A free, plain-English guide to the whole field — organised by topic. Whether you’re a parent trying to understand what a professional said, or a student studying speech therapy, occupational therapy, special education or psychology, start here and follow the links to go as deep as you like.
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The dictionary
Look up any term in plain English, with a real example — 274 terms A–Z.
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By topic
The ten areas below explain how the concepts fit together, for parents and students.
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Go deeper
Each topic links to condition guides, home programs and our evidence base.
Speech & Language
How children come to understand and use words — from those first sounds and babble all the way to sentences, proper conversation and clear speech. We look at the building blocks of language (sounds, grammar and meaning) and at what’s going on when talking is late or tricky to make out.
How children connect, share attention and communicate with the people around them — and the autistic ways of experiencing the world. We cover the back-and-forth of social skills, sensory differences, and a respectful, neurodiversity-aware take on what real support looks like.
Why children focus, act on impulse and behave the way they do — and why behaviour makes far more sense once you read it as communication with a purpose behind it. We cover attention, ADHD-type difficulties, and evidence-based ways to grow the behaviour you want to see.
How the body’s senses, movement and coordination hold up everyday skills — including the “hidden” senses of balance, body position and internal signals, plus handwriting, dressing and play. This is the ground occupational therapy and sensory processing sit on.
How children learn to read, write, spell and get to grips with numbers — the sound-to-letter code that reading rests on, and the specific difficulties such as dyslexia and dyscalculia. We cover phonics, comprehension and hands-on, multisensory teaching.
How children grow across the early years — the usual order that movement, language, social and thinking skills arrive in, what a “milestone” actually means, and how to read a warning sign without panicking. It’s the foundation everything else here builds on.
How children feel, settle and cope — big feelings, anxiety, resilience, and the calm, connected adult support (we call it co-regulation) that helps a child slowly learn to steady themselves. We cover everyday emotional growth, and how to know when it’s time to reach out for more help.
The practical methods professionals and parents actually use to teach and support a child — from communication systems (PECS, AAC) and parent-coaching approaches (Hanen), to structured literacy (Orton-Gillingham) and behaviour teaching (modelling, prompting, task analysis).
How a child’s development is measured and made sense of — the difference between a screen and a full assessment, how standardised scores and percentiles work, and how a diagnosis is reached by weighing up lots of different information. Written to take the mystery out of the numbers.
How we actually know what helps — the research language behind evidence-based practice: trials, reviews, reliability, validity and effect size. Handy for students, and for any parent who wants to weigh up a bold claim for themselves.
You don’t need to learn the jargon to help your child — but understanding a word a doctor or teacher used can make everything less frightening. Start with the dictionary or the free check, and reach out any time.
If you’re studying the field
Everything here is free to learn from. The Assessment and Research & Evidence topics cover the exam-useful concepts — norm- vs criterion-referenced testing, standard scores, RCTs, reliability, validity and effect size — each with a clear example. It’s a study aid, not a substitute for your course or a qualified supervisor.
