How to Speak Toddler

The Let's Talk Toddler System for Teaching Your Toddler to Talk

Hey there, amazing parent. Good call getting this book. Let’s get two important things out of the way before we start.

It’s a pretty safe bet that you are a top-notch parent or caregiver. Clearly you’re someone who cares a whole lot about a tiny adorable person. You’re dedicated to giving your child the best start possible and committed to learning how. You understand that what you do matters. Go you! Your child is lucky to have you in their corner.

Your child is a freaking marvel. You watch how they take in the world around them. You cherish those precious little hands. You’re in awe of their not-so-little personality. Just imagine the amazing connections being made in that little brain all day long. Whether your child is just starting to notice the people around them or reciting the Gettysburg Address, be in awe of that amazing little human being.

Right now maybe you’re lying in bed after finally getting the kids down for the night, or maybe you’re trying to knock out a chapter or two before your little one wakes up from their nap. Right now, without even reading a page, you have everything you need to teach your toddler to talk.

Here are the prerequisites for being an effective language teacher for your child:

You speak or sign a language
You do things with your child
Your heart could explode with how much you love that little one

That’s it. You’ve already got it.

So why the book?

Well, learning to talk doesn’t always go as expected. Some kids benefit from a little extra support along the way, and I want you to know how to give it.

This book does not take the place of speech therapy. If you have any concerns about your child’s communication skills, have them evaluated by a speech-language pathologist. This book will help you speak the same language as your therapist and be an essential member of the team to support your child.

When you learn How to Speak Toddler, you’ll learn how to talk to toddlers so that they learn to talk. As a mom of three little ones, including a late-talking toddler, I’ve spent anxious nights worrying about my child’s future. I’ve woken with the desperate hope that this would finally be the day he said a new word. Even as he gets older, I’ll never take my son’s beautiful but long-awaited language skills for granted.

We worry, hope, and (dare I say?) obsess at times over our child’s ability to talk. So here’s a quick reminder that talking isn’t the be all and end all of a happy, successful life. (I’m pretty sure that your child’s first job interview won’t include questions about when they said their first word.) In fact, you’ll learn that there are a whole lot of other skills a child has to master before they can use words to communicate. When you understand everything that goes into talking, you’ll be able to celebrate the progress along the way.

In fact, regardless of whether your child is making huge gains in their communication skills, you already know they are amazing in so many ways that have nothing to do with talking. I bet you could list 10 of them right now. Their tight hugs. Their infectious smiles. The way the boogie when you turn on their favorite song. The anxiety of waiting for words might threaten to steal away a tiny bit of your joy, if you let it. Stay in awe of that tiny, adorable little human.

A small minority of children will need or choose to access communication in other ways, even as they get older. Every toddler is different. Some of the strategies you learn about in this book will be exactly what your child needs. Others will not work for your child. For that reason, using this book takes a little bit of thought. Luckily, you are the expert on your child. You can take the expert information on speech and language development and apply what makes sense to help your amazing, unique little human.

How to Speak Toddler is about building your child’s skills and supporting them to reach their potential. You know your child best and you love your child most. Now you can add expert knowledge and approaches to become a language-building star for your toddler.

3 Myths about Teaching Your Toddler to Talk

Let’s get a few misconceptions out of the way right off the bat. There are a lot of them out there (especially in the world of the internet). But let’s knock off the top three that

Special toys and crafts will teach your toddler to talk

Good news for your already overrun play room: there are no specific toys that you need to have or special activities that you have to do in order to get your child talking.

Sure, some toys or activities are better than others at creating language-building opportunities.

But there is nothing special about any activity or toy that is going to make your child start to talk.

Forget those Instagram moms who somehow have time to create Pinterst-perfect lessons. You don’t need them and neither does your child.

(Let’s be honest- no matter how amazing your activity is, by the time you entice your toddler to sit down and get them to understand what to do, they’re probably going to lose interest in about 30 seconds anyway.)

Hey, if you like to do all of that, great! Go for it. But if you’re like me and just feel accomplished when the kids’ socks match, it’s okay. None of this has to be fancy.

Here’s the secret: speech activities are the things you do all day long with your child.

We’re talking routines like getting dressed, eating a snack, taking a bath, and playing. It’s about connecting with your child, sharing their interests, and helping them feel heard

Your child does not need Mary Poppins. Your child needs you.

Not color-coded, laminated, or organized anything. Just you.

In fact, toddlers learn better when you practice communication during real-life situations. That’s because real-life situations are necessarily relevant to your child’s communication needs. A book about a unicorn who eats shrimp on Mars is fun, but probably won’t include a lot of words that help your toddler tell you about things they want.

