How to Encourage Language in Toddlers: Part One

Encouraging Language in Toddlers: Introduction and Disclaimer

Lately I've had a few parents of one and two year olds ask me: "My child isn't really talking yet..should I be worried?" followed by "What should I do?"  In moments like this, my role as an SLP requires me to not only give a correct answer, but also make it somewhat short, without using a whole bunch of acronyms or strange vocabulary, give good resources and advice, and also assure Mom that she is doing a good job.  So I told myself, "It's time for Speaking of Kids to do a series on this subject!"

Let me start off with a little disclaimer: This series is not meant to replace a thorough speech/language evaluation.  If you have concerns about your child, you really ought to find a local friendly Speech-Language Pathologist who can evaluate your child's own specific strengths and weaknesses to determine a) what the problem is, b) what to do about it, and c) if there are any other underlying factors to take into account (such as apraxia, autism, syndromes, etc.)  The tips I will share are the tips another SLP would probably give you, so why not start now??

The first step is to decide if your child is behind or not.  Sometimes that can be very obvious, other times it's not.  But in this series I will be mostly focusing on Expressive Vocabulary, so here are the facts:

• At twelve months old, your child should be just starting to use words, maybe using one or two fairly consistently. (Usually "Momma", "Bottle", "Up"....)  (More on that here)
•  By 18 months, they should be using at least 10 words, and possibly up to 50. (More on that here)
• At 24 months, a child should be using between 200 and 300 words.  They should be starting to put two words together soon.  
• By 36 months, they should use about 1000 words.  Wow! (More on that here)

Now you are armed with knowledge!  If you think your child is behind, don't panic.  Find a speech therapist to talk to you specifically about your child.  Nothing is worse than wondering.  Just take action and see where it takes you.  In the meantime, I hope you're excited because the next post will be about the FIRST step to take if you think your child might be a little behind in language development.  See you next time!

What Your 3 Year Old Should Be Doing

Right now I am working with a darling little boy who is turning 3 in a few weeks.  It's almost been 6 months since we first started doing therapy together and that means it's time to do some new language testing and see where he stands with hearing, language, and speech milestones.  As you can imagine, little kiddos change SO MUCH in a very short time so it's important to be constantly monitoring progress.  Every session should be diagnostic in nature, so no test results should be much of a surprise, but it's good to get a broad overview and look at standard scores, etc.  I made a little chart here of Speech/Language Milestones that should be reached between the ages of 2 and 3.  Just thought I would share it with you! Just click on the image to open, save, and print!


PS For all you moms who are like "What in the heck are phonological processes?" Never fear!  I will be doing a series on all things related to Phonological Processes very soon.  Be excited!

Preschool Matching Activity: Pets

Today I am taking my 3 year old to the pet store.  What a great place to use language!  Pets is always a fun theme for younger children.  Talk about the similarities and differences between each pet.  What do they sound like?  What do they eat?  What do they like to do?  Do you have any pets at home?  Here is a little activity I came up with.  Since most younger children can't read, it ends up being a good listening activity.  It also established the early foundations of defining words, which we talked about in detail a few weeks ago.

Have you heard of this app?

Peek-a-boo Barn 

Have you heard of this darling app?  Peek-a-boo Barn is great for very young kids, ages 1-4.  I like using it with late talkers to encourage vocalizations.  It is good for teaching animal vocabulary and animal noises.  Animals rotate hiding in the barn and the child has to tap the screen for the door to open.  I like it for children with hearing loss too because before you open the door, the animal is making a very quiet noise. When the door is opened it becomes louder.  It's fun to guess what animal is hiding by listening to the sound they are making.  Young children with Down Syndrome or Cerebral Palsy also particularly like this app.  It does not require fine motor coordination.  Because of that my 8 month old loves it!  There is a lite version which is free.  The regular version is $1.99.  Take a look!

Book Review: The Noisy Noisy Farm

The Noisy Noisy Farm is about some animal friends who become worried one morning when Rooster does not wake them up.  They spend most of their morning calling to Rooster and gathering more friends.  He still doesn't answer so they go look for him in his shed, only to discover that Hen's eggs had hatched and Rooster is a proud daddy!  Isn't that a darling story?  It is sweet and simple.  The artwork is beautiful and on almost every page is a button for the child to push and hear an animal sound.  I have read this book with preschoolers with Down Syndrome or other disabilities and they totally love it!  Often, when I am working on a child with severely delayed speech, we back up to animal sounds.  This book is a good way to reinforce those sounds and some children really like to imitate it when it is coming from a book.

Preschool Sorting Activity: Farm and Jungle Animals

Hello reader!  Thank you for stopping by.  Are you a follower?  If you're not would you please become one? I would love some more.

