Childhood Language and Social Development
Everyday Activities to Build Language and Social Skills in Young Children
Your infant, toddler, or preschooler can learn new communication skills from you during your everyday interactions with your child, such as mealtime, dressing, or bathtime. By placing emphasis on language and social skills during your routines, you can create many new learning opportunities for your child without having to make big changes to your schedule.
Learning new skills through daily routines works because daily routines are predictable, occur frequently, and are flexible. When activities are predictable, your child is ready for what comes first, next, and then last. This predictability is comforting, keeps them engaged, and reduces challenging behaviors.
Early Intervention is Essential
By 12-18 months, a child’s first words typically emerge. Your child will begin to intentionally label items at 12 months, and they will use 2-6 words other than “mama” and “dada”. By 18-24 months, children typically use about 50 words and understand 150-300 words. Your pediatrician might ask you how many words your child is saying, but there are many other developmental milestones that precede the first words. Some examples are gesturing, imitating sounds, and vocalizing to objects. These are important factors in determining if your child’s language is developing at the age-appropriate stages.
Creating Routines for Learning
You can boost your child’s language skills by increasing language during routines and by working with a speech pathologist who can coach you through the process and help you identify goals that are appropriate for your family. For some families, goals may be centered around improving receptive language (understanding) or expressive language skills (speaking), and for others, the focus may be on social skills. You can repeat routines every day. For example, your child takes a bath, puts on their pajamas, and you read a book to your child every evening before bedtime.
You and your speech pathologist should make a list of all the routines and activities you do with your child (children) weekly. Remember- there are lots of different types of activities. Some are consistent across families (e.g., bedtime), and some will be specific to your family. Other examples include mealtime, diapering, bathing, getting the mail, going for a walk, grocery shopping, or caring for the family pet.
The activities should meet the following criteria:
I enjoy doing this routine/activity with my child.
My child generally likes to be part of this routine/activity.
This routine/activity is generally calm and open-ended - I’m usually not in a rush to get it done.
Usually, there’s not a lot of distraction from my child or me during this activity (e.g., lots of other people around, noise from the TV, other noises to distract)- we can really focus on each other.
Language and Play Every Day!
The number one routine to teach talking and communicating is play. Why play? Because all children learn through play. Play is fun and is a natural part of a child’s development. Play also creates the desire for your child to talk and communicate. Try to plan at least 15-20 minutes each day to sit down and play with your child. Give your child your full attention during this time and try to avoid interruptions. Choose a space where your child can stay near you and where you can minimize distraction. Put the toys that you are not playing with out of sight. For many children, rotating toys every 2-3 weeks is helpful to hold the child’s attention.
Playfully join in your child’s play to show them that you are interested in what they are doing. For example, you can help your child build a tower, give them the blocks or take turns putting a block on the tower. One concern that parents often bring up is that their child does not stay on a task for more than a few minutes. It is okay for a child to move quickly from one activity to another in the beginning. The key is to increase engagement and you will see that over time, you can increase the length of time that your child stays on an activity.
Bathtime is another routine that is so much fun and it is a great time to build language. You can blow bubbles and practice saying “pop” each time you pop a bubble. You can talk about body parts, asking the child to identify or name their nose, eyes, hair, feet, etc. While in the bathroom, spend some time connecting and building language with your child while looking in the mirror. You can make funny faces back and forth, stick out your tongue, or sing songs.
Getting dressed is also a routine that can be used to build language. Use choices while getting dressed to increase your child’s language. You can give choices about what clothes to wear or in what order to put them on. “It’s time to get dressed! Brrr! It’s cold outside. Do you want to wear this yellow sweater or this blue sweater?” Or “It’s time to get dressed. Do you want to put on your shirt or your shorts first?”
While going for a walk with your child every day, you can address language skills while pointing to identify interesting objects. Pointing while communicating is an important language skill for young children to learn. If you notice your child looking at something, you can get down on eye their level and point to it. Let them see what you are doing with your hand. When you point, use the word “look” and identify the object, such as “Look! Plane in the sky!” This will help your child understand that pointing means to look at something.
Language Building Strategies
There are many more examples of daily routines that families can use to build language skills in young children. Once you and your speech pathologist have identified the routines that you can use to increasing language and social communication that work for your family, try incorporating the following language-building strategies:
Reduce the number of questions you ask your child and increase the number of statements you make. When you are engaging with your child, you want to avoid asking questions and giving directions, because this takes the lead away from your child. Instead, comment on what your child is doing and show interest. For example, if you are playing with blocks with your child you may say “Block on!”, “Stack the blocks!”, or “Yellow block on top!” With infants and young children it is best to use gestures, single word phrases such as “red” or “block” or “on” and sounds such as “uh-oh”. For older children it is best to use a description such as “You built a tall tower.” If your child responds with words, repeat them validating what the child said. “Yes, that is a tower! It’s a big tower.” If he/she isn’t talking yet, respond to any noises they make as if they did respond with words. You might comment in response to the noise they made by saying, “You see a tower! That’s a very tall tower!”
Talk about what the child is doing and respond to all of your child’s actions. Children need to hear and be exposed to thousands of words. The more words they hear, the quicker they will build their vocabulary. For example, if your child is crying you can say “You’re sad.” If your child reaches for a banana, you say “You want a banana!” Don’t use baby-talk but keep your sentences simple and at a level that your child can understand.
Wait with anticipation for your child to respond. It is hard for us to stop talking and just listen to our child. This is one of my favorite and most underused strategies in my toolbox. Often, we ask a child a question but we don't give the child enough time to respond. We keep asking questions, making requests and statements. The child can become overloaded without having time to respond. It is important to give young children three to five seconds or more of 'wait time' for improved learning. Add another second or two if there is a complex word being used or a new concept being taught. Look expectantly at your child while you wait for a verbal response.
As you can see routines build predictable patterns in a child’s day and can improve language development in young children. When we do the same activities daily, there is a great chance for the child to learn specific vocabulary and expand social interactions. We can capitalize on the repeated exposure to a task through daily life to build language.
Family-Centered Coaching for Early Intervention
Speech-language pathologists are trained in parent coaching. We can teach you step-by-step how to identify goals for your family and how to teach your child to learn language naturally throughout the day together. Sessions are one-on-one and conveniently offered through telepractice. If you are interested in meeting with one of our early childhood language experts, contact us today.
We look forward to working with your family to help you achieve your goals!
About the Author
Allison Geller is a speech-language pathologist (SLP) and the owner of Connected Speech Pathology. She obtained her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Florida in Speech-Language Pathology. Allison has practiced speech therapy in a number of settings including telepractice, acute care, outpatient rehabilitation, and private practice. She has worked extensively with individuals across the lifespan including toddlers, preschoolers, school-aged children, and adults. She specializes in the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of a variety of communication disorders including receptive/expressive language disorders, articulation disorders, voice disorders, fluency disorders, brain injury, and swallowing disorders.
Allison served as the clinical coordinator of research in aphasia in the Neurological Institute at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. She is on the Board of Directors for the Corporate Speech Pathology Network (CORSPAN), a Lee Silverman Voice Treatment (LSVT) certified clinician, and a proud Family Empowerment Scholarship/Step-Up For Students provider. Allison is passionate about delivering high quality-effective treatment remotely because it’s convenient and easy to access. What sets us apart from other online speech therapy options is—Allison takes great care to hire the very best SLPs from all over the country.
