Exploring the Cognitive and Social Challenges in 3 Years Old Children with Speech Delay Ester Desdemona Sitorus, Dr. Bernieke Anggita Ristia Damanik, S.Pd. , M.Pd. estersitorusuhkbpnp@gmail.com, bernieke.damanik@uhn.ac.id Abstract This study focuses into the cognitive and social obstacles that a three-year-old child, GH, faces due to her speech delay, as well as the factors that contribute to her condition. A qualitative case study approach was used to monitor GH during daily interactions with family and peers. The findings indicate that GH's cognitive abilities are intact, as indicated by her ability to understand spoken commands and spell words. However, her expressive language impairments make verbal communication difficult, particularly with persons outside her immediate family. GH relies heavily on nonverbal cues, which limits her social contacts and jeopardizes her overall social development. External factors such as low social stimulation, restricted peer engagement, and a lack of diversified language exposure were found to be important contributors to GH's speech delay. Additionally, her issue may be exacerbated by innate expressive limitations. The study underlines the need of early interventions for children with speech problems, such as structured speech therapy, enriched language surroundings, and peer engagement. Keywords : Cognitive challenges, Social challenges, Speech Delay I. INTRODUCTION A. Background Language is an important part of human life because it allows us to communicate and express our thoughts, emotions, and needs. Humans learn language from birth and continue to develop it throughout their lives. Of course, we use this language every time we speak. Tarigan (2015:16) states that speaking is the ability to pronounce articulated sounds to express, convey, and state thoughts, ideas, and feelings. Language acquisition or speaking begins when children are still young, with a developmental phase that lasts from 0 to 5 months and continues until the age of 2-3 years, or even 5 years, when children begin to understand their mother tongue or first language. Language learning occurs spontaneously and progressively, with phases ranging from pre-speech to one word, two words, and more sophisticated word combinations (Suardi et al., 2019). Each stage of language development provides a strong foundation for children's communication skills, which will play an important role in their social and cognitive relationships in the future. At the age of three, language development becomes more significant, especially in children's ability to express themselves through speaking. At this age, children usually start using many words to express their thoughts and feelings. Children at this age usually naturally start to make or imitate some articulations of words such as 'mama', 'dada', and so on. In addition, it is not uncommon for parents to teach their children some pronunciations, as stated by Hurlock,