How to Encourage Your Child to Talk

Being able to communicate is a vital skill. It helps your child to form relationships, make themselves understood, and accelerate their learning.

By the time your child is due to start school or kindergarten at the age of four or five, they should already be competent with spoken language, able to:

• Understand verbal instructions
• Understand sequences of events: "First we are visiting the supermarket, then we will visit the park".
• Use formed sentences
• Be interested in the meaning of new words
• Use most sounds correctly

So, how can you help your child to learn to speak so that they're ready for those vital early schooldays?

Begin at Birth

Your child begins to understand speech long before they can produce speech, so begin the day your baby is born. Don't keep up a constant whir of one-sided conversation. The baby will eventually tune you out.

Instead, look at your baby. Make faces, noises, and ask questions: "Would you like to go for a nice walk?", "Would you like some milk", and then leave a pause.

When you take your baby out, point out interesting things: "There's a car". Add more details as the baby gets older and begins sitting in a forward-facing pushchair, "There's a blue car."

Nursery rhymes and songs (such as Row, Row, Row Your Boat, Pat-a-Cake and This Little Piggy) are a fun way to play with your baby and improve language-development. Ones with actions (such as the ones listed) are especially memorable and enjoyable for young children.

Match What You Say to an Action

When you have a toddler, linking words to an action can help your child to understand the meaning behind the words. So say: "Coat off." and remove her coat. Similarly, when it's mealtime pull out her chair, put her plate on the table and say: "It's dinnertime."

Those visual cues will help her learn.

But Don't Bore your Child

Nothing makes a child less inclined to learn than sitting there, while you hold up various objects and say what they are. Parent holds up a ball: "Ball"; parent holds up a doll: "Dolly".

Instead, weave words seamlessly into what your child's doing: "Do you want to dress your dolly in the pink dress," (hold up pink dress), "or the blue jeans?" (hold up the miniature jeans). New words: "dolly", "dress", "pink", "blue", and "jeans".

But don't talk to them all the time. Give them time to just play.

Use Their Name

If you want to get your child's attention, use their name at the beginning of the sentence.

More Ways to Encourage your Baby to Talk

Make Time for Reading...But Let Your Child Take the Lead

Reading with a baby can be like trying to herd cats. No matter what your agenda, the baby always seems to have their own. If you want to move on, the baby wants to stay on the page for another ten minutes; they skip over pages essential to the story and turn the book upside down, amused at seeing characters standing on their heads.

There's only one thing to do about that...

Let them.

Forcing a child to read at your pace risks turning them off books for life. Instead, let your child learn to love books. Loving the language within will follow. Let your baby explore books, and don't worry too much about the story. Your baby can always discover that when they're older.

If you're feeling creative, you could always use the pictures your child does look at to create a story of your own.

Use Short Sentences

Short sentences help your child focus on the important information.

Don't Embarrass your Child

Parents find it cute when a toddler mispronounces something, and then wheel them out to say it for Grandma and Auntie Gladys and Uncle Ted...However, this pressure to perform makes the child less likely to want to speak.

Get Rid of Background Noise

Children can't tune-out the background noise of televisions and radios the way adults can. Therefore, these appliances should be turned off while your baby is up.

Don't Dismiss Babbling

Babbling is not pointless. Your child is not merely amusing themselves. They are attempting to communicate with you.

You should respond to them with words, not by babbling (and especially not by ignoring the child). Something as simple as, "You're telling me something, aren't you? Are you telling me you enjoy playing with your blocks?" will encourage your child to keep trying to talk to you.

Studies show that ages two to four as critical for language development. 

Remove your Child's Dummy

Your child's dummy/pacifier use should be restricted to bedtime only. Use of a dummy in the daytime delays talking by preventing vital babbling and restricting tongue movements.

After 12 months, it's advised by Speech and Language Therapists that children do not use a dummy. Most children will only worry for two to three days after a dummy is removed.

Relax

Some children take longer to develop speech than others. Try to relax and be patient. Many children who seem to be struggling suddenly have a "language explosion" and soak up new language overnight at an alarming rate.

What's normal, for a toddler, covers a very wide range of developmental levels. Just because their older sister was a conversational superstar, it's not necessarily cause for concern if they're not.

That said, watch for these signs and consult your doctor if you notice them:

• Difficulty comprehending simple instructions
• Says very few words repeatedly (over the age of two)
• Cannot be understood at least half-the-time by the age of two by parents and caregivers (and three-quarters of the time by age three)
• Imitating sounds, but not producing the sounds spontaneously
• Has a nasal, raspy or other unusual vocal tone.

Don't Correct or Invalidate What your Child is Saying.

We often correct children when they first begin talking. We tell them they don't need what they ask for, that they're using the wrong name for things.

Children often apply one word to everything in the same category. All animals are "dog", all drinks "milk", all men "Daddy". Do children really not know the difference between their father and every other man?

No.

And we shouldn't be constantly correcting toddlers. Soon, they'll naturally learn the difference between "dog" and "cat", "milk" and "juice".

As children's learning expert John Holt says:

“If a distinguished person from a foreign country were visiting you, you would not correct every mistake he made..., however much he might want to learn a new language, because it would be rude. We do not think of rudeness or courtesy as being applicable to our dealings with very little children. But they are.”

Likewise, you disrespect your children when you invalidate their feelings. Say your toddler says "Food" soon after they've eaten. Don't be tempted to dismiss their feelings by saying: "You can't be hungry, you just ate."

Instead, say: "Are you saying you want some food?" and wait for an answer, (if yes) "Well, I understand why. It's nice to sit and have a snack together. But it's still a little early. In a little while, we'll have some food. Why don't we do something else together?" (if no) "Are you just saying Food? It's a fun word, isn't it?"

By giving your attentiveness, your love and your time to your children you set them up for communication success for many years to come.