Have you been wondering what activities you can do to help your child learn to talk?
In this video I’m going to cover daily activities you can do to encourage your child’s speech
and language development.
The first several years of a child’s life are foundational for the development of speech,
language and cognitive skills.
For this reason it’s very important to create an environment that provides them with the
stimulation, positive role modelling and human contact they need to develop speech and language
skills.
For a normally developing child, learning is easy and creating opportunities for it
is not difficult.
There are a few simple daily routines you can put in place to create an environment
that fosters your child’s development.
Speech and language skills don’t just evolve on their own.
They’re part of a bigger picture involving observation, social interactions, play, manipulating
objects, listening and responding.
All these factors work together to facilitate a child’s speech and language development.
The first daily activity to do is interact with your child face-to-face.
Baby’s and toddlers watch our faces for important clues about language and social
situations.
Focusing on facial expressions and facial movement is highly important when the child’s
brain is laying down the neural pathways for speech and language skills.
Infancy is the time when nonverbal communication and social language development begin.
Starting in the first weeks of your newborn's life, take moments throughout the day to hold
your baby facing you.
Speak to and smile at your child.
At first your baby will only be making brief eye contact with you.
But by 4 to 6 weeks of age, the baby will look into your eyes more, and will even start
to smile in response to your smiles.
Look at your baby when your child makes sounds.
And respond back by repeating the sounds.
You can also say words that contain that sound.
For example if your baby is saying the “ba” sound, you can say words like bottle and box.
When your baby makes faces or laughs, respond by making the same faces right back at them.
As your child starts to say words, add on to what is said.
For example if your toddler says “mama,” you can say “mama is here,” “mama loves
you.”
Another great daily activity that will encourage your child’s speech and language development
is narrating your day.
It’s simple to find natural teaching opportunities as you’re going through your day.
Your baby is always listening and learning.
The information your child takes in during the first several years, provides a foundation
for future communication skills.
Talk to your baby as you feed, dress, and give your child a bath.
Talk about what you’re doing and where you’re going.
Point out and name the different items that you see as you’re going throughout your
day.
Mention their colors and shapes, and count how many of them you see.
Taking a walk outside with your baby will give you even more interesting things to see
and for you to talk about.
Much of a baby’s speech development has to do with repetitively hearing the same words
used over and over again.
Another great daily routine to have in place is to read to your child.
Storytime is a wonderful time to bond with your baby or toddler.
And it’s also a way to enrich your child’s speech and language development.
In the first several months, babies see black and white or high contrast color patterns
the best.
Get picture books with these types of patterns, and talk about the pictures as you flip through
the book.
As the baby gets older, choose books that have large colorful pictures.
Guide your child by pointing to the pictures, and say the object names, colors or numbers
that you see.
You can also make reading fun by adding facial expressions, voice inflections, sound effects,
and animal sounds.
When reading with a toddler, ask your child, “what’s this?” and have them name the
things in the picture.
You can also ask your child to point to the items that you name on each page.
During toddlerhood especially, your child may only pay attention to the book for a few
minutes, and that’s okay.
By drawing attention to the pictures and associating the words with real-world objects, your child
learns the importance of language.
Another activity that will encourage your child’s development is playing imitation
games.
We learn social rules by imitation, studying facial expressions and body language.
And, not surprisingly, a big part of language is actually learned by imitation.
Before they even know language, babies imitate facial expressions as well as the sounds,
intonations and volume of what they hear when you speak to them.
When they become toddlers, they can say a few words, but understand many more.
During this age they really increase their efforts to imitate.
Young children need to imitate the language they’re hearing around them to help them
understand how the components of language fit together.
Children learn the language structure and the individual words through imitation.
It also helps them to expand their vocabulary.
In the first months of life, the baby is able to imitate the parent’s facial expressions.
Make eye contact with your baby and show different facial expressions so your child can learn
to make them as well.
The more you talk to your child, the more they’ll try to imitate the sounds.
You will notice that especially after 6 months of age, your baby will start to imitate your
facial expressions and gestures even more.
Smile at your baby, blow out your cheeks, open and close your mouth, lick and smack
your lips, and nod your head up and down.
A way you can start teaching your child parts of the face is by doing an activity where
for example you point to the baby’s nose and say “nose.”
Then touch your nose while saying “nose.”
Then you can ask the baby to touch your nose, and give your child the opportunity to do
so.
Also do gestures like clapping your hands, waving bye-bye, putting your hands on your
head, or sing a song with animated expressions.
The more you clap, wave and share other similar gestures or actions with your baby, the more
likely it is that your child will imitate you and then start doing these actions spontaneously.
The fifth daily activity to do is teach your child to drink from an open cup and a straw
cup, and avoid the use of sippy cups altogether.
There are many benefits to teaching a baby to drink from an open cup and straw cup.
Because of the mechanism by which the baby drinks from these cups, they strengthen the
muscles in the baby's cheeks, mouth and lips, and facilitate the development of oral motor
skills.
All of this helps the child with forming sounds during the process of learning to speak.
On the other hand, the mechanism by which children drink when using sippy cups impedes
the development of the muscles associated with speech and articulation, and can actually
delay their speech development.
Starting as early as 6 months of age, you can give the baby opportunities on a daily
basis to drink a small amount of water, breast milk or formula from an open cup.
Sometime between 9 and 12 months is a great time to introduce a straw cup to your child.
If you have a toddler, and you’ve been using sippy cups, it’s best to change to a straw
cup and an open cup.
I love the ezpz Mini Cup and Straw Training System.
It was designed by a speech language pathologist.
I have a link for it in the description below if you’d like to check it out.
Not only does it function as a straw cup, but by removing the lid and straw, you can
turn it into an open cup for your child to use.
For more guidance on how to teach your child to drink from an open cup and a straw cup,
take a look at my video titled “How to Teach Baby to Drink From A Cup.”
It’s linked up here.
The process of your child’s speech and language development will span over several years.
By making it a part of your daily routine to interact with your child face-to-face,
narrate your day, read, play imitation games, and have your child drink from an open or
straw cup you will optimize your child’s environment for speech and language development.
See you in the next video.