Guest Post By Shannon Trouse, FNP at Dr. Paul Steinwachs’ office
5 Steps to encourage your toddler’s budding language skills
Fall has started and all of our little ones are trooping off to various forms of school. There are always a flurry of well child physicals to do in the Fall and one of the frequent areas of concern that I encounter is communication. Parents are often worried that their child does not speak an appropriate volume of words or enunciate enough for his or her age group. There are many wonderful speech pathologists in town that can help those children who truly have a speech difficulty. However, for the average toddler, the parents themselves can improve the efforts of a slow talker.
There are a few steps at home to implement and then your little one can be well on his way to communicating clearly to you and others.
Step 1. Turn off the TV.
Research has shown that the highest common denominator of difficulty with speech is in proportion to the amount of TV the child is exposed to. Please note that the studies are explicit in defining this as TV exposure as opposed to just watching TV. It is now known that background TV noise can be just as damaging as sitting down in front of the TV. This stimulation teaches a child’s attention span to bounce from the TV to the task that they are currently doing (typically playing). There is also a disconnect between real time speech and people talking on the TV in regards to learning language. Live conversation is the strongest tool to teach a child to speak.
Step 2. Begin to narrate or talk constantly.
As an example, this is what your morning conversation with your 12 month old will sound like: “Good morning, little one. How did you sleep last night?” Pause. “How did your stuffed animals sleep?” Pause. “Let’s go to the kitchen. What would you like to eat?” Pause. “Oatmeal, yogurt? What cabinet is that in? Let’s see: what goes into the oatmeal? Milk? Where is the milk? Can you help me find the milk? There it is. Now what about butter? Where is the yellow butter? Where should we look? In the door?” You get the idea. Narration is lots of fun once you see them begin to respond.
Step 3. Insist on some contribution to requests.
When your child wants something, make sure that he says something, anything, and is not allowed to point or grunt as a means of request. If he refuses to make any effort that may remotely, vaguely resemble the word “cup”, don’t give him his cup. If he would like to throw himself down on the floor and bang his head in a tantrum until he has a nice bruise, so be it. If he wants to scream until he makes himself sob and throw up, so be it. No verbal effort, no cup.
Step 4. Read out loud.
I know that your two-year old boy will not sit in your lap for you to read to him. That is fine. His ability to sit still for reading will come with age. What I want you to do is to read AT him. Please read aloud while he is doing legos, cars, or laps around the floor. If there is no other competing stimuli, he will hear you.
Step 5. Sing aloud together.
Sing all of the nursery rhymes with hand motions and dances. The movement helps the child to remember the words.
For many of my patients, it has been as simple as turning off the TV to encourage the child’s vocabulary to grow. For others, narration has been key. Be prepared for funny looks at the grocery store when it takes you 20 minutes to go through produce because the two of you are having fun discussing all of the fruits and vegetables there. Slow down and enjoy yourselves. This time will never happen again.
Shannon Trouse FNP at the office of Dr. Paul R. Steinwachs, MD.
(706) 221-2401
1336 3rd Ave Columbus, GA 31901
Photo Credit: Graphicleftovers.com
