How to Help>Talking

Activities, Strategies and Games to Encourage Language Development

1. Observe with interest + clarify child’s emotional experience

  • Name what child sees/ is interested in, especially frustrations, what s/he wants or fears
  • Help child create some order in his/her mind through the most basic contrasts:
    there - gone, in - out, first - then, this - that, here - there, up - down...
  • Tell him ‘It’s time to do something different’ - and WAIT!
  • Don’t go silent too: talk to him, - if only because it keeps you alive and thinking
    and: you never know, he may be listening! Keep him/her ‘live company’!

2. Don’t take over, but follow child’s lead

  • Try to look at things from child’s (not your/ adult’s) perspective + join child in it
  • Differentiate between what you/adult wants from what child wants
  • Who owns the sound/ the game/ the enjoyment? (Don’t be selfish!)
  • Does he want to share the experience, - or do you/adult want to have it?
  • Don’t teach (child is not a machine to be programmed), but join in and share in the fun/ game/ activity/ exploration/ ...
  • Offer words that child might find useful/empowering (but not to teach or satisfy adult): e.g. give child opportunities to say ‘no’, ‘byebye’, ‘gone’, Away Game

3. Wait! and Give child time!

  • Wait and listen: don’t rush before child can think/ make a sound to communicate
  • Be respectful: child may be slower than you, his/her mental system might need time to limber up: don’t inhibit child’s attempts at getting ‘it’ going
  • Help child to mentalise/ to use his mind: ‘Tug’ on his mind!

4. Activities, games and things you can do

  • Mouth And Face Games: make and copy child’s sounds
  • Sing a song or running commentary, - then stop and wait with full attention/ suspense (for as long as it takes) for child to continue
  • Point things out to child, that s/he would be interested in
  • Mental ‘hide and seek’

e.g. are you teaching him words that are relevant to HIM/ HER (e.g. is ‘plane’ important to him/her, if s/he hasn’t yet got his/her head around ‘in’?)
trying to make him say something vs. because it will be helpful to him
e.g. child saying ‘bye bye’ can leave easier = feels HE is making it happen = his choice