The skills required for listening and speaking

Your child’s first five steps to listening and speaking

These five steps are important and hopefully you are feeling more confident about supporting your children in extending them. The lessons in the Toddler Programme will help you support your child in learning these skills.

Step 1: Wearing the technology

• I am wearing my hearing aids / cochlear implants most of my waking hours.
• I might still take them off when I am angry or tired but generally I enjoy them and am happy to wear them.

Step 2: Shared (or joint) attention

• I enjoy sharing toys/activities with you.
• I am keen to know what you are looking at/playing with and to join in!
• I am keen to show you what I like playing with and to involve you.
• I will maintain eye contact for short periods of time and take turns in an activity.
• I can concentrate on one activity for longer periods of time.
• I have begun to point things out.

Step 3: Non-verbal communication

• I am using my facial expressions and body language (pointing, leaning towards, turning away) to tell you things and to communicate my feelings and desires.
• I may use my voice to express myself but without real or recognisable words.
• I understand that when I do this people respond to me and try and understand.

Step 4: Learning to listen

• I know to stop what I am doing and concentrate when I want to listen to a new sound or word.
• I know I have to look at you and focus when you are speaking.
• I am curious about new sounds and will point them out to you or search for them.
• I have a “good listening attitude”!

Step 5: Receptive skills

• I am actively learning about new sounds and words.
• I realise that I have to concentrate and work at learning what these new sounds mean – but I might need your help!
• People are showing me what makes all these strange sounds and reminding me again and again so I don’t forget! I love this!
• I have had new words introduced to me, in context, again and again and I am beginning to understand them e.g. When you say bye bye sometimes I wave! When you make an animal sound I know which animal makes it!
• I am understanding more and more!

“I am ready to start trying to use my voice and perhaps attempt my first words!”

Helping your child develop their communication skills

You should use the Ling sounds (“ah”, “i”, “oo”, “mm”, “s”, “sh”) to support your child’s listening skills, alongside Auditory Training activities (asking your child to carry out a task when they hear a sound). But we will look more at ways of extending what they understand and encouraging them to use their voices.

As you carry out activities try and keep in mind what your child has to do:

1. They have to focus and concentrate.
2. They have to be listening!
3. They need to have sounds pointed out to them and things named.
4. They need to hear this vocabulary many many times for it to make sense to them.
5. They need the confidence to attempt to say the words for themselves.

And remember what you have to do:

1. Be patient – your child is working hard but learning language takes time.
2. Demonstrate or model the language consistently and in context but without putting pressure on your child to “perform”. Comment on what you see or are doing rather than asking them to “Say xxx.”
3. Keep background noise to a minimum. Your child needs to learn to listen in background noise, but right now they need the opportunity to hear individual sounds without competition from others.

Some early words to learn

There are many  ways to introduce and explore everyday language and sounds during everyday interactions in your home. Some early vocabulary you can use includes:

• Open! You can open (and shut) doors, cupboards, pots, boxes, anything you can find!
• Up and Down! Particularly as you walk up and down stairs, or push a car up a ramp or slide down a slide.
• Chair, table, bed. You can use toy houses and furniture and talk a little about what you use them for.
• What’s that noise? You can create opportunities for children to listen to common household sounds.

Hopefully you will be able to find time to support this language as you carry out your daily routines at home. Don’t waste a single opportunity to model the language!

Verbs are important

Good communication is not about naming things. Good communication is about negotiating, describing, asking, telling. This involves verbs which are the ‘doing words’ or ‘action words’ found in almost every sentence that we use.

It is never too early to start modelling verbs – or action words – for your child:

• Talk about what you are going to do today – “We are driving to Nanny’s house. After we can go for a walk in the park and feed the ducks.” (Use some pictures of the people and places you are going to, to help your child understand.)
• Describe what you are doing in your daily routines – “Wash your hands, wash wash wash!” “Kick/throw/roll the ball”
• Stress the verbs in your sentence – Help your child listen to the verbs you are using by stressing these words in your sentence: “We need to open the box. Open!”
• Act it out! – You can help your child to understand what a particular verb means by showing them. “Look, Mummy is kicking the ball. I can kick it to you! Now I am throwing the ball. Look how high I can throw it!” “Nanny is running. I can run, run, run!”