How do kids typically acquire language? What does it tell us about how to help children with Developmental Language Disorder?

We’re a month away from Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) Awareness Day on 17 October! 

DLD is a hidden but common disability that affects 1 in 14 children. It causes difficulties understanding and using language for no known reason. 

If you haven’t heard about DLD yet, check out the links below.

To understand some of the ways speech-language pathologists support young children with DLD, it helps to know how most babies and young kids typically acquire language.

Language acquisition is really complex. A framework can help to break it down. A useful one is the (confusingly-named) constructivist framework*. Here are some of the main ideas it suggests:  

Babies are not blank slates: Babies are born with language-ready brains. For example, they:

• are biased to look at faces;
• prefer speech over non-speech;
• can distinguish speech from backwards speech;
• prefer sign language to pantomime;
• seem to have an innate ability to build language from limited input; and
• can acquire multiple languages simultaneously.

Babies use their senses to learn: Even before they can sit up or crawl, babies explore. They:

• listen to speech – especially when it’s directed at them;
• see people, objects and events;
• feel people and objects;
• smell people and objects; and
• taste food and drink (and sometimes other objects!). 

Babies are eager to learn: Babies aren’t just spectators: they actively seek out information. They:

• are attracted to events that are not too simple or complex for them;
• manipulate and play with objects to learn about them;
• actively take turns in conversations (even before words);
• pay close attention to others’ conversations;
• practice babbling and speech when alone; and
• over time, learn to make language predictions and to spot errors and exceptions.

Babies develop into toddlers, and then preschoolers! Babies’ brains and bodies change a lot from birth to early school age. In parallel, over time, young children:

• learn about objects and events in the world (world knowledge);
• acquire language (e.g. vocabularies and word meanings, morphology, sentence syntax, and social uses of language);
• acquire socio-cognitive skills (e.g. joint attention, knowledge of other people’s mental states, and common ground); and
• develop sensorimotor skills (e,g, pointing, sitting, crawling, walking, speech). 

Image source: Rowland et al., 2025 – full citation below.

Everything interacts with everything else! Typical child development is amazing and complex. Brain and body changes shape learning; and new learning changes brains and bodies! 

Lots yet to learn: One of the (many) reasons speech-language pathology is so interesting is that there’s an awful lot we don’t yet fully understand, including why some children learn so much faster than others, and why some children – like children with DLD – struggle to learn and use language. 

Relevance to DLD? 

• When supporting young children with DLD, this framework helps us think about the importance of things like joint attention, babbling, gestures, social interaction and turn-taking, natural play, following the child’s lead and interests, increasing the quality and quantity of language input, increasing world knowledge and category knowledge, exploring language using multiple senses, and choosing functional targets to work on language content, structure, and use at the same time.  
• For a young child with DLD, the key goals of well-designed, evidence-based language therapy often include increasing their language skills for the purpose of boosting social participation, relationships with family and friends, literacy, academic and work potential, health outcomes, and quality of life.
• We address each of these ideas, with practical support strategies, in our DLD Free Guide for Families (see below).

Go deeper: Rowland, C.F., Westermann, G., Theakston, A.L., Pine, J.M., Monaghan, P., & Lieven, E.V.M. (2025). Constructing language: a framework for explaining acquisition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences (Open access)

More about DLD Awareness Day:

DLD Awareness Day – RADLD

More about DLD and language therapy: Developmental Language Disorder (DLD): A free guide for families – 3rd edition

Related reading from us:

How do babies and toddlers learn language? (Spoiler alert: it’s incredible!)

* Confusingly, “constructivism” means different things in different fields of study. Here, we use the term as used in the field of cognitive sciences. Constructivist learning theory in education refers to a method of teaching that emphasises discovery-based learning. They are not the same.

This article also appears in a recent issue of Banter Booster, our weekly round up of the best speech pathology ideas and practice tips for busy speech pathologists, speech pathology students, teachers and others.

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