On the other hand, talking about your child’s bedtime routine as you’re brushing teeth and putting on PJs is going to make it easier for your child to link up meaning with those words. Getting on the floor and intentionally playing with your toddler every day is going to give them the building blocks of language a lot more than daily phonics lessons.

(Side bar: play all day! Join your child in their play and encourage your child to join you in your daily activities. All interaction, exploring, engaging… can be play)

In this book you’ll learn how to fold talking techniques into every interaction with your toddler. You’ll learn how to turn any activity into one that will teach your toddler to talk. I’ll show you how to create a language-rich, supported learning environment every single day without breaking a sweat.

Let’s just knock a couple more myths out of the way first-

YouTube will teach your toddler to talk

Oh if only it were that easy!

Sorry to be the barer of bad news but… it’s not.

Here’s the thing- we have to be realistic about what screen time can do.

For some children, screen time provides an important model of language and interaction. For other children it can be calming and help a child unwind. All of that is okay. But learning from a screen is incomplete. For optimal learning, the focus has to be on interacting with the real world and real people.

The full experience of language and interaction really takes a back and forth experience with another human being. It’s important to find balance in the type of input your child is receiving. Emerging research suggests that too much screen time can have a negative impact on a toddler’s language skills.

A screen cannot:

Provide a back and forth interaction necessary for communication

Teach your child that communication is powerful

Give your child important feedback on what they do or say

But let’s be honest: you can't be anti-screen time and pro-mom at the same time. If you've managed to keep your kids off the iPad and TV, that's awesome. But if you enjoy the occasional uninterrupted shower or moment of peace and TV is your ticket there, you won’t get any mom-shaming from me. Just use these tips to minimize potentially negative effects.

First, set limits. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no more than 1 hour of screen time each day for toddlers over 18 months up until age 5. It’s important to know the guidelines and to understand they are based on research. But still, no one from the American Academy of Pediatrics came to your house hung out with your kids all day before they made that recommendation. My point is that it’s okay to consider your family’s specific needs as you make screen time limits. For example, a parent who is working from home with limited childcare may choose to rely a bit more on screen time than a parent whose child is in daycare most of the day. You have to do what works for your family.

A limit can be a specific amount of time that the TV or iPad can be on. But it may just be a routine. For example, your child may know that TV time is only allowed while you’re preparing meals, or during a set quiet-time every afternoon. You may choose to only allow TV on the weekends or not at all. No toddler needs screen time. Once you decide on your family’s limits, communicate them and be consistent.

Smart screen time is all about balance. Your child needs a variety of activities during their day to learn all different skills. Before you turn on the TV, consider if your child has recently gotten outside, engaged in pretend play, or helped with a household task. Children learn better from real-life, face-to-face interactions like playing or eating meals together, than from interacting with a video or game. It’s also a good idea to keep an eye out for how excessive screen time may be impacting your child’s mood or behaviors.

Here are some simple tips to help your child get more out of screen time:

-Watch with your child: Narrate what’s happening and relate it to your child’s experiences

-Turn off screens when nobody is watching them

-Set an alarm or a visual timer to help enforce limits

-Give your child a choice of two activities when it’s time to turn off the TV or iPad

-Provide a short transition period where your child is not expected to do any particular task immediately following screen time

Concluding sentence/paragraph

Speech therapy once a week will teach your toddler to talk

Speech therapy is important, but 45 minutes or an hour a week just isn’t enough time to make a real impact in your child’s learning. Even the best speech therapist in the world can only make so much progress in the time they’re given.

Working on speech and language outside of therapy sessions is essential.

Think about this: if your child is in speech therapy 45 minutes each week, that is less than 1% of their waking hours. Imagine how much more progress they could make if some of the other 99% were focused on improving their communication skills.

That’s why the most evidence-based early intervention approaches necessitate a strong caregiver coaching component. That is, parents must be involved in learning the strategies to help their little ones so that they can carryover the techniques in all of the time between therapy sessions.

What you do at home matters. Which takes us to the reason I wrote this book:

You are the best person to teach your toddler to talk <

You know them best

You are the expert on your child. Nobody knows your toddler the way you do. You know what they like. You know what makes them tick. You know how they respond to different kinds of communication. You already have the connection with your toddler that other adults have to work really hard for. Your child already looks to you as a model.

You know what’s important

You know what words and concepts are most relevant in your toddler’s little world. You know which challenges cause the most frustration and which routines are already going really well. You know want your child to be able to do.

