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The question of how children develop an understanding of their own and others minds has attracted a substantial amount of research during the past decades.Especially the field of childrens "theory of mind" has been quite successful.Theory of mind (ToM) refers to our ability to attribute thoughts, beliefs, and feelings to ourselves and to other people, and to our understanding that our actions are governed by these thoughts, beliefs, and feelings.It is essential to understand that people engaged in the same situation as one self can have different mental states in spite of the same experience, also often referred to as holding false beliefs.This ability is crucial in social interaction and communication.In general, this ability develops by the age of four.However, there are children that by definition have profound difficulties to interact with other persons that could be explained by deficits in theory of mind.In the literature it is often claimed that children with autism fail to solve false belief tasks irrespective of tasks used and has been suggested that this deficit is specific to autism.The claim for specificity is questioned by studies that show that there are other disorders displaying deficits in theory of mind, such as profound cerebral palsy and Severe Speech and Physical Impairment (SSPI) and schizophrenia.Comparisons between the performance of children with CP and SSPI and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) on false-belief tasks have shown that children with CP perform worse than the children with ASD.However, by definition and also indicated in clinical records, children with ASD have qualitative impairment in social interaction while children with CP and SSPI do not.In fact, generally, children with CP try to interact, are really interested in others, and show good adaptation in social situations.In the presentation different critical aspects of the theory of mind paradigm will be discussed, highlighted by examples from research on children with neurodevelopmental disorders in comparison to the performance of children with severe speech and physical impairments and typically developing children.The results will be discussed in terms of verbal ability, information processing and latencies, social skills, experimental design, and ecological validity.