Two of the most common concerns we hear from parents are the number of words their child has in their vocabulary and how many words their child uses/combines. While there are many activities to build vocabulary, there are some simple and easy strategies you can regularly use to target increasing your child’s vocabulary and length of utterance.
1. Play dumb: Parents are so great at anticipating and knowing exactly what their child wants or needs– event if they are not always using words. Your child may use a variety of tactics to express what they want or need (e.g., pointing, dragging others to what they want, gesture, or whining/screaming). A great strategy that parents can use is playing dumb. Kids love when adults get silly, so pretend that you don’t know what they want. If your child points at goldfish for a snack, pretend you thought they were pointing to something else. When playing dumb, it’s very important to model the word or words you want your child to use in order to get their wants/needs met. If your child is pointing to goldfish for a snack, after you pretend to think they wanted something else (only one time), you need to follow it up with modeling “goldfish” or “fish” for your child to imitate you. Depending on how many words your child has and is using, you can make your model more complex. For example, if your child is only using one-word phrases model “goldfish” or “fish” only. If they are working on using two-word phrases, model “want goldfish” or “eat goldfish”. You can use this strategy throughout the day with your child (during play, books, and daily routines, etc).
2. Sabotage the environment: This may sound destructive and mean, but stick with us! Something we often do in our therapy sessions is “sabotage” things. Basically, we make it a little more difficult for your child to independently get the toy or snack they want. This encourages your child to use some form of communication in order to get what they want or need. If you are working on building your child’s use and number of words this is a great strategy to do just that. We will often have our toys in bags or boxes that children need help to open. In order to get the item out that they want or need, they have to ask or tell us (e.g., “I want X”, or “Open box.”). You can do this at home with your child by not immediately getting or opening their snack, filling up their cups, or handing them items. Instead, ask what your child wants, model words and phrases you want them to use, or simply wait to open and/or get toys, food, and activities started until they express their want/need.
3. Wait time: Many times after parents ask a question, they immediately rush to either give their child what they want or tell them the answer. Instead, try giving your child wait time (up to 10 seconds). Giving children this extra time helps them be able to first process what you are asking/telling them and then respond (AKA, language processing skills). It can feel like an eternity waiting for up to 10 seconds, but is so beneficial for your child if they need that time! Don’t always feel the need to fill the void of your child’s silences when they are trying to talk. Sometimes they just need a little more time to get organized.
4. Choices: When your child seems unsure of what they want to say or when your child needs help making a request or answering questions, giving them choices can be very helpful. If you ask your child what they want to eat and they don’t answer or just point, ask “Do you want goldfish or banana?” You can also use this strategy during play (e.g., “Do you want the car or the bus?”) and with books to help your child use more specific vocabulary and to answer questions.
5. Focus on Power Words Not manners: Has your child ever brought you a toy, book, or snack, and just said, “Please?” Although manners are important, many parents focus on these more than helping their child to use specific and intentional vocabulary (or “power words”). Power words are essential to convey meaning. They’re the difference between a child saying, “Help please” versus “Open snack”. Both phrases are 2 words, but one leaves the meaning up to your imagination and the other tells you exactly what you need to know. Many children get stuck on the manners (e.g., please, thank you) and nonspecific vocabulary (more, help, that, there), rather than using high frequency power words (open, push, eat, milk, shoes, trains, dog, etc). Although power words vary from child to child, they are essential to help your child become intentional in their communication. Once they have several power words, it becomes much easier to begin to combine them to help increase the number of words they use to communicate. “Book,” “dog,” and “read” can easily turn into “Read dog book” or “kick,” “blue,” and “ball” can turn into “Kick blue ball.”
Each child varies with both their vocabulary and length of utterance; however, it is important to keep an eye on how many specific words your child has and how many words they typically use to communicate. A small vocabulary or difficulty combining words (see milestones here) can indicate possible difficulties with a child’s motor planning or language skills.
As always, if you have questions or concerns about your child’s development, contact us at The Speech Space! We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
Story telling is such an important part of your child’s life. Think of all the times you’ve asked your child, “What did you do today?” and they’ve replied with “Nothing.” or “I don’t know.” or had no response at all. As your child gets older, the ability to tell stories gets increasingly important.
At The Speech Space, we often hear from parents who want to help develop their child’s story telling skills, so here are some fun and easy ways you can help your child develop this skill.
1. Take pictures: Although this may not be possible to do during school days, weekends are a great time to use our handy iPhones to work on story telling. Use your phone to take pictures throughout a day you spend with your child. At the end of the day, have them go through the pictures and describe the activities. Your activities can be exciting adventures or everyday activities like making breakfast together or brushing teeth. Added bonus- you’ll have lots of pictures for your memory books!
