When a child has significative and persistent difficulties understanding or speaking, he or she might have a developmental language disorder. When this is the case, such a disorder will impact the child's daily functioning and persist throughout life. However, this does not prevent the child from making language progress at his or her own pace with the necessary support.
The language difficulties of a developmental language disorder appear during development and are therefore not acquired or associated with a biomedical condition. On the other hand, a developmental language disorder can be associated with other difficulties such as attention difficulties, motor difficulties, reading and writing difficulties, speech difficulties, emotional difficulties or behavioral difficulties.
A developmental language disorder can affect various components of language and will manifest itself differently from one individual to another.