If your child is suffering from speech delay, there are several things you can try at home to encourage your child's language development. The best approach you can take is to be patient with your child and look for opportunities to teach language whenever you can. There are several things that you can do to get your child to start communicating, and some of them will be discussed below.
Describe Your Actions And The Child's Actions To Them
Children will perform a lot of actions throughout the day. This gives you the perfect opportunity to talk to your child continuously. Take the time to describe to the child the actions that they are doing. For example, tell them that they are running, eating or walking. Talk about whatever action you are doing, such as washing the clothes or sweeping the house. Always use full sentences when describing your actions or the child's actions, since this will encourage them to speak in complete sentences.
Read Books Aloud
Get age appropriate books and begin to read to your child aloud. Even picture books can encourage a child's language development. You can look at the pictures and make up stories about them, in complete sentences, so that your child can learn language and be encouraged to speak.
Talk About Family Pictures
If you have an album filled with photographs of family members, you can use this in the same way that you would use a picture book. Talk about where and how the picture was taken. Have a discussion about the family member in the picture and encourage the child to share their opinion, even if they only do so with one word.
Add-on To Whatever Your Child Says
If your child says one word such as "toy", expand on it by making up a sentence about the toy. You can also use the toy to make up a random story. The more you talk, the more your child will learn language and how to speak.
Give Your Child New Experiences
Take your child on family outings and field trips to exciting, new places. This will encourage the child to talk as they begin to experience something that is outside of their everyday routine. Encourage speech by describing and talking about all that you are seeing and doing on the trip, in order to prompt your child to speak.
Talking to your child continuously is a great way to help them with language development, because it encourages your child to talk about what they are seeing, feeling and doing. (For information on speech pathology, contact Eastern Carolina Ear Nose & Throat-Head)
Share9 March 2015
When my daughter began having academic problems in school and acting out, I knew that something wasn’t right. Her teachers wanted me to put her on ADD medications, but I didn’t think that that was the right course for us. I had serious doubts that ADD was what was causing her problems. I took her to several different specialists before discovering that her issues in school were actually do to a visual processing problem. The doctor recommended vision therapy, not medication, to help correct the problem and get her back on track. The exercises are really starting to pay off, and she’s showing great improvement.
