Early development of language skills in toddlers is crucial for them to succeed in schools and beyond. Therefore, it becomes mighty important for parents to give special attention to this aspect of their development thereby, ensuring that they don’t falter in the long run.
In this article, we, at Calgary Child care have highlighted a few activities that you, as a parent can use to improve your kid’s speech and language development skills, especially at a very early age. So let’s take a peek at them without further ado.
Up to 2 years
- Encourage your child to make various sounds that are based purely on vowels and consonants. Examples: Da, ma, ba etc.
- Maintain eye contact with the baby and encourage him/her more to attempt the speech again and again. You can emphasize on different voice patterns to make your baby aware of the differences between a question and a statement.
For e.g.
Raise the pitch of your voice to indicate the fact that you are asking a question. - Imitating laughter can work wonders. You can also encourage your baby to imitate your actions. These can include things like clapping, blowing kisses, finger games and so on. Your imagination is your only limitation. These actions can definitely improve the communication between you two.
- Use the aid of basic gestures to convey different meanings to the kid. S/He will surely learn to comprehend them over time.
For e.g.
A simple nod of the head to signify “yes” and so on. - Use animal sounds to great effect. Babies love them and so will you. It also helps in early speech development.
- Last but not the least, READ to your child. This is probably the best practice of the lot in our honest opinion.
From 2 to 4 years
- Use a simple range of words and speech to communicate with your child such that it can be understood in a jiffy.
- Do the baby talk only if it is needed.
- Make your child understand questions by playing the “yes-no” game. These should include questions like “Want an ice cream? Want to play?” and so on. Everything should be simple so that s/he can comprehend the questions easily. You can even use gestures to your advantage here.
- Singing nursery rhymes can also work. You can involve yourself in the process and encourage your child to imitate you especially during the song. It can work wonders
- Place questions with an option. Such a thing invites a constructive response from the child.
For e.g.
Do you want a chocolate or an éclair?
If the child fails to comprehend the verbal options, you can also use visual information to your advantage like placing a chocolate and an éclair in front of him and asking him to select only one (s/he’ll take both though). - Teach him/her vocabulary. These include things like-
– Naming body parts.
– Naming flowers.
– Naming animals and so on.
From 4 to 6 years
- Make sure to pay proper attention to the child whenever s/he attempts to start a conversation on his/her own.
- Always encourage him/her to speak. Praise any attempt that comes from his/her end. NEVER show frustration in front of him/her.
- Try to involve your child into your speech. The advice, therefore, is to speak with a pause. This gives the child an opportunity to join in within that split-second time.
- Offer your child a clue or a description and make him/her identify the same. This also helps in cognitive development which is another integral aspect of a child development.
For e.g.-
“We use this to sweep the floor. What is it?” - Play games that help to build vocabulary in children. These can include the likes of memory game, name game and so on. You will find a vast resource of these games on the internet. Refer to them as per your convenience.
- Watch TV together. It can also help to encourage speech development in children you know provided you choose the right programs for your kids e.g. the classic Teletubbies.
Lastly, we would also like to say that proper speech and language development don’t occur within a single day. It requires time and patience. So make sure you don’t show any signs of frustration in front of your kid. Otherwise, everything will go down the drain.
We hope you found the list handful enough for your purpose. With that, we’ll bring this article to an end for now. Hope you had a good read.