My last sorting activity was pretty popular so I thought I would share another one with you!  Animals are always a fun and easy concept to teach to preschoolers.  It's important for them to start distinguishing that animals live in different places and have different characteristics. You can also use this activity to teach the animal sounds.  This activity could also be a great describing activity.  Instead of cutting the animals out beforehand, show your child the sheet with animals and describe what you're going to cut out next.  See if they can guess what you're talking about!  You can vary the difficulty level.  For example, "I'm going to cut out the animal that says 'Moo'".  Or you could make it more challenging and say, "This animal has a mane, a tail, and you can use a saddle to ride on it."  You can also turn the tables and let your child try to describe an animal.  Kids love being the teacher!  After the animals are cut out you can do the same listening/describing activity again as you glue them onto the animals' home.  Kids love repetition - don't shy away from it!  

Preschool Sorting Activity: Fruits and Vegetables

Here's a fun and simple activity for you moms/teachers of preschoolers. This would even work with K or 1st graders, depending on their language level. Below are two sheets for you to print:  Just click on the picture to go to the link.

Suggestions for Use:
- Cut out the shopping carts and each individual food item.  For added language stimulation, have the child listen to clues given by you on what to cut out next.  For example, "Cut out the fruit that is orange and sweet" or "Cut out the vegetable that is small and round and green."  

- Have the child sort the food by different categories.  Obviously you could do fruits and vegetables - always a great concept to rehearse.  You could also do it by color or size.  You could also sort by whether its crunchy or juicy.  Sort it by whether or not the child likes it.  Sort it by as many ways as you can think of!  

- You could also use this as a compare/contrast activity which is an important pre-writing skill.  Put a pumpkin in one cart and a carrot in the other.  Ask the child, :"How are they the same?" (Both vegetables, both orange with green stem).  How are they different? (One is round and one is long and skinny, one grows underground, one grows above on a vine)

- The possibilities are almost limitless!  It is simple but so much fun!  It also works on cutting skills and gluing skills which are also important for preschoolers.  I hope you like it!

Language-Enhancing Strategies

Well, it's a little late, but as promised, here is a post with suggestions on how to help your child expand his/her language.  You might read through these 4 strategies and think, "I already do those things."  Well you probably do!  And that means you're doing a good job!  Moms really are in tune with their kids and often do just what their kids need without even realizing it.  These 4 strategies are simple but work wonders.  The key, I think, is to find the right balance of language.  When implementing these, you want to speak with your child at their level, with just a little bit of added difficulty.  Say your child usually only puts two words together.  Try modeling 3-word sentences with them for a while, and see what happens.  Research shows when parents use these methods, children pick up on it and children's language skills improve.

Parallel Talk:  You narrate what your child is doing as they are doing it.
Example:  "You're blowing bubbles!  You popped it!  It went away!"

Self Talk:  You narrate what you are doing while you are doing it.
Example:  "I'm making dinner.  I'm stirring it."

Description:  You describe something the child is looking at or playing with.
Example:  "That's soft.  Soft bear.  Brown bear."

Expansion:  You expand on a phrase or word the child has said.
Example:  Child points to a car and says, "Car."  You say, "Fast car!" or "Red car."  or "Your car."

And there you have it.  Four simple but tried and true strategies on how to help improve your young child's language skills.

Here are some links to other sites on the same stuff:
http://www.talkingkids.org/2011/05/all-kinds-of-talk-using-your-language.html
http://www.playingwithwords365.com/2011/11/strategies-to-help-your-child-talk-parallel-and-self-talk/

MLU: An overview

MLU is a term that is used when referring to a younger child (1-5 years old) and their language abilities. It stands for Mean Length of Utterance. Basically it is referring to the average number of words (or units of meaning) the child puts together during one speaking turn. As a general rule, one-year-olds should be using one word in each utterance or phrase, two year olds should be putting 2 words together, three year olds 3. Four-year-olds are getting real smart and should be putting about 6 words together.

Now, it's a little more complicated than at first glance because the child gets credit for units of meaning. For example, if the child says "balls" and adds an -s to indicate a plural, then that is a unit of meaning so they get two points for that. If they add an -ed and say "I walked there", that is 4 points because they use walk and add -ed to indicate past tense. Very clever, these children are! (see this link for a much more detailed overview).

I think it's GREAT information for parents of young kids so that you are able to listen to your child and evaluate this part of their language abilities. Maybe they'r a language prodigy and you didn't know it! Or maybe they're a little behind and you've been wondering.

My two year old boy happens to be somewhat of a genius child. Not to brag or anything, but his MLU is about 7. Here is a conversation he had (with himself) while playing with his trains:

"Hey look! Stop train! You cannot cross my bridge! Uh oh! Here comes another bridge! You better cross it! (Then his train track broke) Mom, you can help me do this? It's pretty hard to do. You can take me to the hospital? Okay this is the hospital. Thank you! He bonked his head. You help me take him to the doctor? I will. OK! Oh man. This is gonna be sweet!"

Isn't he great? Well some kids are just born with an easier ability to learn language. Some kids might be a little slower in picking up on it. If your child is 3 years old and they are still generally only using 1-2 words in each phrase, you might want to get them evaluated. And next time I'll post some suggestions on what you can do with younger kids to try to help them start expanding their utterances and putting more words together.

Did you like this post? Was it helpful? Do you have more questions? Let me know!