By, Shelby Booth, MA, CF-SLP
Does your child use limited verbal communication and/or have passed communication and language 
developmental milestones (see “Should I be Worried?.. “Red Flags” That Warrant Speech, Physical and/or Occupational Therapy Evaluation”) but are not yet talking or engaging in communicative activities? We have resources for you! In addition to skilled speech therapy, this blog post addresses strategies for parents and caregivers to use to help facilitate verbal communication!
Here at FYZICAL, we strive to provide resources for families to utilize at home to improve their child’s progress in speech, occupational, and physical therapy. Before learning about the strategies listed below, it is important to remember that all children learn language and communication at different rates and with different levels of support.
Some strategies may work while others won't be as effective, be sure to trial a few or all to learn what works best for your child and their success!
Tips for helping your child learn language and use verbal communication:
- Parent labels sounds, words, and actions in their environment
- This can include narrating what they’re doing throughout the day. By labeling and narrating, your child is being exposed to a ton of language they can then learn to use!
- Parent imitates their sounds, words, and actions
- Imitation is important in learning and using language. While imitating your child, they are able to recognize their sounds, words, and actions can be meaningful/important and will continue to do more of them!
- Repeat, Repeat, Repeat!
- Repetition is key in learning language! Focus on words/sounds important to your child and consistently repeat!
- Increase waiting time
- There’s no harm in allowing a few extra moments for your child to engage/respond to you! The extra time can allow them to fully process and understand what is being said to them.
- Use short, simple phrases
- As your child is still learning language, it is okay to shorten long sentences to short, simple phrases.
- Instead of “get your shoes from over by the door and put them on” you could say “get shoes,” offer praise for completing the request then say “put shoes on.”
How to encourage your child to talk with you:
- Put a desired item in sight but out of reach
- This requires your child to ask for your help!
- Create obstacles for your child/sabotage a situation
- This could include starting a game/project then purposely messing up or forgetting something, this provides your child an opportunity to recognize a problem and verbalize needing to fix it/needing your help!
- Provide two options instead of a simple yes/no
- Children can learn to master yes/no fairly quickly, by giving them two options they’re able to expand on their language and vocabulary by directly telling you what they want.
- For example: during snack/meal or play time, instead of asking “do you want ___” provide two options “do you want ___ or do you want ____?”
- Do something your child likes without including them
- Children enjoy playing and engaging with others so when they see you having fun they’ll want to join you. By not initially including them, it requires your child to express wanting to join you!
It’s exciting to see how much progress a child can make in their speech and language skills by simply changing a few things within their environment! What better place to help and be a part of your child’s learning and success than within your own home!