Chatter matters!
Young children need to use words and sentences to talk about their experiences, resolve problems, ask for help and to play. Later while at school, they need to have secure language skills in order to sequence events, re-tell stories and present their ideas.
All of these skills, once secure, are then essential for later reading and writing such as answering questions and writing stories and ideas. Providing opportunities for your child to practice these skills and to hear them being modelled is very important.
Top tips:
- Do not feel the need to correct your child, instead repeat back the sentence correctly: this is a useful strategy because it doesn’t make your child feel they have done something wrong, and allows them to hear the sentence said back in the correct way – for example, if they say ‘I eated dinner’ repeat back ‘yes, you ate dinner’ and emphasise the word that you want them to notice
- Expand on your child’s speech by adding on one or two words: by doing this, you will be allowing your child to hear more and new words
- Try and speak at your child’s level: recognising the level of speech your child is speaking at will help you to slow down your speech and not use too many words in your sentences to confuse them
- Help develop your child’s vocabulary: for example, if your child is using two word sentences such as ‘red car’ try and use one extra word such as ‘yes, its a big red car’
- Try to use open questions: avoid questions that require a yes/no answer as they will not encourage your child to use language -for example ‘what did you have for dinner today?’ rather than ‘did you have fish and chips today?’
- Offer your child thinking time and time to respond: this is very important, as they will not feel rushed and they are able to think about what you have asked them, what they are going to say, and then put their words together to reply
- Give your child an opportunity to communicate: sometimes at home children can help themselves freely to toys, or their family members can predict what they want and give it to them without them having to ask, meaning they can move through the day with very little need to initiate conversation – so it is important to provide opportunities where your child has to ask for things, for example, putting items out of reach so they have to request it; you can also model how to ask and then give the your child what they want when they make an attempt to ask, even if it’s just a noise or a reach towards the item
- Check your child’s understanding: not talking may be a sign of not understanding too
- If your child is struggling to remember or how to say a word: encourage them to think around it, describe what it does or show you