Help Develop Your Child's Language Skills at Home!
Speech, language and communication skills are crucial to young children’s overall development and parents play a critical role in the development of language and speech skills.
The following are 10 strategies for increasing your child’s language at home.
1. Wait, wait and wait!
Before offering to help your child open a cup, grab a book from the shelf or open the door to go outside, pause, and allow your child to initiate and ask you for help. They may use eye gaze, point, a sound or even a word when you give them the opportunity to ask.
2. Give them a Choice
Offer choices throughout the day. What color shirt should we pick? What should we make for dinner?
3. Model simple words and objects
When naming an object, bring it close to your mouth so your child can focus on the object and what your mouth is doing. Narrate actions throughout the day to provide a language rich environment. Utilize books every day! Ask your child to point to objects, identify people, places and things, and answer questions after reading a page.
4. Become a Narrator
Narrate actions throughout the day to provide a language rich environment.
5. Books, Every Day!
Utilize books every day! Ask your child to point to objects, identify people, places and things, and answer questions after reading a page.
6. Singing and Rhyming Together
Integrate singing and nursery rhymes into your daily routine. The repetition of songs allows your child to participate by imitating movement, vocalizing and singing parts of the songs.
7. Face to Face Interactions
Play and interact face to face to allow your child to focus on what your mouth is doing during speech, to read your nonverbal facial expressions, and to increase engagement.
8. Play Hide & Seek
Play hide and seek or go on a scavenger hunt throughout the house! These are both fun ways to practice familiar phrases such as “ready or not, here I come” or practice prepositions or attributes such as “Look BEHIND the couch” or “IN the BLUE pot.”
9. Make a Photo Album
Make a photo album together! Print pictures of family, friends and pets and integrate names of people, places and events. To make it more difficult, don’t forget to add conjunctions, adjective verbs and other targets.
10. Practice Reciprocity
Practice reciprocity and keep the communication going. If your child asks for a drink. Ask what kind? How much? If your child makes a sound, imitate them and see if they will take their turn next. How many times can you make back and forth sounds? This is great speech practice and also good for back and forth engagement that is necessary for conversation.
Do you have concerns about your child’s language or speech?
Maybe it’s time to talk to a professional. SPACE Therapy and Gym offers speech evaluations and speech therapy and you can schedule a free consultation right now.
This is an amazing place! My daughter has attended for the past 2 years and her speech has increased tremendously. – Ashanti H.