Things You Can Do To Encourage Speech and Language Development

There are several activities parents can do with their children to encourage speech and language development. However, activities you do should be age appropriate in order to support and work hand-in-hand with their cognitive development. Below are activities that are useful to be practiced with your children:

Birth - 2 years

1. Encourage your child to make vowel like sounds such as "ma", "da", "pa" - you can do this by identifying yourself "mama" and "baba" or "daddy" referring to your spouse. This helps form the basic of speech.
2. Talk to your baby at every chance you get. While bathing, feeding, playing just about anything. Describe the things you are using and doing. Example: "Let's eat", "Baby is eating porridge", "Spoon", "I am taking you out for a drive", "We are going to the car".
3. Count things. For instance, as you bring you baby down the steps, count the steps.
4. Gather some household objects and say the name of those objects to your baby.
5. Teach them colors. Point at objects of a certain color and say the name of that color.
6. Acknowledge your baby's effort to communicate. Respond. Use facial expressions and different tone of voice.
7. Read aloud. Reading is one of the best ways for children to begin gathering vocabulary. Choose simple board books or those fabric/plastic books that can be read while in the tub. You can describe about what is happening on each page of the book and point to the objects or characters in the book.

2 - 4 years

1. Speak clearly to your child. Try avoiding baby talk.
2. Acknowledge what they are saying even if you find it hard to understand. Repeat the words "biscuits, you want biscuit?" Never brush them off saying you don't understand. This creates frustration and hinders their effort. If you are still unable to understand them after repeating and trying to figure out, get them to show you the things they want and say the name of that object clearly to them and it that is what they were referring to, get them to repeat the word.
3. A fun activity of making a scrapbook of items. Cut pictures of objects, put them in groups and get your child to paste in the scrapbook, write the names of those objects and teach the names to your child.
4. When you want to offer something, give your child choices. For example,  "Do you want juice or water?" "Do you want to wear a dress or t-shirt with leggings?"
5. Encourage extension of speech by talking about things around you, objects and its usage, places and its purpose, description of places, food and its taste. Example, "Here is a ball. I kick and bounce the ball." "This is a supermarket, we buy things we need from the supermarket"
6. Talk about pictures from a book or from your own collection of photos. Choose a picture and talk about what is seen in the picture or you can even encourage them to create stories from the picture.


4 - 6 years

1. Give full attention to your child when she/he speaks. This is important to show them that you are interested in what they are saying and it helps develop confidence.
2. Show your appreciation and acknowledge every attempt your child makes to speak. Avoid saying "I don't know what you are saying"
3. Its now time to build up on vocabulary. Introduce new words as you speak and provide definition of the word, and make them repeat the word after you.
4. You may also begin teaching spatial concept  to show direction, space, opposites.
5. Expand speech by having conversations with your child. Ask them about their day in the school. At times, some children do not respond to questions like "what did you learn today?" instead of this ask or say "tell me the coolest thing you did in school today". When your children watch their favorite tv show, get them to share what happened in that series with you. This not only builds vocabulary, but it strengthens memory as well. Alternatively, you can also ask them how would their version of the story be. This doubles up as creativity builder too!
6. Teach them process and giving direction. Explain step by step of the things you are doing. For example if you are making their favorite chocolate drink, invite them to join you. Describe each step and get them to repeat the steps after you are done. For example: No 1, you put some chocolate in the cup, No. 2 Add milk and so on.
7. Sit with them when they are playing or doing some crafts, get them to describe what they are doing to you.

There you have a list of things you can do with you children. Have a good time exploring the methods and have a jolly time with your little ones!

 

Supporting Your Child's Creativity

My daughter's latest creation prompted me to write this and share with as many parents as I can. She came back from school one day and as usual her afternoons are usually busy with her own exploration of things around the house. This time, she started playing with play dough, all by herself while I was doing something, when I got to her, I saw that she had shaped the play dough into small balls and inserted birthday candles in each of the ball and told me that they were lollipops. She knew where I kept the birthday candles, so there wasn't a need to get my help. So you see, she has been working on this all by herself with no supervision at all. Then she came and sat beside me and was still busy looking and perfecting the lollipop shape. All of a sudden, she asked "mama, do you have diamonds like the ones on your skirt?" (I was wearing a skirt that was decorated with sequins) and I asked "what do you need them for?" She said it was for decorating her lollipops to make it look nicer. I got up, walked to the store room, got my tailoring basket and hand her a box of sequin and glitter beads. Off she went and sat by a corner in the living room, perfecting her creation of the lollipop.  

So how can you develop creativity? How do you see your child creating art pieces, new games, new ways of doing things, new ways of playing with one toy?

Believe me, children are born with a powerful imagination that allows them  to be creative, what we need to do is to provide encouragement and space. Common mommies and daddies, we definitely can make a difference in our children's development, let's take that step!

1. Provide space
Create a space that is solely for your child to get messy and create. Often times, the problems of not wanting to have a mess causes parents to hinder a child's need to explore and create. So how do you solve this? Dedicate a small space just for your child. This space does not have to be an elaborate playroom equipped with so many toys and beautifully decorated. You do not need to burn a whole in your pocket to create this space. It can be a small corner in  your house with a small table and a shelf nearby. Or it can be a small corner, covered with a carpet. Tell your child that this corner is for her/him and that whatever mess is to be limited there.

