Do you find yourself asking your child to repeat words after you throughout the day?
“Say help”
“Say car”
“Say more”
This can put pressure on your toddler to talk and may discourage them from using the words you are trying so hard to teach them.
The first thing to realize is it is totally natural and normal for us to say “say this” especially when we are worried about our child’s communication skills but there is another way to support their language!!
Modeling language allows you to show your child the words they can be using throughout their day. When you model language, you are demonstrating the words they can use without any expectations.
Once you have modeled a word a lot, you can pause to give them time to try out the new word! This can look like you modeling “it’s a car” multiple times and then saying “it’s a …”. At this point you wait to see if your child will say the word on their own! If they do, great! If not, just use the opportunity to model the word again.
When choosing words to model, I like to use functional words like “want”, “more”, “all done”, and “help”. I also use preferred toys and activities to determine good options! For example, if your child loves trains, model words like “go”, “fast”, “train”, and “choo choo”. If they enjoy playing with bubbles, model words like “ready set go”, “up”, “bubble”, and “pop”.
If your child is an analytic language processor, start by modeling and encouraging one word at a time (e.g., “car”, “eat”, “more”). If they are a gestalt language processor, you will start by modeling language in chunks (e.g., “let’s eat”, “it’s a car”, “let’s do more”)! For more information about the difference between the two types of language processing check out my blog post all about analytic language processing and gestalt language processing.
If you are concerned about your child's speech and language development, please reach out for a FREE phone consultation!
AUTHOR: JESSIE KENSEY, M.S., CCC-SLP
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