As a parent educator, I will sometimes have a parent express concern because their 18 to 24 month old has a limited vocabulary and simply hasn’t started to use words consistently. We review and discuss concerns such as hearing, familial history and patterns, receptive language skills, and cognitive skills. We usually refer them to their pediatrician to be sure there is no medical reason for their concern.
Our speech language pathologist and I developed a list of simple activities that we suggest to parents to encourage language development:
1. Expand what your child says by adding just a little more. For example, if your child says, “ball”, you can expand what he says by saying, “Yes, that’s a big ball.”
2. Talk to your child about what he is doing and what you are doing. Describe the action, size, shape, color, and general happenings of the day.
3. Provide verbal labels as you interact with your child. For example, your child touches your nose. You say ‘nose’. Your child goes to the fridge, points and grunts. You say, “drink please”. Model the words in very simple terms.
4. Give your child time to respond to what you say. Speech is complex and sometimes they need time to process what is being said to them, formulate what they want to say, and then they have to complete all of the motor planning to speak the words. It’s complicated, so give them plenty of “wait time” for processing.
5. Sing songs, do finger-plays and say rhymes. These are fun interactive ways to play, explore and engage in language.
6. Listen to a variety of music. The options in children’s music are endless. There is a song for nearly every concept, for transitions, cleaning-up, saying a blessing and the list goes on and on.
7. Read and look at books! A toddler typically does not have the attention span to sit through a complete story. Time with books should be fun. Provide board books so they can hold the book and play with it themselves. Talk about the pictures, what is happening, and shorten the story to fit his attention span. Go with the flow; when they have lost interest, it is okay to stop and move onto something else.
This list has been compiled by MJ Wood, CCC-SLP and Kristi Delp, M.Ed.
If you have concerns about your child’s communication development please contact your health care provider or your local early intervention team.
