DLD or Childhood Apraxia of Speech: how to tell

When the words won't come, it helps to know whether your child is searching for the right language — or working hard to make their mouth obey.

In short

You cannot tell these apart from home, and you don't need to — that's exactly what an assessment is for. In simple terms, Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) is mainly about understanding and using language — finding words, building sentences, following what's said. Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS) is a motor-planning difficulty — your child knows the word they want but the brain struggles to send the right movement plan to the lips, tongue and jaw, so the same word may come out differently each time. A speech-language pathologist tells them apart, and a child can sometimes have features of both.

What tends to look different

These are gentle pointers — not a checklist to diagnose with:

• More like DLD — a smaller vocabulary than peers, short or jumbled sentences, trouble finding the right word, difficulty following instructions or telling a story, and challenges that show up in understanding as well as speaking. Individual sounds may be fairly clear.
• More like CAS — speech that's hard to understand even when the child clearly means something, the same word said differently on different tries, groping or searching mouth movements, trouble with longer words, and often clearer single sounds than connected speech. Understanding language is usually stronger than the ability to produce it.
• The honest overlap — both can make a child hard to understand and both deserve early, skilled help. The distinction guides how therapy is delivered, so getting it right matters.

What unites them: your child has things to say. Skilled therapy builds a reliable bridge to saying them.

When to seek a check

Arrange a speech-language assessment if your child is much harder to understand than peers their age, has very few words, isn't combining words by around two years, seems frustrated trying to talk, or if you simply have a worry that won't settle. Early support works — you never need to "wait and see" with communication.

The Pinnacle way

AbilityScore® is part of Pinnacle’s developmental assessment. Diagnosis, where needed, requires an appropriately qualified healthcare professional — never from an app, a list or an online form. Our speech-language pathologists use a structured, clinician-administered assessment to map exactly how your child's communication is working and build a plan around it through speech therapy. Learn how your child's profile is built in the AbilityScore® explained, or explore more on how we help families.

Trusted sources

WHO ICD-11 developmental speech and language categories; American Speech-Language-Hearing Association guidance on Childhood Apraxia of Speech and developmental language disorder; American Academy of Pediatrics (HealthyChildren.org) early communication milestones.

Next step — Unsure which it is? Let a Pinnacle speech-language pathologist tell you clearly. Book a speech assessment.

This is general information, not a diagnosis — individual assessment and diagnosis require an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.