2. Have your child tell you how to do a familiar activity: Most children’s days are based in routine- morning routines, hand washing routines, food routines, bedtime routines- which should be very easy for your child to retell, as they do them every day. Children love to “be the grown up,” so have your child tell you how wash your hands or make their snack. Try to use key words like “first/then/last” or “first/next/last” to help your child become familiar with them in sequence.
3. Act out a familiar story: Does your child love to read some of the same stories over and over again? If so, try to gather some dress up items or use their toy figures to act out the story. You can start by letting your child use the book to help them remember how the story goes, but try working up to them acting out the story without help from you or the book. Demonstrate how you would act out or tell the story and use an expressive voice and face, or over exaggerated movements. Kids love seeing adults get silly, so have fun and make it a great performance
4. Wordless books: While most books have words, there are some that have few to no words in them (Flashlight, Frog Where Are you?, Pancakes for Breakfast, Red Sled). These books are great for young children for several reasons, including story telling. Since the books have no words, it’s easy for your child to use the pictures to help them make up their own story while having a visual guide to keep them on topic. Make sure that your child is using the pictures to help them with their story, using specific vocabulary and staying on topic.These wordless books are also great to focus on details of what is happening in order to make inferences and predictions about the pictures or stories.
As your child grows and moves through school these skills become more and more vital. In their early years, family or teachers may ask what your child did over the weekend or holiday. As they continue through school, your child will be expected to retell stories that are read to them or recall activities from earlier in their day. When your child begins writing tasks, they will be expected to write a cohesive story with a beginning, middle, and end.
Incorporating story telling and sequencing skills into daily routines and activities you already do, makes it easier to work on these skills. We are all about making it as easy as possible to improve your child’s communication skills!
If you have questions or concerns about your child’s development, contact us at The Speech Space. We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
You may have heard someone refer to your child’s “speech skills” or their “language skills”, when talking about their development. While they may sound similar, these are actually quite different areas of development. This post provides a quick, basic summary on the difference between these two areas.
Speech skills: Speech, which is related to how your child talks, can be split into two different areas, articulation and fluency.
Articulation refers to the way children acquire and produce sounds in words, sentences and conversation. If your child is having difficulty with their articulation development you may see things like:
difficulty producing sounds in isolation
sound distortions of consonants and/or vowels
deleting sounds in words, substituting sounds in words
difficulty sequencing sounds or syllables
Fluency is the aspect of speech production that involves smoothness, rate and effort. If your child is having difficulty with their fluency development you may see things like:
stuttering (e.g., repetition of sounds or words, blocking, interjections, etc)
rate of speech
awkward or odd breathing patterns or pauses within words or sentences
developmental stuttering
Language skills: Language can be broken down most simply into two parts: receptive language and expressive language (Note: Today we are just talking about foundational or basic language skills. We’ll cover higher-level language skills in a future post.)
Receptive language is the ability to understand what is being said and can include things like following directions or understanding questions. If your child is having difficulty with their receptive language skills, you may see things like:
trouble following directions in novel activities and daily routines
asking “what?” or saying “huh?” consistently after questions
trouble pointing to or identifying vocabulary in books or activities
difficulty understanding sentences that are longer in nature and/or contain a lot of detail or concepts (e.g., can you find the big, red truck)
Expressive language is the ability to use language and includes things like grammar, vocabulary and answering questions. If your child is having difficulty with their expressive language development, you may see things like:
difficulty using distinguishing features or functions (e.g., “Mommy look at that little dog.” vs. “Mommy look dog.”)
Some children may have trouble with one of these areas of communication (speech or language) or both. Some children may have difficulty with one area of their language development, but not the other (receptive vs. expressive).
Looking out for potential red-flags with your child’s development is the best way to combat any difficulties in these communication areas. Identifying areas of weakness and working on them early gives your child the best chance to make progress and catch up to their peers!
If you have questions or concerns about your child’s development, contact us at The Speech Space. We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
At The Speech Space this is a question we get a lot. So, here is a quick guide about what you should look for with your child!
Babies start “talking” as early as 2-3 months old. At this age your child is doing what we call vocal play, where they make funny noises and seem to be testing out their equipment. Children typically acquire vowel sounds first (e.g., “oooo” “aaaahhhhh”), so be listening for those sounds. At approximately three month intervals in your child’s life, you should observe more and more “talking”.
In children before the age of 1-year vocal communication is typically referred to as babbling and/or jargon. Actual talking should begin around the age of 1 years old and your child should have at least 1 real word. A real word is a word that has meaning outside of your home and that someone outside your household can understand (not just by parents or siblings).
From the age of 1 years old to 18 months, your child should start to sound a bit like a parrot–to the point where you have to start watching what you say around them (they do always seem to love imitating those bad words, don’t they?!). From 18 months to 2 years old, there is typically a language explosion! Your child should start acquiring and using new vocabulary words frequently and also start using at least 2-3 word phrases.
From 2 years old to 3 years old your child’s language should continue to grow and develop at a rapid speed and their language should become more sophisticated in terms of organization (i.e., grammar and vocabulary).
