Communication Development Center

And now that you are here, we want to give you a road map, really a star map, to our website…to help you decide where to travel next.

Yes, your journey is all about language development. But this map begins with Development in general, because language development is a part of child development.

Child development is natural, and when we partner with our children, we have the potential to support them in *becoming* the people they already are. They were born to be themselves; and with our support, can develop into the freest version of themselves.

As you continue to look at the tabs at the top of the Welcome page, glance at the Development topics, and see that Processing is first. We chose this as first because how individuals see, hear, and think about life depends on their own natural neurology. It also depends on their environment, learning opportunities, and partners, but it begins with their own, highly individual, neurology.

You’ll see that Language Development is the next topic, but it’s not separate from overall child development. Language is part of life, and experienced in individual ways. Different cultures have conventions that decide some of the rules of language forms (grammar, word structure, etc), but language itself is the ‘close-caption’ part of an experience. It’s the sound track, the surround-sound, a symbolic part of experience. Language is a part of experience, so language processing is part of ‘experience-processing.’ As our illustration shows, some young children first experience single words (‘ball’); others experience long gestalts (“There it goes. The ball went out of the park.”). This illustration encapsulates the difference between analytic and gestalt processing very succinctly.

Take a look at the next topics: Regulation, Sensorimotor, Praxis. Whether or not you know anything about these topics now, you will find an introduction and lots of detail on each one. That’s because they are part of Development, and may be more or less related to your child’s language development. Information on each topic will help you, an adult who cares about a gestalt language processor, to support that child in the best ways we know.

The Communication Development Center, soon to become the Communication Development Collective, is an outgrowth of a long-standing clinical practice that developed Natural Language Acquisition (NLA), and is still the home of NLA. Now that the Collective has become an international information center, it is becoming an important resource base, with incredible articles, blogs, posts, handouts, and a full library of materials available to peruse now or later.

There’s no hurry about any of this. This is, after all, your journey, the one you share with your child. You can skip straight to NLA Stages if you wish, and look at NLA as a developmental process. Or if you already know about NLA, you can go straight to Supports and look at Supports for every stage in this process. If you are looking for materials in other languages, these will begin to multiply over time, so stay tuned to International!

As we continue to expand our universe of possibilities, you will be able to read everything on this growing site, and save anything you want for your personal use, free of charge. We feel passionate that this information be accessible to everyone. While there are links to purchase the original NLA book, and three professional-level NLA courses for those who feel it may benefit them, the same information is all here and it is completely free. This information doesn’t ‘belong’ to anyone, and exclusivity is antithetical to the universal sharing that this movement is about. Just as the NLA Facebook groups are spreading internationally, we are cognizant of the fact that this natural language acquisition style needs to be understood by everyone. The days of pathologizing echolalia, and considering GLPs to be substandard ALPs, can no longer continue.

To make this material available without cost, donations are graciously accepted — if and when you are able. All donations are tax deductible in the US, as Communication Development Center, Inc. is a registered not-for-profit organization. 100% of donations will be used to extend our educational forum — and greatly appreciated.

Welcome!