Helping your baby to talk

Help for Parents, How can I help my child read? by teachbabytotalk
• Starting on day one, talk to your baby simply, clearly and often. He will not understand what you are saying, but will enjoy having ‘look, move and gurgle’ conversations with you.

• Read picture books to your baby from birth.

• Express in words what he shows in signs and facial expressions.

Talking to toddlers

Conversation has two elements — understanding and producing language — with three parts to each:

–taking turns
–understanding words
–developing grammar.

Most toddlers understand more words than they can say and more complex grammar than they can produce.When you talk to your child try to match his understanding of words and model correct pronunciation to improve  his ability to produce them. He may call a cat a ‘ca’, but you should always call it a ‘cat’. Try to be consistent in the words you use but look for opportunities to expand his vocabulary. For example if he wants a drink show him the ‘drink’ in is the ‘cup’.

When you talk to your toddler, let him watch your face if possible. Because we tend to look towards the object of our conversation, your child will be able to see what your conversation is about by following your gaze. If he cannot see your face, point or use your hands to direct his gaze.

Helping him to take turns

Learning to take turns in conversation is a vital part of learning to talk. Turn-taking is best developed in the simple conversations we have with our children and in the games we play with them. ‘Peek-a-boo’, tickling games and simple action games like ‘This is the way the ladies ride’ all have an element of turn-taking.

Encouraging early sentences

By the time they are two most children are beginning to put words together. The words they use to form these early sentences tend to be the names of objects (car, biscuit), people (me, Mummy), verbs (have, want, go) or words they use like verbs (doit allgone). So for example he might say, ‘Car go’ or ‘Me doit’.

You can indicate that you understand the structure of his sentences by expanding them and clarify the meaning, for example, ‘The car is going’ or ‘You can do it’. As the language he produces becomes more complex so should our expansion of it. So ‘Night, night. Teddy go sleep now’ becomes ‘Teddy is going to sleep now. Night, night, Teddy’.

Small children can only hold a very small amount of information ‘in mind’ .Remember that a child under four has a very short memory span. Keep sentences short and simple but don’t be afraid to expand his vocabulary at any opportunuity.New words are quickly incorporated into his speech as he “tries” them out!

When they are very young we need to surround our children in language, through talking to them and playing with them, reading to them and singing with them from babyhood.

Love is necessary for babies to thrive.  Children will feel loved and valued when they are being talked to , played with ,sung to and read to daily. If you are doing this every day you are helping them to find out that learning can be fun.

What you say to your child on a daily basis is very important. Messages from you to them need to be encouraging and positive.

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