Encouraging and supporting your child’s early communication skills

Making the most of your home environment

The time your baby spends in the home with your family is still your little one’s primary learning environment. That is why it is extremely important for you to focus on:

• what you say to your child
• what you do with your child
• how you speak to your child – your tone of voice and inflections.

Remember to talk naturally to your child. Every moment you are with your baby is an opportunity for conversation and learning. Always try to be a “meaningful” talker rather than a non-stop one! Seize any natural opportunity, then talk about it as you would with any other child, but say it directly to your baby.

Talking one-on-one with your baby can bring many special moments and positive results. Be close to your baby when you talk to them, whether they are in your arms, crawling on the floor, sitting in the high chair or standing nearby. If your baby is at a lower level than you, bend at the knees rather than bending at your waist. Because you will also be at your child’s ear level, they will have a much better chance of hearing your voice as you speak to them.

Keep to the point!

Call your child’s name, and be ready to speak up to get their attention. If your child responds, that’s great! However, whether your child responds or not, go on with what you have to say. Speak in a moderate voice. Make what you say brief and to the point. Babies quickly lose interest.

Whenever possible, show your child what you are talking about or do whatever you said you would do. Try to make an immediate and direct association with your words and what they represent.

Incidentally, it is best if your child is not facing into bright light. This makes it difficult for your baby to see you. Make an effort to have your face toward the light and their back to it.

Pauses are powerful

Your child may not always look towards you when you call or speak to him. Keep talking anyway, then pause for a moment. For example, if you are about to give your child a toy or spoonful of food, stop. Your baby is likely to look at you to see what happened. Then you can say, “Your ball!” or “Mmmm — pudding!” Pauses are just as important to conversation as your words.

Important note! Try not to pull, tug or tap your child to get them to look at you. This can be tiresome and annoying to both of you.

Encouraging your baby to pay attention

Your goal is to encourage your child’s attending skills, through his natural curiosity and through his interest in what you are saying, or what is going on.

The following tips can help you to keep your baby’s attention when you speak:

• Speak at a moderate pace – a speed your child can follow.
• Use a resonant and clear voice – do not mumble or slur. At the same time, do not over-articulate or exaggerate your words.
• Vary the intensity and pitch of your voice. Babies like to listen to voices with lots of inflection.
• Let your voice fully reflect your emotions. Vocal inflections carry abundant information and help attach meaning to language.
• Match your facial expressions to your spoken message.
• Sing songs, read books and recite nursery rhymes with your child. As you read stories with your child, use your voice to create the characters. By doing this, you provide excellent opportunities for your voice to carry the meaning of what you say.

Responding to your baby’s speech and language as it emerges

Your baby may imitate and repeat some sounds. They may now babble whole strings of syllables. They may combine several speech sounds that you can recognize as being parts of actual words. Babies often chatter to themselves when they are playing alone or settling down to sleep. Remember to respond to your child’s vocalisations and imitate them so they will continue to practice using their voice.

It is important to encourage your child as they progress through the early stages of their emerging speech sounds. There is more information in the Baby programme – ou might like to refer back to that section to assist you in determining present and future speech goals for your child, but here are some quick reminders:

• If your child is vocalising during his play or in response to you:
  • Encourage him to continue his vocalizations by imitating his sounds and varying the pitch of your voice from high to low and low to high.
  • For example:  while interacting with your child during as they are playing with toy cars on the floor, you notice them vocalising “ee”, “ee”,  “ee”, over and over again. To encourage their vocalisation, move close to them and say:  “I hear you, [your child’s name]! Let’s go! Whee! Whee! Whee!”, varying your pitch from high to low, as you push the toy cars along.
• If your child is babbling:
  • Encourage this skill by imitating what he says, and then try varying the duration and/or intonation of your voice.
  • For example:  you observe your baby uttering, “um, um, um” indicating that they are waiting for food. To encourage their vocalisation, you could move close to your child and say, “I hear you {your child’s name], you’re hungry.”  If the food is ready  follow with, “Here it is! Yuuum, yuum!”  Hold your voice for varying lengths of duration, or go from your natural speaking voice to a quiet whisper as you feed your child.  Repeat this throughout your baby’s meal.
• If your child has some single words for a specific need:
  • Offer your words of encouragement when your baby talks. Let your baby know you heard them, and follow through with their request or comment as soon as you can.
  • For example:  if your baby says “mo” indicating that they want more milk, respond by saying,  “[your baby’s name], you said ‘more’.  I heard that!  Here’s more milk.”  If more milk is not an option, then respond appropriately, “Oh, [your baby’s name],  look it’s all gone.  No more.” Then perhaps offer them something else.

