What Can I do at home to help my child’s language skills improve?

Strategies for Little Ones:

 

  • Offer choices embedded into daily routines. This can be in ANY routine! Try offering visual options for choices of cups, shirts to wear, toys, snacks etc. This creates an opportunity for your little one to make a request by pointing, or imitation!
  • Be sure to choose some time in your day to sit down and practice basic turn-taking. If Your little one is busy, it might mean they need to sit at a small table and chairs, or even their booster chair! If the toy is enticing you will sometimes be surprised how long they will attend and they will appreciate the one-on-one time with you!
  • READ books. This is best incorporated into a nighttime routine “books before bed”, but books are fun at anytime of the day! Be expressive and engage with your child to see if he/she can point to named pictures and explain what is happening in each one. When the children are under the age of 2, they might only need simple, colorful picture-board books or sensory “touch and feel” books are perfect choices!
  • Get silly! Be expressive when you interact, get down on the floor and PLAY! You can roll a ball, play hide-and-seek, engage with simple cause-and-effect toys, simple puzzles, pretend play activities with a baby doll, cars, or dinosaur.
  • Always talk about what you are doing during each routine. The more words your little ones hear, the better. They are listening and storing up the vocabulary words, in addition this allows for expansion of their expressive vocabulary and creates opportunities for verbal imitation.
  • Even bath time can be a great time to build language skills! You can work on body part identification (i.e. “Where is your belly?”) You can model words like “splash”, “pour”, “uh-oh”, “in”, “out”, “wash”, sing songs while in the bath and play with bath toys or fun bath-safe paints.

For more information, visit http://www.abcpediatrictherapy.com

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