You have the most time with your child

Toddlers learn best through the everyday activities you are already doing together. Splashing in the tub, picking a snack, and getting shoes on are all learning opportunities. Parents have the ability to make these simple activities meaningful interactions by talking, giving choices, being playful. Whether you work out of the home or are with your toddler all day long, you are with your child during key learning moments. You don’t have to be “on” all the time to make a huge difference in your toddler’s communication skills.

Seek assistance

While I firmly believe parents can make the most impact in their child’s speech and language skills, please don’t go at it alone! The expertise and guidance of a speech pathologist or other developmental therapist is invaluable. If you have any concerns about your toddler’s speech development, contact a speech pathologist. In the United States, every state has an Early Intervention program that offers free, high-quality evaluation. See Appendix 2 for more information on finding support when you have concerns about your toddler’s communication skills or development.

Now that we’ve cleared up a few myths, let’s get to the information you really need: How to speak toddler.

In the next section of this book, you’ll learn four principles that should guide your whole approach to teaching your toddler to talk.

These principles may seem like common sense, but so many parents find themselves doing and saying things to their toddlers that contradict them. As you read through the four principles, consider ways you might be able to tweak the way you interact with your toddler. Sometimes small changes can have a profound impact for the better.

4 Principles:

The LOW PRESSURE Principle

You don’t have to be wearing body paint at a T-ball game to be putting too much pressure on your kids. In fact, we often put toddlers on the spot in ways we don’t even notice.

Have you ever asked your toddler to do… well, anything? If your kids are like mine, they might not (read: most definitely do not) listen the first time you say it. Here’s the thing: toddlers don’t like being told what to do. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have expectations and boundaries; it just means we might not get the outcome we want just by making a demand. And if we demand too much, we run the risk of our child shutting down and doing less of what we asked for.

So if your toddler is told they have to say, “cookie” before you give them one, you might be staring at each other for a while.

What’s worse is that if the stakes feel too high, your child may actually become resistant to attempting communication.

Pressure Scale

The Low-Pressure Principle says we need to keep pressure and demands low when we talk to our toddlers. Instead, it’s important to show them that communication is useful and fun.

Toddlers learn best when they are playing. Maria Montessori said “Play is the work of the child”. Play is how toddlers make sense of the world and learn how to interact. The second they suspect there is anything serious or work-like in what we want them to do, it’s over. Right? For example, think about how you get your toddler to help clean up their toys. Chances are if you just demanded that they clean up, they would refuse or stare blankly at you. Instead, you might sing a song (“clean up, clean up, everybody, everywhere…”) or make a game out of it (like basketball by throwing their stuffed animals into the bin). That said, we just talked about how you can teach language during any activity, not just play. The ideas is that we want our language interactions with our child to feel natural and easy, whether we are talking about putting away dishes or getting dressed in the morning. We want to keep that light-hearted and warm attitude around language learning.

I often hear from parents how stubborn their toddlers are and if they would just try then they would be talking. I have to say that that is rarely the case. Most of the time, if a young child can do something, they will. Usually the problem isn’t that the child is strong-willed, it’s that they are missing some of the skills needed for talking. In other words, talking is still hard. The issue isn’t whether they want to talk, it’s whether they’re able at this time.

Think about a skill that is challenging for you. As an example, let’s say changing a tire. Now imagine someone is insisting that you change a tire before you get to have a snack, or that you have to change a tire before you can use the car. You may want to change the tire, but no amount of bribing or threatening is going to make you capable of changing the tire. In fact, you might learn to hate the idea of tire-changing in general after all those demands have been placed on you.

The same thing happens with children who are constantly being asked to use language that they do not have. Constantly telling your toddler to “say milk!” or telling your toddler that they have to say what they want before they get it, is going to backfire. Children get stressed if we ask them to do something way above their capabilities. Sometimes that looks like a tantrum or just sort of loopy behavior. Sometimes their stress makes them just shut down and ignore you.

So what is a better way? Imagine that instead of demanding that you change the tire, someone takes the time to show you how to change the tire. They show you what each tool does and walk you through the steps. They let you watch them change the tire many times. Eventually you’ll feel like a pro and be happy to change the tire whenever needed.

That’s basically the same idea for teaching toddlers to talk. There are two ways to dial the pressure way down. First, with the help of this course and a speech-language pathologist, identify where the breakdown is in your child’s language learning and work on those skill first. We’ll talk more about that soon. That might look like working on imitation skills, gesturing, listening, or social skills. The other way to dial down pressure while still teaching language is to model. Language modeling is talking to your toddler in a way that doesn’t expect a response. That means not asking questions, not asking your child to name things, not asking them to follow a million directions. Instead, you can make observations, label items and actions, and wonder aloud, without requiring a response.

