As reported in the current issue of Topics in Language Disorders, BYU researchers found that some societal conventions are inadvertently turning children's speech problems into social and educational struggles. Brinton and Fujiki's study describes peer evaluations, teacher evaluations and self-evaluations of six children with SLI under the age of 12. Teachers perceived children with the impairment as having more behavioral problems and poorer social skills than others, and the peers of the students with SLI saw them as excluded, ignored and somewhat of an annoyance. The children with the disorder perceived themselves as more lonely than typical children. I just get passed from one person to another.
Nobody wants to play with a broken toy.
Researchers also evaluated how the children with SLI interacted with typical children, comparing them to two control groups of ordinarily developing children. All six of the children with SLI had more problems initiating conversations than most normal youngsters, and four of them had more trouble working, playing and negotiating with other children in their group. This is ironic, because when they go to school, they are constantly bombarded with tasks that demand the very skill they do not have. The way they struggle to learn is the way they are expected to learn. Although children with SLI need to interact with other students, they may struggle to learn when placed in groups.