Before you can determine whether or not a child may be in need of our assistance, you may like to consider what to expect during 'typical' child development. The following guidelines give examples of typical development over a number of age ranges.
This is a very brief overview of the development of school-aged children, taken from the PEARL Project, 2002.
Between 5 and 10 years.
- 3000 – 5000 new words are acquired each year; children begin to develop abstract thoughts and understand abstract vocabulary such as ‘welfare’, ‘relevance’, ‘democracy’.
- Non-literal meaning and humour develops.
- Children can take a social perspective of others, for example the feelings of others and consequences of their own utterances.
- They may develop an extensive vocabulary in a specific area corresponding to a particular interest – football teams, for example.
10 – 12 years
- Children begin to use meta-linguistic and meta-cognitive verbs: verbs used to talk about language such as ‘infer’ and ‘conclude’.
- They also understand the difference between factive verbs (that might imply certainty) for example, “I know” and non-factive verbs (that imply uncertainty) for example, “I believe”.
- They understand and use ambiguity and sarcasm.
- They develop the ability to have extended conversations
12 years +
- They understand and use idioms such as “He kicked the bucket” and slang terms.
- They develop sophisticated language for persuasion and negotiations.
- They develop the ability to write in the formal way, for example using literate words such as ‘assert’ and ‘concede’.