Give Your Child A Chance!
By the time your toddler is heading towards age 3, you should be able to hold little conversations with them. This is such a fun time to learn more about your toddler’s personality and likes and dislikes!
An important thing to remember when conversing with a toddler is to give them a chance to respond. Often times, as parents, we want to fill-in the blank! Don’t do that…give them a chance to talk and figure it out for themselves. They’ll get it!
Get baby-talking!
What Do I Talk About With My Baby?
For those of you who are familiar with my blog, you know the more you talk to your baby and toddler in the early formative years of birth to three, the better prepared they will be for academic success. Talking to your baby and/or toddler is one of the best ways to nurture your child’s language and cognitive skills!
But what to talk about with a little one? Often times our communication with our little ones, particularly toddlers, is business-oriented. For example, we say things like “don’t touch” or “stop that”…but we need to remember to extend our conversations beyond the daily routine. Embellish, embellish, embellish!
Talk about the objects in the room you’re in or talk about the items on the shelf in the grocery store when shopping. I love to use picture books with a baby and use every adjective I can think of when describing the picture to them. Instead of a red apple, I might say a rosy, shiny, glistening, delcious red or rojo apple! I like to throw in a little Spanish. Thanks to Dora the Explorer, I’m becoming fluent. Well, that’s a stretch, but I do know more words in Spanish than I used to know. I really do this with my daughter. I know the dividends are worth it!
You know what I’m going to say next: Get baby talking!
Pirates Of The Can and Beans!
“May I have some pirates of the cans and beans please?”
This is what my almost 3 year old nephew calls his favorite Pirates of the Carribean Disney snack…that is too funny!
So, how intelligible or clear should a 3 year old’s speech be?
By the time a child turns 3, they should be approximately 80% intelligible to the listener. There will still be some substitution and distortion of consonants, i.e. says woad for road or wook for look, but overall, they should be able to get their point across without too many misunderstandings!
Get baby-talking!
Cheers To The Ears!
Our ears are amazing! Did you ever stop to ponder what they actually do? Yes, you know that they ‘hear’, but did you know what an amazingly complicated wonderful process that is? Check out this website to learn more – so cool!
Why all this praise for our ears? Good hearing is absolutely essential to strong speech and language skills. Babies and toddlers must hear properly in order to develop speech and language skills optimally.
It’s vitally important that your newborn’s hearing is tested at birth. It’s also important to get regular check-ups throughout these early, formative years to make sure those ears are clear of infections and fluids. Obviously, you want to get regular check-ups for children throughout their childhood as well!
If you have concerns about your baby or toddler’s hearing, go to your pediatrician and voice your concerns.
Take care of those ears and they will take care of you!
Get baby-talking!