Once your child turns two years old you should see a huge leap in their language skills!
Why do some children start talking later than their peers (professionally known as: developmental delay or language delay)?There can be different reasons for this.
Some children may have hearing loss due to frequent ear infections. Ear infections may be an indication of fluid in the ears, and if your child has fluid in their ears it will impact how and what they hear in the world around them, thus impacting their speech, language and communication development.
Another cause can be oral-motor (muscle) weaknesses. If your child has weak oral structures (i.e., lips, tongue, cheeks, jaw) this can impact their communication as they may struggle to experiment with and form a wide variety of sounds.
Sometimes lack of exposure to a rich language environment can cause delays as well.
At The Speech Space, parents often say their child was “just a really good, quiet baby” and that is a red-flag! Babies should not be quiet, and as discussed above, start their “talking” (e.g., babbling, vocal play and jargon) early on.
Some good news: Early intervention for your child is the best way to help! Children who receive therapy at the earliest opportunity have a better chance of catching up with their same-aged peers and meeting their potential later in life.There is never any harm to just “get it checked out” if you are having concerns. Always better safe than sorry! If you are having concerns or questions about your child’s speech, language and/or communication development reach out to us at The Speech Space! We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.
Does your child have frequent ear infections or bad seasonal allergies? If your child has these issues, they may end up with buildup of fluid in their ears. The fluid in your child’s ears blocks sound from making it efficiently and clearly into their inner ear (where the actual hearing is done) causing hearing issues. Difficulty with hearing sounds can negatively impact your child’s total communication development (meaning: speech development, language development and even social development!). If your child is not hearing how sounds are made correctly, they will likely have difficulty imitating sounds and words.
As we discussed in a previous post, children start their engagement and communication early on, so interference with your child’s hearing can impact their development, particularly as they get older. Not only can their speech development (i.e., learning how to produce sounds correctly) become impacted, but their language development and social development can become stunted. Think of your child’s early years as practice for these type of skills (speech, language and social skills) for later in their childhood and even later life. If your child is not able to practice their skills, how will they be able to correctly use the skills they haven’t been able to practice?? After all, practice makes progress!
Red-Flags that your child may have issues with their hearing:
frequent ear infections
their ears seem “wet” frequently
very bad seasonal allergies
limited babbling and/or jargon as an infant
delayed first words
not using a variety of sounds (with babbling, jargon and their imitations/words)
their speech sounds “slushy” or “nasally”
not responding when you call their name (multiple times)
seem to only react to what is in front of them or what they can see
If your child does have hearing issues due to fluid, your pediatrician and audiologist will determine the course of action to address their hearing loss; however, it is likely your child may need speech therapy as a result of the time they were not hearing correctly. Many of the children we work with at The Speech Space end up doing very well and can quickly progress through therapy once the fluid in their ears is no longer present. There is no harm in getting it checked out– better safe than sorry!
Feel free to reach out to us at The Speech Space if you are having concerns about your child’s development. We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems! Additonal Resources: Great article from ASHA on the causes of hearing loss in children
It’s only normal to worry about your young child’s speech and language development, particularly at the critical ages of 18-24 months. Your child’s development will impact their ability to engage with others and effectively navigate their world!
At two-years old, your child typically should be using between 100 and 150 words, consisting of familiar nouns (“cookie”, “dog”, “cup”) and verbs (“eat”, “go”). Additionally, your child should be combining words into 2-3 word phrases, for example: “Eat cookie”, “Mommy go”. You should see a language “explosion” around this age, where your child begins using new words more frequently than before and progress accelerates.
Furthermore, you should monitor your child’s ability to understand – technically called receptive language. At two, your child should be able to identify clothing and body parts, follow simple 2-step commands, respond to yes/no questions, and point to familiar items/objects. If your child struggles to understand language, it may be harder for them to learn and use new words.
You can encourage your child’s development through day-to-day activities, especially including ones at home:
Singing with your child and leaving off key words (e.g., “Twinkle, twinkle, little _______”) encourages them to use vocabulary in a familiar way
Reading is another great way to encourage language development! Make sure you read interactively with your child by asking your child specific questions while reading, for example:
ask about functions: “What is she coloring with?”
talk about specific parts of a picture: “the dog’s tail” or “the boy’s shirt”
label the different pictures or objects in the book as you go along
Daily routines build understanding through repetition!
Give your child multiple step commands during activities (e.g., “First put on your shoes and then bring me your coat.”)
Explain the steps of activities you’re doing and have your child retell the steps back to you, with your help and guidance (e.g., hand washing or making a snack)
If you are concerned about your child’s speech and language development, act now, as early intervention helps prevent your child from falling further behind. For children with speech and language weaknesses, speech therapy is imperative to address those weaknesses in order to help your child effectively communicate with others. If you have any questions about your child’s speech and language needs, please contact us at The Speech Space!