2. Make it convenient
Next is to have things they need within reach. Having a shelf and storing art supplies, play dough, and some toys helps them to get creative whenever they feel like it or whenever ideas struck without having to wait for parents to help them get supplies.

3. Free play
Encourage lots of "free play time". It is very important that you allow them some unstructured time in which they can do just anything they want. Free play provides the much needed exploration which is crucial is developing creativity. Through free play, your child has the chance to try out how things work, how some objects can have many functions and how things around them can be used as toys, or for creating some art pieces. Free play also plays a role in developing critical thinking and problem solving, which are very important skills you want your child to have as they grow.

4. Exposure to different experiences
Another way to encourage creativity is giving your child different experiences. How can you achieve this without having to spend so much? The easiest way is by reading, stock up on good books about the world, about different places, about animals in different parts of the world, about cultures and celebrations of different people. Visit the library to find interesting stuff to read and then share the story together, think how some plots could have been different. Ask your child what would she/he do if she/he was the lead character in that book. Visit places which will not cause you much, places that provide opportunities to observe and explore.

5. Avoid managing
And finally, hold that urge to manage, do things for them or wanting them to do things your way. For creativity to grow, they must explore and do stuff freely. Don't force them to colour the grass green! Even if they choose to color the grass purple, in reality they know that the grass is green! This is their way of living their imagination. Let them be!

Let your child be free, provides lots of encouragement and see how they grow!

Crying: Sad or Attention Seeking. What do I Do?

As babies, crying is the only way to communicate babies' needs, be it a wet diaper, pain, wind or hungry. But as the baby grows into toddlerhood and is able to speak even one word or two word sentence, the child now has another way of informing us parents of her/his needs. Given this, most parents should find it easier to understand and provide for the child. However for some toddler and parents, things don't get any easier but the cries get intensified! Their toddler cries and screams almost all the time! 

As parents, you must be able to differentiate if your child is upset/sad over something or your child is actually seeking attention? Cries due to parting with family, friends, lost of something that is the toddler's favorite, a soft toy that she/he always play with for instance can be grouped as sad/upset.  In this situations, you should acknowledge the emotion your child is experiencing and pacify her/him. 

However, often times, we see toddlers who cry, scream and roll on the floor for some reason. This situation can be a nightmare for parents. Just what makes some toddlers throw such tantrum while some others can ask for something and yet not scream and roll on the floor if her/his wants are not met?  The answer to this is how parents respond to the toddler in moments like this. In many cases, parents quickly give in and provide the toddler with whatever the toddler wants. Let's examine a few situations.

Situation A
Your toddler is playing with some cousins and likes a toy another cousin is playing with. Your toddler snatches it away and off course the other child would pull it back, and your toddler is suddenly on the floor, kicking in the air, rolling and screaming and crying. You come over to check, you panic with the screams and cry and could only think of the easiest way out - give the toy to your child. So you nicely tell the other toddler to share his/her toy with your toddler, taking the toy away from that child and giving it to your toddler. 

Situation B
You are at the supermarket, grocery shopping. You pass by the toy section and your toddler wants to go see the toys. You turn into the toy section. From just seeing, now your toddler wants to buy a toy but you have no plans to buy toys on that day and said "no", and it starts all over again. You feel embarrassed, you think other shoppers are looking and making remarks about you, so you instantly grab the toy, give it to your child and walk away from the toy section. Your child is now quiet, happy that her/his wants have been met. 

The two situations above are observed very often. If you analyse the situation, you will see that what happened is a chain of events that begins with an antecedent, followed by a certain behaviour and eventually brings a consequence. The child's cry becomes an antecedent for you which makes you give in to her/his demands which represents the behaviour and this satisfies the child, makes her/him stop crying. As this happens many times, you give in and your child gets quiet, you will continue to give in because it instantly stops the cries. However without realising, you have indirectly conditioned your child to throw tantrums whenever she/he wants something, because she/he now knows that by doing so, she/he will get whatever she/he wants. This now becomes a vicious cycle which will continue until you choose to do something to break that cycle. 

Usually whenever you are faced with such situations, it is best  not to entertain to their demands the first time itself. However if you are already in that cycle, you need to break from it. When faced with such situations, the best way to deal with it is to pick your child up and explain. Yes explain why she/he cannot have it her/his way. You can pick up and say "I know you want that but you cannot have anything if you  continue screaming like this." Slowly walk around to give sometime to the child to cool down and then sit and explain why you cannot fulfill her/his demands. If we look at situation A above, you need to pick up the child and tell her/him "You cannot have it if you cry and scream like this, you need to stop and we will talk about this." Then once she/he is calm, explain "When you play, you must share, you need to take turns and you cannot snatched toys from others." Then bring your child back to the group, with you seated together, observe how they play and teach your child to ask for a toy, you need to show it for your child to model it. 

A child who always throws tantrums do so, because they think it is acceptable and the right thing to do, it is us parents who need to stop the tantrums and show them the best acceptable way to behave.