Speech and language development plays a critical role in children’s social development, their behaviour, their learning of early literacy skills and even in the development of their self-esteem.
Encouraging and developing these communication skills with your young child is so important - let's explore some ideal exercises and activities.
Talk, talk and talk some more (ideally from the beginning)
Some parents mistakenly believe that there’s little point in speaking with babies since they can’t yet talk back, yet babies start to understand language long before they can use it themselves. Importantly too, there’s lots of research that demonstrates that the more words children are exposed to early on, the better their later language processing skills and bigger their vocabulary will become.
Naturally, this is linked with enhanced school readiness and academic outcomes once they reach school. While that might not be too surprising, the research differentiates between the kind of exposure that helps. Interestingly, children only gain these important benefits when they’re exposed to a lot of child-directed language, that is, when they’re spoken to a lot directly, as opposed to just hearing lots of words in their environment.
This is important when it comes to thinking about screen time. It turns out that watching people talk on screens or devices doesn’t actually aid our children’s language development. Our kids need real life exposure - to our faces, our voices, our words - in order to learn these important language skills.
Sing
Singing together teaches children not only about language but also about rhyme and rhythm. Our little ones also learn about the use of pitch, volume and breath control, all of which are equally helpful with speech production. Some parents worry that they ‘can’t sing', but honestly, your child will be the most welcoming audience imaginable.
Sing nursery rhymes, sing about the meal you’re preparing, sing about how much you love your little one… just sing.
Extend and correct through modelling
For those of you with older infants and toddlers who are talking in single words or short sentences, it can be helpful to repeat their comments or requests as a full sentence to
model what you’d like them to learn.
So, for example, if your child says, “milk”, you can respond with, “Can I please have some milk? Yes of course you can.” Or, if your little one says, “Ball - table" you can respond with, "Yes, the ball is under the table.”
By responding to your child like this, you can help them to extend their use of language by demonstrating correct sentence structure as they learn. You can take the same approach when your child mispronounces words. Simply repeat these words back to them with the correct pronunciation.
So, for example, if your child says “pasghetti” (which admittedly, might be tempting not to correct since it sounds so damn cute), you can say, “Yes, we’re having spaghetti for dinner”.
Play games together
As your child gets older, they’ll start to enjoy games like ‘I Spy’ through which you can expose them to all sorts of descriptive language, for example, you could say, “I spy with my little eye, something purple… or something round like a circle”. Or you could introduce rhyming words by saying, I spy with my little eye something that rhymes with ‘rug’.
Older children will often delight in sharing ideas and stories with you too. No doubt you’ll have lots of fun along the way.
As you talk, rhyme, play and sing with them, your child is forming powerful brain connections behind the scenes. Importantly too, you are laying the foundation for your little learner’s early literacy skills, and in doing so, are setting them up for success in big school and beyond.
Dr Kaylene Henderson is a highly trained and sought after Child Psychiatrist and parenting expert. Based in Queensland, she dedicates her time and knowledge to a wide audience of parents, educators and corporate groups while raising three gorgeous kids of her own.
