Specific language impairment (SLI)

Specific language impairment Impairment The word services use for how much something gets in the way of daily life. A diagnosis usually needs proof of this, not just a list of traits. Read the full definition of Impairment described children who struggled to learn language without an obvious cause. If your child was assessed some years ago, it may be the term on the report.

The name changed through a piece of work called CATALISE, which used a structured process to get a panel Panel A meeting where professionals decide things like funding or a place on a waiting list. Parents are not in the room, but you can still ask how a decision was made. Read the full definition of Panel of 57 experts to agree on wording. Developmental language disorder, or DLD, was the term they agreed on. The campaign that came out of that work puts it plainly: DLD is the new term to replace SLI.

The reasoning matters, because it was not about tidiness. The word specific implied the difficulty was only with language and nothing else, which turned out not to be true for most children. It also meant services could turn children away when their profile did not look pure enough, including children whose non-verbal reasoning scores did not fit the old rule. The panel dropped that requirement because the evidence did not support it.

This is the opposite case to Asperger's. Here the newer word is the one the community campaigns for, because it opens doors to speech and language therapy rather than closing them. So we use developmental language disorder, and we use its full name rather than softening it.