7 Tips to Encourage Speech and Language in a Toddler

Recently, I have received quite a few messages with questions pertaining to toddler’s language abilities. While language development is different in every child and should be addressed in a case-by-case scenario, I thought it might be helpful to put together a list of a strategies to support overall language development in a toddler.

Be a Model

Be a good language model by modeling the language you want your child to be using. For example, when your child puts his arms up to you, it generally means he wants to be picked up, right? In this situation think about a word – up – you could model that you would want your child to say to be picked up. Model that word – up – and wait a moment before picking him up. Don’t expect your toddler to imitate your model immediately, but over time he should pick up on what’s expected and what you want him to say.

Wait 

As adults we tend to want to fill in a lull in conversation. Or, we tend to ask our child a question and then rush to answer for him. In the future, try waiting a few moments longer than you normally would to allow your child to process the question or conversation.  By giving your child time to respond, it reinforces his effort to keep trying to communicate, even if he isn’t responding in an understandable way quite yet.

Expand

Expand on your child’s current language ability. If your child extends an object and doesn’t have a word for it, model the word for him. If your child extends an object and uses 1-word to label (ball), model back a 2-word phrase (big ball).

Use Sounds

Sounds are easier to imitate than words and are generally way more fun to produce during play. If animal and vehicle sounds seem to be difficult for your child to produce, try starting with pure vowels (ahhhhhh, oooooo, ohhhhh, eeeeeee). Once your child becomes more adept at imitating the pure vowels, begin to move on to more silly, animal, and vehicle sounds.

 Don’t Test

Here’s a Challenge for You: remove the question “what’s this?” and the command “say ____”  from the conversation with your toddler. Chances are, when putting pressure on your toddler to perform by asking “what’s this,” or when giving him the command “say ball” he shuts down and says nothing. Take the pressure off and refer back to the strategies of Model and Wait.

Create Communication Temptations

Set up your home environment to create moments throughout the day when your child needs to communicate with you. As adults, it is easy to anticipate your child’s every need, which in turn shuts down opportunities for your child to communicate with you. Think about setting up the environment so a desired item is just out of reach or placed inside a tightly sealed container and then wait. Your child will probably reach or whine to get what he wants. Model a desired word and wait before giving the desired item.

Say What To Do

Young children are concrete thinkers. When giving a direction, tell your child what you want them to do vs. what not to do. For example, if you want your child to stop running in the house, try giving the direction walk instead of don’t run. Don’t is a high level language concept your child is probably only hearing run and continuing on with the exact behavior your are trying to extinguish.

Life with a toddler is exhausting, exhilarating, frustrating, and confusing. Hopefully, the above strategies will help ease some of the everyday frustration and confusion and help guide you to become more intentional in your language use with a toddler. As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or comments.