We discussed ways to "model" speech; talk, talk, talk. Talk about what your children are doing as it gives them words for things and actions they see & do. It gives your children a model for their own speech & language.
Self-Talk; talk out loud about what you are doing or thinking. Name everything. Have a conversation with your self, narrating your activity & steps. Use single words and short sentences.
Parallel-Talk; talk about what is happening to the child. Your words describe what they are doing, seeing, hearing or feeling. Say what you want the child to say. Be the "bubble" over their head. Model what they should say if they could. If the child is reaching for a toy, you say "want that" or "gimme". If they hand you their cup say "milk", "more" or "more milk". If they point to something say "look" or name the object.
Children need to hear a word of phrase spoken many times (some 10 times others 200 times) before they will be able to use it. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat, Repeat. While dressing; "shirt OFF", "pant OFF", "shoe OFF" or "sock OFF".
Language is learned within the natural conversations of daily living, and their are many opportunities for interaction. Remember S.O.S.-Short, Often, Simple and have fun!
Saying what our child would say if they could say it lets them know we understand, and gives them a language model that will help them learn.
Gesture or sign: gesture is an important stage of learning to talk. It's a bridge to spoken language. When parents use gesture paired with verbal language they can impact their child's vocabulary development.
The use of gestures develops in a predictable sequence:
Gestures help us understand language by giving information (shaking head no), show emotion (open arms to welcome a child), convey information (smile + nodding) and are a way of expressing oneself before being able to talk.
We help our child put a word to the action when we:
With daily routines we can add information! Describe what is happening!
Here are some examples of our daily routines and words I used with Cole:
Use the same words and actions each time, repeat the word every time you do the action, over and over again, watch your child to see what they like best and use your voice and facial expression to make parts of the routine exciting.
Communicative words with limited consonant placement for kiddos like Cole who can say just a few or one word(s):
Choose some Power Words that are Practical, Purposeful and Useful to work into your daily routines.
So after just the first day of my class, I prepared to practice what I learned the next morning! While making breakfast I kept repeating "mmm" slowly and with intonation and soon Cole did too! Then I said "Yum!" a few times in a row slowly and so did he, even though it comes out "Mum!" :) Yeah! progress already and so I went on with similar words to our activities throughout our day and he made many attempts to words, was more tuned in to our interactions and was so much more confident in himself!!! YUM is still our biggest accomplishment, but that's better than nothing. The rest of our week was similar. I am looking forward to Cole's speech developments over the next 6 weeks!
"Yee Ha!"
Some information was cited from It Takes Two To Talk (Manolson, 1992)
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