Barriers to Communication in Children

Communication involves using language to express ideas and share information, such as through listening, reading, speaking and writing. Children require good language and speech skills to interact with people and succeed in educational settings and other areas of life. If your child experiences problems communicating, she may fall behind in school and struggle with situations that rely on effective communication.

Cognitive Problems

Children with cognitive problems may have insufficient thinking skills, which can lead to problems in such areas as imagination, intellect, judgment, memory, perception and reasoning, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Causes of poor cognitive functioning include brain or head injuries, neurological conditions and premature birth. If your child has a cognitive disorder, the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center recommends seeking qualified medical assistance as early as possible, preferably while your child is of preschool age, when language skills begin evolving.

Fluency Problems

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Fluency refers to your child's ability to talk with normal, uninterrupted speech flow. The speech of children with fluency problems often contains a large amount of hesitations, prolonged sounds or repetitions,states the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Stuttering is a common example of a fluency disorder, which is also called dysfluency. More than 15 million people worldwide stutter, according to Psychology Today. The condition is most common in children aged 2 to 6, and it lasts less than six months in about 97 percent of children.

Language Problems

Language disorders affect the ability to understand speech or use spoken or written language effectively, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Examples of language disorders include expressive language disorder, which makes it difficult for a child to use the correct words to state what she means to others, and receptive language disorder, which makes it difficult for a child to understand the words that others use. Children can have expressive and receptive problems at the same time, and they can also have a language disorder even if they seem to produce and understand speech well.

Speech Problems

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Also called articulation disorders, speech disorders prevent a child from pronouncing sounds correctly, states the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. As a result, his speech may include a lot of mistakes and sound poorly articulated. Types of errors found in the speech of children with speech disorders include distortions due to pronouncing sounds unclearly, omissions due to leaving out required sounds and substitutions due to the use of incorrect sounds instead of the correct version. Speech problems often occur because of physical issues, such as cleft palate, hearing loss and teeth problems, according to the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

Voice Problems

Voice problems arise when certain aspects of your child's voice affects its quality, according to the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. The disorder may then lead to issues, including nasality, hoarseness and inappropriate volume, such as being too soft or too loud. Voice disorders are usually related to phonation, which concerns how air from the lungs make the vocal cords vibrate, or resonance, which involves the way air travels through mouth, nose and throat.