Children with social communication difficulties may find it hard to:

  • Communicate and interact with others for a range of different purposes (e.g. to initiate with others, to make requests, to respond to others etc).

  • Use non-verbal means of communication such as gestures, facial expressions and eye contact
  • Understand social and conversational rules
  • Understand non-literal or ambiguous language
  • Recognise and understand emotions.

These difficulties can sometimes make it hard for children to interact with others and form friendships. Social communication difficulties are sometimes linked to other conditions such as Autism Spectrum Disorder and Attachment Disorder. They may also co-exist alongside other conditions such as Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). You can find out more about DLD on the RADID Website. 

If you feel your child has difficulties with social communication, you may find the information on this page useful.

Children at this stage may not yet be sending intentional messages. Instead, you may have to interpret what they want. For example, they may stand in front of the kitchen cupboard and cry (which you may interpret as them wanting a snack). Children may start to send you more intentional messages by leading you towards the cupboard, moving your hand onto the cupboard or pointing to the cupboard. They may find it difficult to respond to you and they might appear to be following their 'own agenda'.

Helpful information for children at this stage:

Useful videos:

Children at this stage might be starting to send you more intentional messages. To do this, they may:

  • Bring items to you to ask for help
  • Lead you to something/somewhere
  • Move your hand onto things
  • Direct their gaze towards you
  • Reach towards you
  • Gestures e.g. they may lift their arms to ask to be picked up
  • Use words (although not all children at this stage can use words)

Children at this stage may still find it difficult to respond to instructions or share their interests/attention with you during play.

Helpful information for children at this stage:

Useful videos:

Children at this stage are able to use words to make requests and they may also be able to respond to some simple questions. Children at this stage are able to share their interests with you and they may hold items up to show you or point to items. They may not yet be able to engage in conversation, their phrases/sentences may still be quite short and they might still find it challenging to interact with their peers. 

Useful videos

Children at this stage may be able to use language for a variety of different purposes e.g. to initiate with others, to make requests, to make comments. They may be able to use sentences but they might find it challenging to engage in conversation with others. They may find it hard to initiate a conversation, stay on topic, maintain a conversation or end a conversation. 

At this stage, children may also have difficulties with their sentence structure/grammar (for example, they may mix up 'he' and 'she') or they may also have difficulties with their understanding of language (for example, their ability to understand instructions or accurately respond to questions). Please check out our expressive language and understanding pages on our website for more information.

Helpful information for children at this stage:

Useful videos:

Useful Websites: