Activities to Encourage Speech and Language Development

Ultimately, there’s no substitute for time sitting down with a professional working to refine your child’s language skills. However, in concert with speech therapists, private practice at home can help children hone their speech and language skills. Your child wants to communicate and be understood, and with attention and guidance from both yourself and professionals, you can make that happen.

When you are working on speech with your child, don’t overemphasize what they can’t do. Improvement in speech is an important thing to pay attention to and encourage, but it isn’t the only thing you should recognize about your child. Praise other achievements like picking up toys, playing nicely with other children, or using the bathroom.
Young children can have trouble producing certain sounds. If your child is struggling with hard consonants like ‘p’, start off by simply modeling the sound yourself. Work it into your daily routine, and read books that use the sound before bed. You could say ‘Please play nicely with your toy panda and then we’ll have pancakes. Can you say ‘pancakes’? Hearing the repetition of the sound will help refine their understanding of it. Don’t worry if your child can’t produce the sound correctly in a full sentence or word right away. Again, repetition is the key, in both comprehension and production. Gamify the task of repeating the ‘p’ sound: reward them for practicing by giving them tokens (building blocks are good for this). Once they’ve mastered that, incorporate the sound into basic syllables like ‘pa-pa-pa’ or ‘po-po-po’. As before, reward the effort with tokens. Lastly, you can move onto actual words using the sound.
Background noise and distractions should be kept to a minimum. Don’t leave the television on all day. Studies have proven that overexposure to television actually contributes to language delays, since it reduces the amount of time that parents spend talking to their children. Children learn communication skills most effectively when they are spoken to by another person.
Using straws can be highly effective in your child’s development of muscular strength in their mouth. Both drinking liquids through them and blowing air out of them will aid in the production of clear speech. Again, gamification of practice can be highly effective in encouraging your child to continue improving. Children love trying to blow a ping pong ball into a goal by blowing through a straw.
Reading is, of course, fundamental in reinforcing speech development and mitigating the issues of speech disorders. Read one of your child’s favorite books to them. Then, have them read it back to you. This can be excellent reinforcement. If the child is too young to read, instead have them explain what they see on the page. Remembering the context from hearing the description before can strengthen speech and confidence as they produce their own interpretation of the scene on the page.

Advice for Parents from Speech Language Pathologists

If you have any concerns about your child’s ability to learn to understand and use words, it is well worth checking in with a speech-language pathologist. ASHA, the American Speech Language Hearing Association, recommends these activities for helping speech development.

Age: Birth -2 years

Say simple sounds like ‘ma’, ‘da’, and ‘ba’. Encourage your baby to say them back to you.
When your baby makes sounds, talk back and make eye contact. Hold a ‘conversation’ in these sounds.
When your baby laughs or makes faces, reciprocate.
Talk to your baby while you go through everyday actions with them. Bathing, feeding, dressing: talk about what you’re doing, where you’re going, who or what you will see.
Point out colors and shapes. Count things.
Talk about animal sounds. For example, ‘The duck says ‘quack-quack!’ Your baby will connect the sound and the animal.
When your baby produces word-like sounds, such as ‘Mama’, extend your baby’s talk: ‘Here is Mama! Mama loves you. Where is <name>? Hello, <name>!’

Age: 2-4 years

Now is the age to begin modeling good speech. Speak clearly to your child.
If you do use baby talk, use the adult word alongside it: ‘Time to say bye-bye to Jordan! Goodbye, Jordan!’
Again, repeat your child’s words to show comprehension, then extend it. If your child says ‘Up’, extend it by saying, for example: ‘Do you want me to pick you up? I can pick you up.’
Simple songs, especially nursery rhymes, are invaluable for helping your child practice the rhythm of speech. They’re easy to remember too, because of the straightforward rhythm and rhyme.
Ask questions involving a choice: ‘Do you want to read Goodnight Moon or Bark, George tonight?
Regularly introduce new vocabulary to your child. Body parts and actions are great choices: ‘This is my eye. I can see the car, Teddy, and <name>’.
Practice answering and asking questions with your child. Pose simple questions like ‘Am I Daddy?’ and ‘Is this blue?’ and have your child make questions for you to answer.

Age: 4-6 years

At this age, it is important to model good listening habits, as well as speaking habits. Listen when your child talks, and gain their attention before you begin speaking.
Use new vocabulary, with context clues to help them deduce the meaning. ‘Please give me the device. I need to text Grandma.’
Adjectives, especially opposites, are good to introduce at this stage. ‘Big’ and ‘small’, ‘long’ and ‘short’, or ‘right’ and ‘left’.
When watching media together, talk about what the child is watching, and what they think. How does the main character feel at this moment in the story? What just happened?
Take your child grocery shopping. Talk about what you are buying, how many of each item you need, what you will make with the items.
Your child should be able to follow two- and three-step instructions at this point in their development. Use phrases like ‘Wash your hands and then sit at the table.’

Parents as Speech Therapists

All of these tips and exercises can be instrumental in helping you and your child bond and helping them practice their speech skills. However, if you suspect your child of having any speech problems or language delay it’s vital to have them tested by a qualified professional. Speech language pathology can identify conditions such as speech and language developmental delay, expressive language disorder, phonological disorder, even autism spectrum disorder. If your child is identified as having some sort of speech or language disorder, you should take steps to manage communication breakdowns that can occur. A good mnemonic to help you remember how to do this is ‘the 3 S’s. Simplify, Shorten, and Show.

Simplify the Language

Be careful when you’re communicating with your child to ensure that you’re not using unfamiliar vocabulary. While we always hope that our children will feel able to ask questions and gain clarification when they encounter new vocabulary that they cannot immediately deduce the meaning of from context, we cannot assume that they will always take this initiative. Therefore it is important to check in on yourself when using complex vocabulary.

Shorten Your Sentences

For children and even for adults, a complex series of instructions without context can be difficult to remember if delivered all at once. This is especially true of children who have communication disorders. If you need to ask your child to follow multi-step directions, it can be helpful to write it down and itemize the instructions. For example: ‘1) Strip the bedding off your bed. 2) Put the bedding in the basket. 3) Carry the basket down to the washing machine. 4) Take your new bedding out of the linen cabinet and put it by the bed.’

Show What You Mean

While verbal communication is important, it isn’t everything. Studies have shown that 55% of communication is non-verbal: posture, gestures, and expressions. You can significantly increase the chance that your child will understand your words by accompanying them with body language that helps convey the meaning. Going back to the example of complex, multi-step instructions, you are likelier to be fully understood, and your child to carry out the instructions, if you slowly and carefully mime out the instructions as you explain them. ‘Strip the bedding off your bed’ can be mimed, as can ‘put the bedding in the basket’ and ‘carry the basket down to the washing machine’. Most people find it far easier to learn or remember things that encompass multiple learning styles: audio, visual, and kinesthetic (based on movement).

Lynne Alba Speech Therapy Solutions is on hand to give your child a speech-language evaluation. We can also offer more advice on how to work with your child to mitigate their communication disorder. Contact us today to get your child the help they need to communicate more happily and effectively: (310) 856-8528