It can be helpful to think about using more statements than questions. Do you often ask your child, “What’s this?” or “Can you say ____?” Or do you ask them to repeat words all day long? The problem with this approach is that most toddlers who are not yet talking or not using many words have a hard time repeating. Nine times out of ten, if they could imitate words easily, they would. It’s not laziness- it’s just that learning to talk is hard work! Instead of quizzing your child, focus on teaching them. It’s important to model language, which simply means talking! We have to teach them words before we can expect them to use words. We also want to model language in a way that encourages toddlers to try to get involved. By lowering the pressure to talk, toddlers to become braver communicators.

If you’re already using a lot of questions, this can be a challenging shift in the way you talk to your toddler. Try to limit questions like “What’s this?” and “Can you say that?”, especially if you’ve never heard your child say the target word before.

If you are trying to help your child practice a word you have heard them say before, it’s okay to ask them to say the word and hold out for a response. That said, give them 3 or 4 opportunities to say the word, then give them the object either way and move on. What you don’t want is to create frustration, or worse power struggle where your child feels a ton of pressure to get their words out. As a rule of thumb, aim for 3 or 4 statements to every question you ask.

You might be wondering how in the world your child will ever talk if you don’t place that expectation on them. First, you might be surprised at how your child can suddenly jump in when the pressure is off. Second, I’m going to give you a ton of ideas to create more opportunities for your child to communicate with you (see communication temptation and choices). That way you can hit the perfect pressure balance to really encourage your child to find their voice.

The INPUT/OUTPUT Principle

Babies and toddlers need to be exposed to language in order to learn it. More high-quality, language-rich interactions result in more language learning. I call this the “Input-Output Principle”.

The basic idea is that the more your child hears, the more they learn. In order for our children to learn language, they have to hear a lot of it. We call this “providing a language-rich environment”. I suspect that if you’re reading this book, you are a parent who is already doing a great job talking to your child. In this module, I am going to encourage you to talk more with your child. Some studies suggest a toddler should ideally hear 20,000-30,000 words per day. I know, that sounds like a ridiculous amount of words. When you break it down it works out to about 30-40 words every minute your toddler is awake. This is just a ballpark figure and frankly, not super important to adhere to (Put away that tally sheet, I see you).

While you’re at it, put away the guilt, too. If your child likes to play by themselves now and then, or if you like to make dinner without performing a monologue, it’s okay. You don’t have to be on all the time. Here’s the truth: Most kids will develop appropriate language skills when they are in a reasonably stimulating language environment... in other words, they’ll learn to talk as long as someone is talking to them. Are there things you can do to support this development? YES! You know that, and that’s why you’re reading this book.

Okay, so you know your child needs lots of exposure to language in order to learn language. So you’re just going to talk, talk, talk about everything all day long, become a Chatty Cathy, get sick of the sound of your own voice, kill the dead air.

Hold up a second. That’s not exactly the approach we’re going for here. More is not always better. The Input/Output Principle is not as simple as it sounds. When you’re talking to your child, it’s important to hit the pause button on the regular.

The Importance of Pausing

Remember Zach Morris’s pause button? Zach would say, “time out” and everyone around him would freeze while he walked us through his next scheme. Well, when we pause with our toddlers, it should be like a reverse Zach Morris pause button: you pause, and the rest of the world goes on around you. When you pause, take a moment to observe your child. Consider what they are trying to communicate to you and give them space to respond.

Leave space for your child to process, to experiment with sounds, to formulate a response, maybe to blurt something out. Your child needs to know that they play an equally important role in this whole communication thing. Talking isn’t something you do just to fill the silence; it’s a back and forth between two people sharing thoughts and ideas. Pausing gives your child the expectation that they are an important part of the interaction, and it gives them a chance to figure out how to participate in that role. Now, it’s okay if they don’t jump in with a soliloquy. We just want them to understand that their turn is equally important.⁣

Furthermore, wall of words can be overwhelming to a child who doesn’t understand them all yet. We’ll talk more about presenting language in a way that your child can access, which often means simplifying the message and leaving space. So talk talk talk, but don’t forget to pause.

