How to Encourage your Child's Language Development?

How to encourage your child to speak? Do you need fancy schmancy videos or expensive classes? No! You don’t need those things to help your child learn to speak.

Here are some of the few easy and free ways to get your kids talking:

One-on-one Conversations

Make sure have one-on-one conversation with your child several times in a day to expose her with lots of language. Try talking to her about what she’s doing or how she’s feeling.

Eye Contact 

Making and maintaining eye contact when you are talking to your child is very important. It will determine if she’s really focusing on your conversation. It holds her attention and it will also let her know that she has your full attention.

Use Proper Grammar

Speak to her slowly and carefully but not to the point that it sounds like robotic. Many parents use baby talk to their babies but this has to be discouraged. You have to use proper grammar when talking to your child. You should express your thoughts in complete sentences.

Expose your Child to a Variety of Words

It is good to use language that’s above your child’s current level, in that way you are teaching her more and new words. Expose her to a variety of words, toss in some occasional big words and she’ll eventually learn how to decipher the meaning of the big words you just said.

Short Messages

Keep your messages short. Children have short attention and if you express longer thoughts, your child will definitely get lost.

Whisper

If you notice that your child’s attention is starting to drift, try to whisper to her ear and she’ll definitely listen more carefully.

Single-word to Double-word Utterances

Make sure that you expand your child’s single-word utterances. If for example, she says “balloon,” expand her thought by saying “Yes, that’s a yellow balloon.” “Would you like to blow a balloon?” In doing this, you are expanding her vocabulary and make sure you acknowledge what she had said.

Source: Parents Connect