In this post, we are going to take a look at some of the things that you can do as a parent to help your child to develop their language skills much more effectively and completely. You’ll find all of the following to be really helpful in that regard, and your child is going to be much more likely to have a strong grasp of the ability to use language effectively.
Talk Early & Often
If there is one thing that is going to help you out a lot here, it’s making a point of talking to your children early and often. This simple thing is really going to make a radical difference to how easily and quickly they pick up on language themselves, and it’s amazing how much this is really going to help them out. From infancy, children absorb the rhythm and sound of language through listening to you and other people speak. You can therefore help them along by simply narrating what you’re doing as you go about your day, whether you are cooking, getting dressed, or walking outside.
Simple, clear speech is best, and helps your child to link words to actions and objects. This is going to mean they develop the ability to use language themselves so much more easily and powerfully. So the simple act of talking to them early and often can make a world of difference to their lives.
Listen And Respond
Of course, language is all about communication, and communication is two-way. It’s therefore vital that you are listening to your child and responding as much as possible too. When your child babbles, gestures or speaks, respond as if you’re having a real conversation. This back-and-forth, knowing as serve and return, teaches that communication is a two-way exchange, and encourages more confidence in speaking. It’s therefore one of the most important things that you can try and aim for when it comes to helping your child to develop their own language abilities.
The great thing about this is that you will probably find it comes quite naturally, as it is one of those things that humans just do by nature. So you can probably trust yourself to do this the moment you have a child to interact with, and your child in turn will respond. That’s part of watching the magic of language really develop, and it’s an amazing thing that you are going to be really glad to be a part of.
Read Together
This is another core and fundamental part of raising a child, and something that you will probably find yourself naturally wanting to do. Reading aloud as a daily practice is one of the best ways to grow vocabulary and comprehension. Choose books with repetition, rhyme, and lots of rhythm for younger children, and ask open-ended questions as they get older. If you do this for even ten minutes a day, it is going to help make a difference, and you will probably find that it is also a great opportunity for bonding with your child as well. As such, there are many purposes that this can serve, and it’s a really good idea to make sure that you are doing it every day.
Teach The Building Blocks
At some point, it can be helpful to help your child to understand some of the building blocks of language. That means that they are going to be much better equipped to know what is being said and how it all works as language. That includes, for instance, teaching them about syllables and how they go together to make words, and then later on teaching words and sentences. Of course, this process happens gradually over years, but you should aim to always teach at their edge, as this is the best way to ensure that they develop as they should. If you can do this, you are going to find that they have much more in the way of being able to develop their language skills powerfully.
Expand Their Words
This is a simple but powerful technique which helps your child to grow their vocabulary as well as helping them to understand sentence patterns too. When they say something simple like ‘dog’, you can build on it: ‘yes, the brown dog is running!’ This gently introduces new words in a natural way, in the way that humans learn language, and yet without turning it into a lesson. It’s subtle and effective, and you will find that it is going to really help your child to learn a lot as they develop. Overall it’s a great way to ensure that they are going to understand how it is that language actually works.
Encourage Play & Social Interaction
It’s important to remember that language is actually a social tool, and that you need to try and keep it as such. Anything you can do to encourage play and more social interaction is therefore always going to help your children to develop their language abilities. That can be in the form of playdates, games, imaginative play and the like, and it’s important to make sure that you are encouraging your child to engage with other kids as much as possible. If you do that, they are going to build their language skills in the best, natural way that they can.
All in all, those are going to help your child to develop language skills much more powerfully and quickly.
