If your child is a late talker, one thing that you probably have resolved this year is to have them speak more, right?
Well, in this article, we are going to explore tips to help them develop receptive and expressive language skills.
So, here we go:
- Sing songs with them
You will find that your kid loves children’s songs that they hear on Tv or on your smartphone. Once they have heard a Cocomelon song such as ‘If you are happy and you know it’, they will be easy to repeat it. Or complete the song once they heard it started somewhere.
You could therefore make a habit of singing the song with the child. Engage them as you do so. You could for example sing ‘If you are happy and you know, clap your …’ Let them complete the song.
At the same time, it is good to enhance the use of gestures. Clap your own hands and show them how to do it so that as you sing ‘If you are happy and you know, clap your hands’ they will be able to know what hands really are.
I came to trust this strategy after my speech delayed son started going out for preschool. He would come and babble songs that they were taught in school.
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Once I realized what the songs were, I encouraged him to sing them more and these days, we always sing out the songs in the evening before dinner.
- Play social games
Engage your child in social games that have them play with other kids. It could be board games, riding a bike in turns or playing hide and seek. With such games, the child is forced to interact with other kids and as they do so, they will grab one word after the other.
- Read books
Reading interesting toddler books can be fun as well as educative for your speech delayed child. Make sure that the books are multi-colored with interesting cartoon photos smeared all through the pages.
The book should also have simplistic language that the child can relate with. Word such as ‘milk’, ‘cup’, ‘bunny’, ‘puppy’, ‘chair’ and so on. All these are objects that the child can find at home and relate with.
- Avoid questions but prompting statements
My speech delayed son hates questions. I would rather make statements such as ‘You want to eat food’ rather than ask ‘Do you want to eat food?’ Once I make the statement, he is able to add other information such as the kind of food he wants to eat.
- Preschool helps
Taking my son to preschool has really helped get him singing, interacting with others, sitting still on a chair as well as taking instructions from other people.
If you are able, take your child to a preschool as early as possible. If it is not a choice, you could always take them to special needs school where they will hang out with other children.
- Stimulate your sensory seeking child
According to a study, children who have trouble with interpreting and adapting to different senses are going to wait longer for language emergence. If your child has sensory processing disorder, it is only right that you quickly identity what they are having trouble with and adopt early intervention measures.
This could be fidget chew toys if they are having taste processing disorder, trampolines if they have proprioceptive disorder or exposing to lots of colors if the disorder is on the visuals.
