Whatever career pathway a child ultimately embarks upon, one set of brain functions will inevitably play a role in fostering success. These are the functions that band together and result in optimal communication skills. Good communication cements working relationships, social interactions, and leadership capacities. Just as important but much less obvious is the fact that excellent communication helps one to clarify one's own thinking about things. There's an old saying, "How can I know what I think until I hear what I say?" How true! But that might mean that if you have trouble expressing your ideas, your understanding of those ideas runs the risk of being incomplete or vague.

The most common and disabling communication gaps are seen in kids with expressive language dysfunctions. Their weaknesses take several different forms. There are some students who have trouble with words; either it is hard for them to find the words they need when they need them (so-called expressive dysphasia) or they simply possess inadequately developed vocabularies. In the latter case, a student has trouble learning and incorporating into her speech newly acquired words. Other students have trouble with sentence formulation. This is a big problem in elementary schools. A child may know what he'd like to say but then have serious problems constructing a grammatically correct sentence to convey his thoughts. Such trouble may make him reluctant to speak or it could cause him to "dumb down" his ideas to fit them into a simple sentence. What a shame!

Still other students meet frustration at the discourse levels of language, verbal output that has to go beyond the boundaries of sentences - into extensive explanations, narrations, and recapitulations. They are apt to have trouble organizing their thoughts in a logical sequence. Often such students reveal conspicuous difficulty with verbal elaboration; they simply don't elaborate on much of anything. Instead, they overutilize brief responses to questions or else just say they don't know (when they do know). Extended responses take too much work on their part and too often the final verbal product is deficient; so they "shut down" verbally.

Teachers and parents can identify students with expressive language dysfunctions. When they speak on a literate subject they show excessive hesitancy, a lack of variation in sentence structure, less fluency than other kids (i.e., more hesitation and more effort expended), and a tendency to use only very common vocabulary (no abstract, academic, or technical terminology). Such students are seriously at risk for academic and perhaps career difficulty. Even the subtlest problems with expressive language can have dramatic ripple effects creating serious damage for students throughout the curriculum.

It is important to recognize that some students have excellent social language abilities but weak literate language function. That means a student may be quite fluent and adept when it comes to communicating with peers on the bus but inept in a classroom discussion on medieval religious beliefs. The opposite also prevails sometimes. A student may display excellent academic verbal function but have trouble communicating on a social plane. Such verbal pragmatic dysfunctions can cause a student to be unpopular or even actively rejected by peers because he says the wrong things at the wrong time, talks in a manner that sounds hostile or excessively boastful, and has trouble using the words and sentence constructions that are fashionable with his fellow students. And some students with social skill shortcomings actually display problems with nonverbal communication. Their body movements and the images they project, the way they market themselves, may communicate negative vibes to their peers. Most often, the kid emitting such signals is totally unaware of the extent to which he is alienating the other children.

In school a significant amount of communication comes forth on paper. Writing is a critical skill, one that actually helps kids develop their communication skills. Unlike speaking, writing is a relatively slow process, one that allows for revision, for constant sanding and polishing. Written communication allows students to organize discourse, vary sentence structure, and do some rich elaborating on their thoughts. But writing is an enormous academic strain for some students, especially those with graphomotor dysfunctions or significant weaknesses of attention, language, or memory function. Many such students despise the act of writing, which is too bad, since they are the ones who most need to write as a way of enhancing their thinking.

Communication within academic settings is not confined to the verbal domain. Many students benefit from having available certain non-verbal channels of communication. They can find expression through creative activities. A student may communicate through art or dance or music. Some combine verbal ability with creativity as they write poetry, stories, or skits. Still others like to communicate through humor of various types. It is safe to say that every child needs to have at least one (and preferably more than one) mode of communication that works really effectively for her. Adults need to find those gratifying and satisfying outlets for every child.

Finally, there is one other form of communication that is vitally important for kids, and that is the opportunity to communicate to caring adults one's true feelings. The communication of feelings - feelings of worry, anxiety, apprehension, and glee - need to be vented by kids in a setting that's safe. Parents and teachers should let children know that they can communicate how they are feeling inside without fear of reprisals, criticism, or public humiliation.