Slow Down!
Happy Monday, everyone! I hope your week is off to a great start…
I wanted to give you a very important tip today for communicating with your baby or toddler. I have spent extensive time teaching you about “baby talk”– that high-pitched, melodic, sing-songy speech pattern we use when talking with babies. I want to add something to it.
It’s very critical that you slow down your normal rate of speech when conversing with your little one. I recently read an article called, How To Talk To Children. It’s focus was teachers and school-age children. It emphasized the need for teachers to slow down their rate of speech while teaching their classes. In a nutshell, preschool to third-grade age children can process about 120 words per minute and teachers on average were instructing at 160 words per minute! You can see where difficulties may arise from this difference.
So, let’s distill this down to babies and toddlers. Since their central nervous system is not as developed as preschoolers and school-age children, we should be slowing down our rate of speech even more in order to be effective communicators with them!
So, tip for the day: Slow down!
Remember, get baby-talking!
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