Ten Tips for Play To Help Your Child Talk

Welcome  to  Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter: this week's extract from the SpeechContacts Kindle and your chance to learn more about the way your child learns to talk. 

Here are ten tips for playing with your child, helping him learn to talk through play.
  1. Observe your child: watch what he does and you'll see how much he learns from every toy.
  2. Provide him with related items: spoons and plates, toothpaste and toothbrush, garage and cars. He'll learn to put them together, beginning to find out how the world works.
  3. Play alongside him, so the two of you are having fun doing the things he wants to do.
  4. Give teddy bear tea parties with him as he practises 'pretend' play.
  5. Help to bath teddy and your toddler will soon learn the words for body parts.
  6. Dress a doll in her clothes, undress her and put her to bed, as you and your child name all her clothes and even tell her a bedtime story.
  7. Play with a toy telephone together, pretending to talk to granny. Or do it for real!
  8. Consider providing a doll’s house. Not cheap, but worth every penny for the hours of pretend play.
  9. Look at picture books together. The same ones, over and over, help him learn the words.
  10. Be patient and let him go at his own pace. It's not a race. Give him opportunities and he'll learn unbelievably fast.
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Two More Games To Help Your Child With Her First Words

Welcome  to two more games to Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter: this week's extract from the SpeechContacts Kindle and your chance to learn more about the way your child learns to talk. 

Here are two more easy activities for you to enjoy with your toddler, designed to encourage him to use his new words.


Teddy's bath time
Coolect together Teddy, a toy/baby bath or washing-up bowl, plus pretend soap, sponge, towel, toothbrush and toothpaste. 
 
Geddy a pretend bath, naming each part of his body. Say “wash Teddy's nose”, “wash Teddy's mouth”, “wash Teddy's ears”, and carry out the action, with your child joining in.

Then try “dry Teddy's nose”, “dry Teddy's mouth”, “dry Teddy's ears”. As the game continues, leave a longer and longer gap before the name of the body part. Say “wash Teddy's ...” and see if your child will fill in the next word.  If not, just say the word yourself.

In the bag
Make a simple cloth bag if you can sew, or ask a grandparent to make one for you: they'll be thrilled to help. Avoid using plastic bags, because of the danger of suffocation.  

Put a few toys in the bag, and then sit facing your child with the bag in your hand.  Say, “What's in the bag today?” and pull out the first toy, showing great excitiment,  naming it and giving it to your child.

Continue until all the toys are out, then help him to put them back in one at a time, saying to him, “in the bag,” “car in the bag,” “dolly in the bag,” and so on.

Let him join in with you, but don’t worry if he doesn’t say the words himself at first. 

He soon will.

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Six Ways to Help Your Child Talk: Activities to Encourage Your Child's First Words


Welcome  to Six Ways to Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter: this week's extract and your chance to learn more about the way your child learns to talk.  



If you're a new reader, CLICK HERE to read How To Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter from the very beginning.This link takes you to the first post, so you can read the extracts in sequence. At the end of each week's post you'll see a link to take you on to the next extract. I try to post every Friday, by noon GMT.

Speech: activities for babies
Play with sounds with your baby. When he babbles, saying “bababa'” or “gaga”, he’s enjoying the sounds he’ll use later in his speech. Repeat them back to him. Try out a whole range of speech sounds with him, and watch him enjoy it.

Speech: baby activities: labels
Repeat the names of things, many times. He needs to hear the word “drink” dozens of times before he recognises it as the symbol or label for the stuff he drinks. Remember, groups of sounds are not words until they have meaning, so supply him with the words alongside babble play.

Speech: baby activities: puzzles
Play with a heavy wooden puzzle, where each piece is a picture of an object, and lifts out of a board. When you pull out a piece, say the name. Let your child pull out another one, and say the word with him.

Speech: baby activities: books
Look at picture books together. Choose some that have a single object on each page. Collect real objects to match the pictures and keep them in a box. As you turn to each picture, help him search through the box for the matching object. Say each word clearly.

