How Can I Help My Child? - Talk to Them!

We get a lot of questions from parents asking for ways in which they can help, aid and assist in their child's Speech and Language development.  This is a topic that we'll revisit often as there are many things that you can do to facilitate your child.  In this first post we'll discuss:

Using Your Language to Grow Your Child's

From the moment your child can hear, they are absorbing all of the language they hear in preparation to one day use it themselves!  Needless to say, the way you communicate with your child is extremely influential.  A research study by Risly and Hart (2006) found that the amount of 'family talk' surrounding a child correlated directly with that child's vocabulary and IQ at age three and up to age nine.

Let's break down four ways in which parents can talk with their children:

• Self Talk - Using short sentences to describe what the parent is doing as they do it.  For example if you are cooking breakfast you may say, "Mommy is cracking the eggs!" or "I am stirring!"
• Parallel Talk - Using short sentences to describe what the child is doing as they do it.  "You're pouring the milk!" or "You ate the cereal!"
• Description - Describing an object that the child is currently engaged with.  "That milk is cold." or "The cereal is crunchy!"
• Expansion - Expanding what the child says by one or two words.  Child: "Milk!"  Parent: "Yummy milk!" or "Lets drink the milk!" or "Milk is in the cup!"

Notice how in the examples above you're never asking questions of the child, you're simply modeling language.   Just as your child watches you drive and then wants to sit in the drivers seat themselves and move the steering wheel back and forth, or observes you shopping and then wants to walk around the house wearing your shoes and carrying a purse; your child will naturally mimic the way you communicate around them.

So what does this mean for you?

Pay attention to the type of conversation you're having with your child.  Are you using 'commanding' dialogue?  "Do this!", "Come here!", "Put that down!"

Or are you engaging your child with positive, conversational talk in which you describe and make sense of the world around them?!

A balance between the short, focused language discussed above and longer, more typical conversational sentences will help your child put it all together!