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Sarah Halstead

You are here: Home | Family | Help Develop Your Child’s Language {Guest Post}

July 26, 2011 By Sarah Halstead

Help Develop Your Child’s Language {Guest Post}

Filed Under: Family, Parenting Tagged With: guest post

Today I want to introduce to you an in real life friend, Tiffany. You may have seen her son appear on my blog before. He is sweet Hunter. I love taking photos for her and I am so glad she is in my life. Thanks Tiffany for writing this post for my blog. You can visit Tiffany’s blog by clicking the picture below.

I guess I should give a little background about myself before I try to give anyone advice about language development.


My name is Tiffany and I’m a mommy and a wife. I am also a speech-language pathologist (I get to sign my name all official with CCC-SLP at the end of it, it makes me feel important, lol). I have my BS in early childhood education and my M. Ed in speech-language pathology. I work in a local school system. During most of my schooling, I dreamed of working in the local children’s hospital, doing lots of feeding and swallowing therapy. But then I got the baby itch and my husband and I decided to have a baby. I got pregnant with our son Hunter and I decided that working 7:30 am to 6:00 pm was no way to raise a little one. So now I work 7:30 am- 2:30 pm (most days… some days I have IEP meetings and such) and I get to spend most of my time (and most importantly the whole summer) with my son.

Enough about me…

Look around your child’s toy room (that would be the living room in my house). See all those toys? You can use them in developing your child’s language skills! Anything that has repetition is a great tool!

Help Develop Your Child’s Language

I love our “Count & Learn School Bus” because it came with a couple of balls. I keep all the balls and my son has to attempt to say “ball”. I hold the ball up beside my mouth so his attention is drawn to my mouth to see how I’m forming the word. Most of the time it comes at as “da” or “duh”, but I simply repeat “ball” and hand it to him. We have a bag of blocks that I love as well (since there are so many in there and it is a zipper which my son cannot do yet). He grunts and vocalizes for my attention when he wants the bag opened, so I say, “Open,” and then I open it. Eventually I will require him to attempt to say “open”.

Help Develop Your Child’s Language

The Little People Barn is another good toy. All those animals to name and the sounds that they make! My son recently started to say, “Moo!” when he sees a cow (and a horse, and a sheep. This is all normal… he is recognizing that these creatures are animals and that they make noise. Before that, every animal was a “dog” and it went “woof woof” so we are making progress).

Here are some helpful hints as to how to incorporate early speech therapy into your child’s home life:

-Talk to your child. Talk about what you’re doing (“Mommy is washing the dishes. Look at all the bubbles on the plate!”), talk about what they’re doing (“You’re pushing the car. Vroom, vroom!”), talk to them while you’re grocery shopping (it may feel silly, but who cares what other people think. “I need some watermelon. Will you help me find the watermelon? Here it is!”).

-Sabotage! Sounds cruel, but it’s not. Put toys you know your child loves just out of reach. Make him ask you for help. Put the top on too tight so she can’t open the container. Keep the bag of blocks zipped. Keep a piece of the puzzle (“Where is it?!”).
-Bring items to your face. As mentioned earlier, this has your child looking at your mouth to see how you are using your articulators (i.e., lips, tongue, teeth, etc.) to form the words.

-Repetition. Instead of counting your child’s toes “1, 2, 3” say, “Toe, toe, toe….” It reinforces that word. We all learn by repetition.

Help Develop Your Child’s Language

-Read! My favorite books are by Sandra Boynton (these are 2 of the many we own). They are so fun and so educational. I also like counting books (but instead we say the name of the object… fish, fish, fish; dog, dog; cat). We tend to stick with a few books we read over and over for a few weeks and then change it up.

-I know we all have busy lives, but make a certain time of the day for just you and your child (no TV in the background, no computer, etc.) and play on the floor. Model what you want your child to be doing.

-Sign language. Why would I want you to teach your child to talk with her hands when we want to focus on verbal communication? Because it gives your child a way to communicate needs that she can’t verbalize yet. I PROMISE, sign language does not delay your child’s language development. If a child is going to have an expressive language delay, the child will have one regardless if she was taught sign language. But you have to say the word you are teaching. Children use their own form of sign language (i.e., gestures) even if we don’t teach them sign language. It is like teaching your child Spanish along with English. American Sign Language is a “language”. Baby Signing Time teaches a lot of good signs, and sets it to music. Some good signs to start with are “more,” “eat,” “play,” “ball,” “drink,” “all done,” and “wet”.

