10 tips for toddlers' language development

Published: 25 Oct 2019 Tagged: Communicationconversationlanguagelanguage developmentSLPSpeakablespeakingspeech and language pathologyspeech language pathologistSpeech Pathologytipstoddlers

Small children demonstrate incredible learning paces when compared to bigger children or adults. This stage in a person’s life is marked by understanding the world through every single experience using sensorial stimulation – colours, sounds, scents, tastes and textures that a child needs to assimilate. The more the stimulation, the more the learning, which includes language development. A child’s language skills are proportional to the number and relevance of lived experiences. Therefore, the Speakable team has sorted ten tips to help parents and carers stimulate toddlers’ language skills:

1. Read different kinds of book. It doesn’t matter how much a child reads of recognises letters and number, the narrative itself encourages the interpretation of the story and the recognition of keywords by comparison and logics.
2. Play on the floor. Children might like to make their own stories with their toys, so you should participate by describing what you see and encouraging the child to also describe within her own limits of vocabulary. Your description can add many more words for the child to assimilate and enrich the toy story.
3. Constant ordinary descriptions. A child will assimilate absolutely everything stimulated for her, under her own decoding limits. That means that a simple but comprehensive comparison among all kitchen appliances and utensils, or narrating the house’s cleaning chores while doing them, will be very helpful for the child to learn many words for nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions.
4. Give options for things and actions. In order to stimulate the child’s independence and choice-making skills, simple decisions such as ‘Would you like orange juice or apple juice?’, ‘Do you want to play by kicking or by tossing the ball?’ will be very important. You should always provide options when they are available and when the child really can decide.
5. Attention to the child’s pace. Pay attention to the child’s personal conversation pace and try to follow the same. Sometimes, the child babbles or speaks very calmly due to her own personality, but the other person doesn’t show the needed patience, which is not positive for the child’s development. An energetic child might annoy a person who is tired or is too calm. In any occasion, patience and attention must be provided, gently helping the child to assume a pleasant pace and also to not be annoyed by your own pace.
6. Disrupt the daily life. On random days, do something silly such as giving the child an empty cereal bowl at breakfast, put different shoes on each foot etc. Stimulate the child on identifying what’s wrong and to explain in her own limits how to make it correct.
7. Music and dancing. There are many stories about the miraculous effect music causes on anyone’s development, especially on communication. Create moments to sing constructive songs to sing along with the child, even dancing those songs which are about body parts, animals, actions and many other themes to enrich vocabulary and how to communicate. Dancing movements might help kinaesthetic learning, which boosts creative thinking in a child.
8. Be careful on how you react on mistakes. This is the child’s most important period to assimilate the world, and the child is also assimilating the relationship with people. If the child is criticised, reprehended or bullied for language mistakes, the child might simply give up trying to be better, or start treating other people with the same lack of respect. Instead, show the correct way of speaking and always praise efforts and victories, giving support and understanding for the child’s mistakes.
9. Field trips and new environments. The toddler’s mind is assimilating thing in an amazing pace, and you as parent or carer is the one who can provide more and more opportunities for this assimilation. Any environment different from the usual ones (home, family and friends’ home, kindergarten, park near home etc.) will provide a new breakthrough for the child’s understanding of the world. It could be places like a zoo, a circus, a museum, or even ordinary ones such as a bank agency, a ferry, an open-air fair and many others.
10. Care and hygiene with the ears. Children in this age range are more susceptible to ear infections and other ear-related issues. When any of these issues occur, the child’s hearing ability might be affected, which automatically might represent a barrier to the child’s speaking ability. Be very attentive for any sign of issue with your child’s ears.

These ten tips were elaborated by our team at Speakable, but every child might have different needs and we can provide many more tips according to the child’s unique profile. Just get in contact with us if you feel your child needs any special attention to language development and we’ll be more than happy to provide the needed support!