5 Easy Strategies to Incorporate into Everyday Routines to Encourage Speech and Language Development

Parents play a pivotal role in fostering speech and language development in their children. It is essential for caregivers to support, reinforce, and facilitate a child’s communicative interactions. In this post we share some strategies that parents can incorporate into their everyday routines to encourage speech and language development. In fact, you are probably using some of these strategies and don’t even realize!

1. Self Talk:. Studies have shown that children who are spoken to more throughout the day have a larger vocabulary when they start school. Talk to your child about what you are doing. Use simple language and a slow rate of speech. For example, when brushing your teeth, narrate your routine. “I am going to brush my teeth. First, I need my toothbrush. Let’s put toothpaste on it. Now it’s time to brush. All done brushing. Now let’s rinse the toothbrush.”

2. Create Opportunities: As speech-language pathologists, we purposely plan our sessions around creating opportunities. We think of all possible ways to encourage children to use language to communicate. One way to create opportunities for language at home is to withhold items or keep desired items out of reach. You can set up your daily routines or play activities so that your child needs to use language to request items or ask for help. For example, begin a craft activity without crayons or glue. During snack time, hand your child an unopened box of water or juice. You can teach them to request by stating “open,” and slowly increase to two-word utterances, such as “open juice.” When washing hands, you could remove the towel. Keep desired toys slightly out of reach (in a safe place), so the child needs to use language to request them (e.g., “want car”).

3. Choices: Providing your child with choices is an excellent way to expose your child to new vocabulary and model the names of various items. Instead of asking your child, “what do you want to drink?” Try saying, “do you want milk or juice?” You could even bring out the milk and juice to show them, so they can associate the name with the item.. Instead of asking “what do you want to play next?,”try saying “do you want to play with the train or play-doh.” It is helpful to provide the child with two choices that you would want them to choose anyway. This gives them a sense of empowerment to decide between two choices and removes the pressure of them having to answer open-ended questions, which may be too challenging. By providing choices you are giving them a reason to communicate!

4. Add 1 word: Expanding on your child’s utterances is another way to build a strong foundation of language skills. As children become older many will naturally progress from one word sentences, to 2-words, then 3-words, and so on. For others, it requires more time, effort, and support from professionals. By adding one word to your child’s utterances, you are helping them to expand their sentences, and are increasing vocabulary exposure. If your child is not yet communicating in single words, a caregiver can say single words and label items as they go throughout the routines of the day (e.g., Say “car” while pointing to a car). If your child says “car,” you can respond, “drive car.” If your child is using 2-word sentences and communicates “drive car,” you can say “mommy drive car.” Slowly your child will pick up on these additions and begin to incorporate them on their own.

5. Sing: Another fun way to facilitate speech and language development is to sing with your child. Music has been shown to teach language and improve recall of words. Incorporate songs into daily routines, such as washing your hands, cleaning up, getting dressed, and brushing your teeth (“This is the way we brush our teeth, brush our teeth, brush our teeth)” As your child becomes more familiar with these songs, start to leave words out for them to fill in. You can make up your own songs to friendly tunes or use songs you already know. Hearing the same song over and over builds language and vocabulary. Eventually children will start to expect these songs and join in.

We hope these strategies and tips are helpful! Relax, have fun, be creative, and soon these will naturally work their way into your daily routines!

Have questions or need advice? Feel free to send us an email at info@easyexpressionslp.com