3 Tips to Help Your Child Produce 3+ Word Phrases

Do you want your child to increase the length of his phrases, but aren't sure how to make that happen?

3 quick and easy tips to implement during play, reading a story, or while looking at pictures to increase phrase length:

1. Make it fun

Your child will be more motivated to imitate or produce three word phrases if the activity is interactive. Let your child pick a picture or story book, or even a stack of family pictures you have laying around. If you are trying to facilitate 3 word phrases, set out three pom-poms, coins, blocks, snacks (Cheerios or tiny chocolate chips are good motivators), or any type of manipulative.  If you are trying to increase utterance length to 4+ words, match the number of manipulatives accordingly. Here’s an example of three gems used to mark words:

2. Model the Phrases!

Can you imagine if you had started taking a foreign language class and your teacher put pictures in front of you and asked, “What is this? What do you see? What is he doing?” How frustrating would that be if you did not yet have the vocabulary knowledge to draw from?! For many late talkers or those with speech-language disorders, frustration is exactly what they feel when they’re given a task that demands them to use skills they don't yet have or don't have a strong foundation for.

If your child already had the words, he would be using them already!

Model, model, model! It is important that you model some (or all) of the words for your child. Let’s pretend the character in your book is eating cookies. Point to the cookies and say, “Cookies!” enthusiastically. Then model, “He’s eating cookies!” while pointing respectively to the boy and then to the cookies. 

 Next, take your child’s index finger and say each word while pointing to or touching the manipulatives you've chosen (Cheerios, blocks, etc.).

3. Have a Party!

I don’t literally mean that you should have a party—but your facial expression, vocal inflection, and gestures should reflect how exciting this activity is and how excited you are to do this with your child. Trust me on this one—your child will be ecstatic to imitate phrases (whether it’s only part of the phrase or all of it) if you celebrate each and every attempt. Tell your child how proud you are of her, and watch as she takes pride in herself!

I hope this post provided new and practical ideas! Thank you for reading! I would love to hear your feedback after you these ideas with your kiddo!

Remember to keep it fun, use motivating manipulatives, provide good models, and celebrate every communicative attempt.

#talktoomey #speechlanguagepathology #motivate #celebrate

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