Foolproof Tips to Facilitate Language Growth

Many parents or caregivers ask me what they can do to help their child learn to speak or expand the language that the child currently uses. Here are some of my go-to tips:

• After reading a story, switch roles! Have your child read to you. Even if your child can’t decode the words yet, he or she can re-tell the story from memory while looking at the pictures. If it is a story he or she hasn’t heard before, let him/her be creative.
• Encourage your child to look at all of the pictures and make up the story.
• Expand on your child’s utterance. If your child says, “He’s by the trees,” or even just “Trees,” you can expand by saying, “You’re right, the prince is in the forest! I see lots of tall trees!”
• Be animated! Kids are very intuitive, sometimes more than we might give them credit for. Vary your volume from a whisper to a loud voice, use different voices for different characters, make crunching sounds when you see leaves or people eating food.

The more you engage your child, the more the excited your child will be to imitate (and ultimately expand) language!