Student Engagement & Wellbeing News

Neurodiversity - Autism & Developmental Language Disorders

In the last edition of the newsletter, we looked at neurodiversity, what that encompasses and the exciting paradigm shift that is occurring in how we think about our unique brain types and that education is also changing to support all brains within our classrooms.

In this edition, we will explore Autism and Developmental Language Disorders (DLD) a little further, and in the  next edition, we will explore Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Autism

Autistic people develop differently to non-autistic people. Autistic people think, move, interact, sense and process differently to what others may expect. Autistic persons have indicated that they may also have more qualities and characteristics in common with other Autistic people than with non-autistic people. Each person is different, but Autistic people will be different to non-autistic people in they way that they:

• Socialise and communicate,  including how they might connect, make and understand friendships and relationships, and use speech and body language
• Think and process,  including how they might see patterns and connections, imagine and play, experience and express senses, emotions and executive functioning, and in the way their brains develop.

For more information on Autism please see https://reframingautism.org.au/about-autism/

Developmental Language Disorders (DLD) 

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) refers to difficulty with understanding and using language impacting approximately 7% of children in school. It can be difficult for families to understand what is occurring for their child and receive a diagnosis as it often manifests in behaviour, broad literacy impacts and attention difficulties.

DLD impacts a child’s ability to:

• Organise sentences in order to hold a conversation or re/tell a story
• Find the words to share thoughts and ideas
• Understand words in order to follow directions or answer questions
• Recall important information
• Sustain attention
• Progress in literacy and numeracy

For further information you can go to this website and this one also.

Anna Gbikpi-Benissan