Our Speech and Language Therapist and co-founder, Kate, often gets asked what families can do RIGHT NOW to develop their child’s communication skills.
Of course, there are no short cuts but if you want something you can do today, then Kate’s got you covered…
1 – Get face to face: being face to face makes communication and interaction so much easier, and crucially means you can both see each other’s facial expressions which give us so many clues about what the words you’re saying mean (which is really helpful when you’re a toddler learning how words work)
2 – Offer one choice today: would you like an apple (hold up the apple) or a banana (hold up the banana)? You can then repeat the words apple and banana again as you hold them up – you’ve now had the chance to show your child what words mean and repeated it several times!
3 – Read them a story: children’s books have lots of pictures so the words that your child is hearing as you read to them match the pictures and the language in books is repetitive, full of rhythm and really interesting – this helps children to learn language from story time.