Making sure that your child reaches important speech and language milestones is vital to their overall speech and language development. From birth to five months your child should be cooing and making noises when talked to, from six to eleven months your child should be saying “ma-ma” or “da-da” without meaning, from twelve to seventeen months your child should be able to answer simple questions non-verbally, and so on and so forth. Luckily, there are many ways that you can help your child if they seem to be falling behind in their speech and language development.
That said, here are some ways you can help improve your child’s speech and language development:
Talk to Your Child as Much as Possible
Talk, talk again, and then, talk some more. One great way to help improve your child’s language development is to narrate the day. Talk to your child about what’s happening around them such as, “doesn’t the warm sun feel nice on your face?”, and “let’s go walk to the park. There, we can go on the swings and play!”.
When children hear lots of different words and phrases, it helps them to obtain a better understanding of language in general and can help expand their vocabulary.
Teach Your Child to Ask For Things
A lot of times, younger children tend to point to what they want instead of verbally asking for something. Don’t let your child develop this habit early on! Alternately, when your child wants something, teach them to ask out loud.
For younger kiddos, a simple “please” should do the trick, while children who are a little older should be asking for the specific name of the object, followed by a “please”, such as, “milk, please.”
Avoid Criticizing Your Child’s Speech
When children first start learning to talk, they tend to say words and phrases a little differently than an adult might. One common example would be that they sometimes use a ‘W’ in place of an ‘R’, like “wabbit” instead of “rabbit”. Rather than you immediately saying, “no, that’s not right”, repeat the word or phrase back to your kiddo with the correct pronunciation or usage.
Sing Songs Together
Singing songs is an excellent way to promote your child’s language development and is just plain fun. Songs help to encourage speech because of all of the rhyming words and rhythm in them.
If you’re unsure of where to begin, start with common children’s songs like Itsy Bitsy Spider or Old MacDonald. Not only do these songs have plenty of rhyming words in them, but they also come with performing amusing gestures! Singing songs together will help improve your child’s speech and language development, and will also allow you and your child to bond.