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Comprehension Difficulties

The day your child does what you tell them to do is a memorable day! It is amazing when your little toddler actually goes and gets the ball, puts his nappy in the bin, or gives Daddy the shoes following your instruction.

Children develop comprehension skills starting with the recognition of a few familiar words, e.g. ‘Mum’, ‘Dad’, ‘ball’, ‘bottle’ etc and as the child develops they start to follow simple phrases e.g. ‘find the ball’, ‘hug Mummy’, and later more complex commands such as, ‘put the red ball in the basket’. By school age they are starting to understand more complex grammatical and morphological markers, e.g. ‘The hat was not his ‘The mice ran away quickly

Children can sometimes present with Receptive Language Disorder which means they do not develop / understand language as well as their peer group. Children with receptive language difficulties can often appear naughty because they simply do not understand what is being said to them. Coping strategies are often subtle and can allow them to fly under the radar. Children with receptive language difficulties are often very smart and can demonstrate excellent learning skills in non-verbal assessment.

At a higher level children with receptive language difficulties can present with verbal reasoning difficulty, often miss the hidden meaning in jokes or idioms and find it hard to understand and retain the story in more complex narrative.

Receptive language difficulties can affect dynamics at home between a parent and child, socially with peers, and in school when instructions and curriculum content becomes difficult to follow.

There are a variety of causes although often the cause of a language difficulty will be unknown:

  • Genetic factors
  • Brain trauma
  • Difficulties during pregnancy
  • Auditory Memory weakness
  • Auditory Processing difficulties
  • Hearing difficulties – conductive hearing loss

Justine can provide specialist assessment and effective treatment for children with Receptive Language Delay / Disorder.

I contacted Justine about my 2.5 year old after his nursery raised some concerns about his mouth regularly being open and excess dribbling. Justine took the time to thoroughly understand the issue and the flags that nursery had identified as well as a detailed background of my son's life to date. She then provided us with some very useful advice but concluded we wouldn't benefit from treatment at this stage. I really appreciated her friendly and pragmatic communication and felt reassured after speaking with her that I knew how to help my son. I appreciated the time she invested, especially given it didn't result in any specific work for her. Thank you!

Katherine

Justine is an amazing therapist, my daughter has been lucky enough to see her in London weekly for Prompt therapy for the past 3 years. My daughters speech has improved so much as a result of her seeing Justine every week. I’m so grateful she gets to see Justine and can’t recommend her enough.

Hayley

I would recommend working with Justine, she is very kind, very patient and has found the perfect way to make my child understand, thank you so much Justine.

Nic

You have been a magician for Tristan!

Francesca

Justine you are an amazing,caring and passionate lady. We can't thank you enough.

Trisha and Marcus

Dear Justine, Thank you for being so wonderful and caring for Damien the way you have we really appreciate everything you have done for him.

Damien & Maria

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