For many professionals in the field DLD is by nature compelling because of the many and different systems involved (Phonology – the speech sounds and rules for combining that make up words, Morphology – the rules for forming words or parts of words, Syntax – the rules for combining words into sentences, Semantics – the meaning of words and sentences, and Pragmatics – the rules for using language in social situations such as conversation). The overlapping nature of these systems also results in many and different language patterns in children with DLD. It would be a logical assumption that the plethora of language patterns manifested in DLD, make it difficult for non-professionals to recognize the symptoms. And yet the ability to recognize symptoms could lead to screening and possible intervention and in the long term more data available for future research.

It has long been described as an invisible disability (Patchell, and Hand, 1993), but since then not many things have changed on the way DLD is being perceived. Besides the numerous terms used to describe it in the past, recorded as many as 32 different terms in relevant literature by Bishop (2014), there are also other factors that still render DLD an invisible disorder. The absence of physical signs in children with DLD, does not allow for anyone to speculate on the possibility of such a disorder. Daily communication and coping with familiar situations are going to be based on language skills that almost the majority of children with DLD will be able to develop. Only in cases of complex language demands will children with DLD start to show weaknesses and are required to put much effort. In a sample taken from children in Australia, who exhibited speech and language difficulties, the children with speech disorders were more likely to be diagnosed and be provided with treatment Skeat et al., 2010). Moreover, parents, the second group of adults beyond teachers, who are in a constant state of observing and comparing their children and their abilities to others, even they are not able to compare successfully the abilities of their children when it comes to language development or language abilities in general (Hendricks et al., 2019). But even in teachers it is interesting that even in older ages of elementary schools; they still remain without confidence, but most importantly without specific knowledge, on how to cope with DLD (Marshall et al., 2002).

In addition to the reasons on why DLD remains “unseen” the sense of professionals in the field that popular knowledge on that matter is low has to be validated again by facts. In reality many people might be able to provide information on autism, ADHD and dyslexia, but they do not succeed when faced with the term DLD. And even in some cases the information portrayed by people on DLD could be mistaken, as has been proven with the help of an online small scale survey in Australia (Kim et al., 2022). This particular lack of popularity, and especially knowledge on DLD, could be attributed to the high rates of comorbidity prevalent in DLD with other disorders. Based on the idea that reading comprehension as a procedure requires children to exhibit sufficient abilities in both decoding and linguistic comprehension. Snowling et al. (2020), have found that indeed reading difficulties are present in children with dyslexia or DLD. High rates of co-occurrence have been also reported between DLD and ADHD, both very common developmental disorders (Mueller & Tomblin, 2012). And continuing with the relationship between DLD and autism, many commonalities have been discussed based on deficits exhibited in language and communication, but there have also been suggested possible links between them, perhaps the existence of a subgroup of children in the autism spectrum disorder that manifest language disorder (Georgiou & Spanoudis, 2021). It is not unusual for children being diagnosed with dyslexia, ADHD, and sometimes being diagnosed with DLD and after some years the initial diagnosis is changed to learning impairment. For Speech and Language Pathologists in school settings there have been reported limited diagnostic labelling or the use of terms descriptive to the situation, avoiding the term DLD (Ash et al., 2020). Educational constraints are common in that matter and further enhance the problem of public awareness on the topic of DLD.

The general attitude prevalent in the United States for example, treating DLD inside the educational procedure is at odds with how other “famous” developmental disorders are handled (e.g., ADHD, autism), which in turn will be diagnosed easily by a medical staff and treated alongside the educational procedure and not exclusively through education alone (McGregor, 2020). As a result, it further undermines the assessment efforts and the communication of the need why more research is required in general around DLD.