Help Your Child Talk: Attention, Listening and Understanding Checklists

Here's extract 18 from How To Help Your Child Talk and Grow Smarter: your chance to learn more about the way your child learns to talk.

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This week is a bit of a recap of some of the things we've looked at over the past few weeks. Here's a very brief set of simple checklists of things to remember with your baby and toddler, covering the first three keys to language skill: attention, listening and understanding. 

Attention skills: babies

• Make eye contact.
• Speak gently.
• Notice which sense your baby is using.
• Play peep-bo and sing nursery rhymes.
• Limit the number of toys around him.
• Let him sleep and be quiet.

Attention skills: toddlers

• Alternate quiet times with activity.
• Limit TV and encourage his own activities.
• Watch for overstimulation and let him relax quietly.
• Call his name and wait for him to look at you.
• Get down to his level so he can see you.
• Keep calm when he gets frustrated.
• Consider signing with him.
• Tell bedtime stories.
• Sing nursery rhymes.

Listening: babies

• Babble and play cooing games, encouraging your baby to enjoy babbling.
• Say his name or touch his hand to gain his attention.
• Make eye contact and smile at your baby when you talk.
• Turn off the TV and radio for a time every day while you play.
• Sing nursery rhymes together.

Listening: toddlers

• Keep to a routine, with quiet times for stories, games and puzzles 
• Include times for noisy play and letting off steam. 
• Tidy his toys occasionally so he attends to one thing at a time. 
• Smile when your child talks to you. 
• Turn off the TV and radio for a time every day while you play. 
• Make a quiet corner with somewhere to sit and draw, colour or look at books.

Understanding

• Repeat simple words in many different contexts.
• Broaden your toddler's understanding of the world by taking him out to different places.
• Talk to him about the things he sees.
• Keep the language you use simple: one or two words in his first year.
• Emphasise important “key” words in a sentence.
• Place a new word at the end of a sentence. 

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