Your child learns to talk every time you talk to them!
Your child changes at each stage of their development, and in turn your role as a parent develops with how to support their language and communication skills. As you notice changes in your child, you will notice changes in yourself.
Top tips:
- Say your child’s name first: this will gain their attention, and once they are able to look at you and know that you are talking to them, they are then able to listen
- Point things out to your child and respond to what they are pointing to: this is all part of developing communication and vocabulary
- Try to give your child one instruction at a time, make the instruction clear, and talk slowly: this will help your child understand what you would like them to do (giving visual clues such as pointing can help your child even more)
- Try not to ask your child lots of questions: this can be confusing for them
- Reduce background noise: your child will find it hard to listen to you if there is background noise as they find it difficult to block it out, so turn off the TV and radio so they can hear your words and the sounds in the words
- Comment on what you are doing or what your child is doing: doing this while playing or going out and about helps develop your child’s language and vocabulary
- Allow your child to have thinking time: this will give them chance to process what you have said and what they are doing
