Tips and Tricks to Boost Your Toddler’s Speech and Language

When your child enters into this world, he is immediately exposed to his new environment. Speech and language development begins right away, as your child begins to explore the environment around him. The early years of your child’s life is a crucial period for speech and language development. 

As you interact with your child, there are various ways that you can help to boost his speech and language:

• While you are playing with your child, talk about the actions that he is doing and what you are doing. For example, if your child is throwing a ball, say “throw the ball” as he throws it. This will help him match spoken words to actions.
• Label objects for your child. As you are engaging with your child, tell him what it is that he is holding, looking at, etc. For example, if your child is holding a ball, say “you have a ball” This will help to increase his ability to identify and name various objects.
• Expand on your child’s utterances. As your child is acquiring language skills, he will start to speak using short utterances before he can use full sentences. When your child produces one word or short multiword utterances, take his utterance and use it in a full contextual sentence. For example, if your child points to a ball and says “ball,” you can respond with “yes, I see the red ball!”
• Use natural sounding speech with appropriate intonation when talking to your child. As your child is being exposed to language, not only is he listening to the words, but he is also listening to your tone of voice and looking at your face. Therefore, to help him understand what you are saying, it is important to match your tone and facial expression to your spoken words. For example, if your child is throwing toys inappropriately, tell him “no throwing” with a more stern tone of voice. If you say “no throwing” with a “happy” tone of voice and a big smile, your child may have a difficult time understanding the concept of “no” since the tone of voice and facial expression did not match the meaning of “no.”
• Sing familiar songs with your child. Engaging in song is a fun way to encourage language development. At first, you will be doing most of the singing while your child closely watches and listens. While you sing, you can use gestures to match words in the song. As your child gets multiple exposures to you singing the song, encourage him to engage in the song by gesturing along with you. For example, when singing “head, shoulders, knees, and toes,” start by singing the song while you touch each body part matching the words in the song. Then to engage your child more, you can sing the song while you help him move his hands to touch the body parts from the song. Another tip you can do with songs is pausing at certain words for your child to say. For instance, you can pause before “toes” each time it occurs in the song to allow your child to say it. Not only can this help to increase language production, but it can also help your child identify and name objects, items, or in this example, body parts.

NSPT offers services in Bucktown, Evanston, Lincolnwood, Glenview, Lake Bluff, Des Plaines, Hinsdale and Mequon! If you have questions or concerns about your child, we would love to help! Give us a call at (877) 486-4140.