Speech: baby activities: word games
Use daily activities to teach new words. At bath time, say the name of each part of your child's body as you wash it. At mealtimes, name the cutlery and crockery. Don’t ask him to repeat your words, and don't say “Say shoe,” but when he makes sounds that are a bit like an appropriate word, say the word back to him, in the adult version. His sounds will soon become that real word.

Speech: baby activities: my book
Make a scrapbook of things your child knows. Include photos of family members and pets. Put in pictures from magazines, of cups, toys and clothes that look like ones he knows well. Put his photo on the outside and write his name on it. 

Sit down often to look at the book. Talk in simple sentences about each picture. Make sure you use the name of the object often. 

Say, “Look, there’s Jane. She’s got a hat on.” Your child will love his very own book, all about himself. He’ll soon start saying the names.

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First Words: Help Your Child To Talk

Your baby's learned to pay attention and to listen. He's beginning to understand you when you talk to him and during his second year, at some point, he'll start to use words himself.
 
In this extract from How To Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter: your chance to learn more about the way your child learns to talk, we look at how he arrives at those very first words. 

If you're a new reader, CLICK HERE to read How To Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter from the very beginning.This link takes you to the first post, so you can read the extracts in sequence. I try to post every Friday, by noon GMT.   

Speech: infants
Your baby depends on you to keep him alive, warm and comfortable. His first cries are the only way he can communicate with you, and he cries with a sound that you just can’t ignore. You’re right in your instincts to use his cries as a signal that you need to look after him. 

Doctors now know that the stress of prolonged crying encourages the production of the chemical cortisol, as Penelope Leach points out in her book “The Essential First Year – What Babies Need Parents to Know”. It’s true that humans all need cortisol, to help reduce inflammation and encourage the metabolism of some foods, too much in the brain can slow development. 

It doesn’t hurt your baby to cry a little: all babies cry sometimes, but remember that he is communicating with you in the only way he can, and be responsive.
When you feel you need to do something for him, you’re right. That’s what he’s telling you with his cries.

In the early days and weeks, you might notice he uses slightly different cries for a variety of purposes. He may have a hungry cry, for example, that you notice is different from the cry he uses when he’s uncomfortable. By 3 months, he’ll know he can use his voice to tell you when he’s pleased or unhappy; excited or tired, and from now on, you’ll hear plenty of coos, gurgles and shouts.

Speech: listening skills
Remember that second key: listening. He’s been listening all the time: to the things around; to human voices and, most importantly, to your voice. He’s heard your intonation patterns: the tune of your speech as your voice rises and falls. He’s heard your voice rise in a question, get louder when you’re annoyed, become low and soft when you play baby games with him.

Speech: practice
Meanwhile, he enjoys his own noises. “Ga ga” he says, his tongue falling naturally into that position. He likes it, repeats it and finds other sounds that are fun. Soon he starts babbling and he finds that you join in, encouraging all the noises, repeating strings of nonsense back to him. 

Between 6 months and 1 year, he plays often with babbling noises, trying out all the sounds of speech. He doesn’t stick to his native language, but includes sounds he’ll never need to use. Over time, his babbling begins to sound more and more like your speech, even though there are no real words there yet.

His strings of sounds get longer and he joins them together until he produces something that seems just like the intonation patterns of speech. At this point, parents sometimes feel their baby is trying to talk. He is playing with sounds, getting ready to launch himself into speech, and it’s not until he can sequence his sounds with a meaningful word that real speech begins.

Speech: feedback
At some point during this sound play, he hits on a combination of sounds that resemble a word.
“Da,” he says as his father picks him up, “Da-da-da.”

Delighted, his father smiles, cuddles him and repeats the word. What a reward. He tries that again. Every time he makes that combination of sounds, at the right time, you’ll celebrate, repeat it and reinforce it. As his accuracy improves, he gets it right every time, encouraged by your excited feedback. There it is – “daddy”: his first word.

Your child’s first word may be something different. Maybe he says “Mama” first. 

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