If you have any concerns regarding your child’s speech and language development, ask your pediatrician for a referral to a speech-language pathologist. I love our pediatrician and he has a lot more schooling under his belt than I do, but he does not have the education I have in speech and language development; therefore, I am not going to trust his “judgments” regarding my child’s speech and language development. It is nothing for your pediatrician to write a referral, and if they won’t, I would go to a different pediatrician and ask for the referral. It might also be a good time to get a referral for a hearing test through an audiologist as well just to rule out any hearing loss (even if you are positive your child doesn’t have a hearing loss or because your child passed the newborn hearing test). Your local speech therapist will complete a few assessments on your child to see where your child’s speech and language development is compared to other children his/her chronological age. It is never too soon to go (there is an assessment that starts at 0-3 months).

If you have any questions or want to know more about anything I’ve written, you can send me an email (tmass513 {at} yahoo {dot} com). If you want to know more about my not  so crazy life with my husband and my son, you can hop on over to my blog (http://rhodesfamily08.blogspot.com/).

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Comments

  1. Michelle Ayers says

    July 28, 2011 at 9:12 am

    Oh Cued Speech is also great for people with hearing loss because it helps clarify lip reading!
  2. Michelle Ayers says

    July 26, 2011 at 6:37 pm

    If you ever work with deaf kids, you might be interested in Cued Speech! www.cuedspeech.org and www.cuedspeech.com I am deaf and grew up using Cued Speech! I love it! I also know some sign language but I mostly use Cued Speech because of the way it helps to clarify lip reading. If you have any questions MIchelle Ayers [email protected]
    • Tiffany Rhodes says

      July 27, 2011 at 7:41 pm

      Awesome! Thanks for the info. I will check that out. I'm always looking to educate myself more in the field. I don't work with any children who are deaf, but I do have a few who have some hearing loss.
  3. Carrie says

    July 26, 2011 at 4:54 pm

    I absolutely Love Sandra Boynton book! my favorite was the barnyard dance
    • Tiffany Rhodes says

      July 27, 2011 at 7:42 pm

      We like that one too! :] I think my son's favorite is "Blue Hat, Green Hat"... I really like "Happy Hippo, Angry Duck".
  4. Allie says

    July 26, 2011 at 1:18 pm

    Hi Tiffany. I'm one of Sarah's blog friends =) I have a two year old with Autism and Expressive Receptive Language Disorder. From a mommy of a child with language disorder, thank you for sharing this wonderful post to help mom's understand a little better how they can help their child develop language skills. I'm quite passionate about early intervention!
    • Tiffany Rhodes says

      July 26, 2011 at 2:13 pm

      Not a problem! I love working with the little ones, so I usually try to "steal" them when they are referred to our school. :] I'm going to hop on over to your blog. :]
  5. Tiffany Rhodes says

    July 26, 2011 at 8:09 am

    Thanks Sarah for letting me guest post! I was super excited and told Carl when he came home from work last night about it. :]
  6. Amber says

    July 26, 2011 at 6:56 am

    Tiffany, We must be secret sisters. I am a Physical Therapist, although different for SLP, I learned a lot from several friends in the SLP program while in school. My son is 16 months and I do several of these things with him. WE LOVE THE LITTLE PRICE FARM for the exact reason you expressed. Bennett also went from saying, "Woof" to "Moo, Baa, Roar, Ney, etc." He has been signing since he was 8 months old. Now he signs and says the word with the sign that he knows. WE LOVE IT!! It helps so much when your child can express his needs through sign before they can talk. We, too, are a HUGE FAN of Sandra Boynton books. They are by far our favorite. Currently, Birthday Monsters and My Oh My Dinosaurs. Such excellent books that my son adores. Plus, we go to the library often to rent books. I will be posting an activity for Pre-Toddlers tomorrow on my blog that has to do with the Alphabet. It is very helpful for language and fine motor skills. Sorry this is a book, but another excellent toy that I posted about here http://ambocullum.blogspot.com/2011/07/10-toys-to-give-toddler-12-18-months.html is the Safari (brand) animal collectables. They are portable and make basically every animal. My son has learned many animal noises while playing with his animals. Thanks for this fantastic post. I will be passing it along...........right now.
    • Tiffany Rhodes says

      July 26, 2011 at 8:08 am

      That's too funny! We must be secret sisters. ;] I've learned a lot from our PT and OT at the school. I love how we all just "hold hands" in therapy. :] I will check out that toy and your blog! Hunter keeps the My Oh My Dinosaurs book in the car so he can look at it and says, "Rawr" each page, lol.

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I'm Sarah and I am the writer behind this blog. I love sharing recipes, DIY projects, photos and about my everyday life. I married my high school sweetheart Kenny. We have three boys and one baby girl - Dustyn, Carsyn, Prestyn, and Annelyn. Thanks for stopping by, can't wait to get to know you more. Read More…

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