Helping your child find their voice through play and connection

Written by Suzanne Holland, Chat and Play speech and language therapy

Communication is fascinating. I mean I know I’m very likely to say this but it I think it is true.

Think about today, who have you talked to and how? Maybe you've given the kids breakfast and asked them if they wanted toast or cereal. Maybe you’ve text sent your friend a funny video with just some emojis. Maybe you’ve text your partner the shopping list or checked in on a friend who has a tough day.

All of this is communication and you’ve done it in multiple different ways and for different purposes. You probably haven’t given it much thought and you won’t remember anyone sitting you down and teaching you how to do any of those things, you just learned how to do it. But how? and what about when it’s not being learned so easily?

This is where I come in.

Language Learning

Learning communication skills starts really early, even earlier than you probably think. Babies can process speech from 29 weeks gestation and can distinguish between different speech sounds. Thinks ‘sssss’ and ‘buh’.

At 2 months old babies can hear two language and turn to their native language.

At 5 months they can recognise their own name and around 6 months they start to link the words “mummy” and “daddy” to their own parents.

Over the next 6 months until their first birthday they are learning to understand lots of words and experimenting with making noises.

Your little ones first words tend to come around one year and don’t always sound exactly right to start with.

They really are little sponges and we can harness those skills early

What can we do?

Children learn to communicate by copying what they see, trying things out and seeing what is the most effective means to get what they want. They communicate to share fun as well as to get your help. So step one is to have fun!

Get to know your little one and what they like, what interests them and when do they get the most excited. Knowing this will help you to find those opportunities where language learning is going to be more successful.

They are going to be much more motivated to communicate when it’s fun and engaging and when they are with their familiar people.

Remember they are learning so try to avoid testing them by asking them lots of “what’s this?” questions.

Playtime is communication time

Children learn best when they are having fun. Communication develops most naturally when you are playing together and having lots of fun. So find 5 minutes, turn the tv off and play together.

• Get down face to face - this will help you to see what they are looking at as well as ensuring they can see your face

• Have fun - show your little one you are with them and having fun. Smile, use funny faces (have a look at the still face experiment on you tube to see the importance of this)

• Respond to them - if they do something respond back. If they point to something look at it

• Take turns - if your little one is babbling or cooing turn this into a conversation - babble back to them or say something back to take your turn

• Copy actions - can you get some actions in there, maybe baby bangs a toy- copy it. Is there a song you can sing that has some actions in it. Eventually they are going to copy your words so starting with actions is going to help this later on. Start by copying them and then see if they will copy you

• People Games - use fun games like peek-a-boo. This encourages them to focus on you. As they get familiar with these you can add a pause in this to see if they will take a turn in communication and tell you to carry on. They might do this by moving their body or making a noise

• Use words - talk about what you are doing or what toy you have. As they get fussy and it’s time to finish tell them this “all done, let’s get some milk”

• Songs - use songs and rhymes. These are great ways to add some language in, they can be great fun. They are predictable and repetitive which is prefect for learning