As your child’s speech and language abilities continue to grow, take the time to listen and observe their early attempts to communicate with you. Make every effort to understand. When you do understand, respond appropriately and offer your baby appropriate language. You may be surprised at how much you and your baby are conversing!

Providing a language-rich environment

All around your home there are opportunities for you to provide your baby with a language-rich environment that can help them extend their listening and spoken language skills.

New words for new ways

As your baby investigates new places and things, they will face unfamiliar situations. Sometimes you can help them explore something new. Use words to describe whatever has caught your baby’s attention.

Of course, sometimes your baby will go after things or get into things that are off-limits or potentially harmful. Then you have to step in quickly with restrictive language: “No,” “Stop,” “Danger” or “Hot!”

The world your baby is exploring should not be a world of only, “No, No!” The intriguing things they discover have names. Talk about your baby’s interest at the moment. Talk about the chair they are trying to climb on or what they can see from the window. Talk about your baby’s toys or about your family pet. Talk about the pots and pans they are banging. Talk about anything and everything in which your child shows interest. Remember that it is all new and exciting to them!

Join in your child’s play as they move around the house in search for new things to discover. As your baby moves from one thing to another, go along with them. In this way, you can really impact your child’s rate of learning, and you will both have fun. Talk about the things your baby sees. Pick up things and share them with your child. Shake the objects, bang them against each other, roll them — whatever makes sense. (But do these things only if it’s appropriate for your child to do the same!)

Many things you take for granted can be of tremendous interest to your baby: a drawer or cupboard door to open and close, a toy chest to unload or fill up again, or even just peeking around a corner. Be sure to comment as you go along on these exploring expeditions.  For example, you could say, “Open it,” “Push it” or “I see you.”

What’s cooking?

The kitchen is a powerful centre for language learning. Starting when your child is very young (three to six months), you can place them in an infant seat or swing and talk to them as you prepare food. For example, you might say “I’m pouring,” “I’m stirring” or “I’m washing.”

These are some simple ideas and games you might want to use:

• Let your baby play with wooden spoons, small bowls and/or measuring cups. When they are old enough, let your child stir and pour. Talk about the ingredients and actions you are using. Praise your child when they vocalise or try to imitate your sounds — and for “helping.”
• Help your baby practise pouring by giving them two small plastic cups along with a small amount of food that is easy to pour. Show your baby how to pour the food from one cup to another. Talk to your baby about what they are doing. As your baby samples the food that drops, talk about how yummy it is!
• When you take food from the refrigerator to cook, let your baby touch the container. Say, “Brrr – cold!” When the food is cooked and warm, but not hot, let your child touch it again, or even taste it, as you say, “It’s warm.”
• When your baby is starting to eat solid foods, give them a few pieces. Let your baby pick the food up, move it about, hold it. Talk about how it feels and what they’re doing. Make frequent use of phrases like “Pick it up,” “It’s soft” or “Oops, it fell down!”.

You can involve your child in your activities through conversation.  Get his attention and talk about what you’re doing.

Discovering your double

Your baby will enjoy discovering their own reflection in a mirror. They may try to “talk” to their reflection or they may clown around a bit, flirting with that image of themselves or making faces. We have already mentioned using a mirror in learning games. We make use of the mirror again in a slightly different way in an activity in this lesson.

However, it is often fun for a child to discover something as interesting as their own reflection all by themselves. Help your child develop play ideas. Encourage your baby to watch their reflection in the mirror by saying “Pat your tummy!” or “Clap your hands!” whilst demonstrating the actions for them and guiding their hands if they need the help.

Remember that young babies first imitate actions they start. As babies mature, they learn to imitate actions started by others. Does your baby imitate you if you:

• Clap?
• Wiggle your fingers?
• Shake your head?
• Wave your hands?

Encouraging language and communication

When you are talking to and invoicing your child in everyday activities around your house, think about these helpful hints:

1. How are you helping your baby pay attention to things for longer periods of time?
2. Are you keeping background noise to a minimum during the day?
3. Are you making sure your baby can see your face for communication?
4. How are you involving your child in everyday routine activities?
5. How are you encouraging your child to continue to use his voice?
6. Are you checking your babies’ hearing aids every morning so you are sure they are working well?

A few important ideas

• The majority of your baby’s learning in the early years occurs at home.
• Remember to talk to your child about anything and everything – your activities and theirs.
• Your child enjoys and needs a variety of things to play with – this includes people too. Try to make the most of the time you spend with or near your child.
• Make use of your child’s different senses for learning – vision, hearing, touch, smell and taste.
• Watch for ways that your child communicates without words and then talk about what they are trying to tell you to give them the language they need.