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!
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”.
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.
-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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