Try this:⁣
▶️Ooo the ball is so bumpy!⁣
(Hand child the ball, then PAUSE⏸)⁣
⁣
▶️Let’s roll the ball. ⁣
(PAUSE⏸, then help the child roll the ball)⁣
⁣
▶️Roll!! Bye bye, ball!⁣
(Wave to the ball, then PAUSE⏸)⁣

Try not to overthink it. Talk to your kids, expose them to new things, include them in the conversation. It’s about having quality interactions every day, not about being perfect every single time you open your mouth.

Ways to Say More

You’ve just read about why it’s important to talk to your kids when they’re learning to talk… but what should you talk about?

The best way to ensure your toddler hears more words is simply to talk more during everyday activities. Experiencing every day activities together might be having lunch at the same table with the TV off and talking about the foods you’re eating. Or it could be sitting on the floor with your child while they play with a train and talking about where the train is going. It might be including your child when you fold laundry and talking about whose shirts are bigger. Talk about whatever they are noticing in the moment, and draw their attention to new things, too. Keep your phrases simple and repetitive. Once you get talking, you’ll realize there is so much to say.

For some parents it can feel awkward to talk to your toddler all day, especially if your toddler isn’t responding yet. If you’re starting to get sick of your own voice, try using these tips to help your toddler hear lots of different words:

Describe what your child is looking at (“The bird is hopping.”)
Give your opinion (“This toast is yummy.”)
Say what you’re doing (“Let’s open the drawer”)
Give the play-by-play of your what your child is doing (“Hat off!”)
Say what your child is thinking (“Oh no! It’s stuck!”)
Sing songs, real or made-up! (“This is the way we wash your toes!”)

Quality over Quantity

Yes, the more words they hear the better. However, don’t feel like you have to be talking every moment of the day. Modeling more language to your toddler doesn’t have to be yet another thing on your list.

Instead, think quality over quantity. Make the time you are already spending with your child really count. Then, don’t worry if you need to let your toddler play independently or (*gasp*) watch a TV show! Focus on saying more during the activities you do together every day, like getting dressed, bathing, or eating meals. By enriching your daily interactions with more language, you’re building the connections and skills that will help your toddler learn to talk.

Appendix or side bar: Tips for reading

The PRIMARY SKILLS Principle

Concentration, Connection, Copying, Comprehension, Communication, Clarity

Talking is so much more than the sounds coming out of your toddler’s mouth.⁣

Think of learning to talk as building a house. If saying words is the roof of the house, it requires the support of a strong foundation. In this case, the foundation is thinking skills (concentration), social skills (connection), listening skills (comprehension), and imitation skills (copying). You can’t put on the roof until the foundation and walls are in place.

Let’s quickly consider each of the 6 C Skills:

Concentration is essential because a child must notice and attend to the environment around them to start associating meaning to sounds.

Connection to others is integral to the purpose of communication. We use words to express ourselves to others. When a child can tune in to the intentions and actions of someone else, they gain valuable information about how to communicate, and more importantly, why to communicate.

Comprehension is understanding words. A child must understand a word before they can use it meaningfully. ⁣

Copying is a way for a child to try out the sounds they hear others using. It’s a way to learn new skills and make them their own.

Communication in this case refers to sending a message to another. This may be via gestures, signs, pictures, or words. Talking falls under the “communication” tier of this framework.

Clarity is how clear the speech sounds come out. Typically we don’t worry too much about how clear speech is until a child is using words regularly.

We’ll dive into each of these skills in depth later in the book. For now, just remember that the foundational skills must be strong in order for talking to be successful. Look at everything a toddler has to figure out before we would even expect them to start communicating with words and phrases. If any skills are missing from lower levels, it’s going to impact their talking. This is the Primary Skills Principle.

The beauty of this principle is that once you learn about the many, many, many skills it takes to become a proficient communicator, so you start to notice all of the little wins. Suddenly you can see the often quiet ways your toddler is progressing. This helps build their confidence and yours. It also ensures that you follow a path that makes sense. You’ll learn how to work on each step in a sequential manner so that your child can truly be successful.

The BACK-UP/BUILD-UP Principle

The Back Up/Build Up Principle emphasizes the importance of meeting your child where they are.

You learned how a child needs a strong foundation in concentration, connection, comprehension, and copying before they can become successful communicators. The Back-Up/Build-Up Principle reminds us to focus on the skills that your child currently needs help with. If you get ahead of yourself, you need to back up. Your child will be most successful when you focus on their strengths and build from there, taking baby steps to the next milestone.

Imagine stepping stones across a river. If you’re on the first stone and try to leap all the way to a stone 6 places ahead, you’ll likely end up soaking wet. But if you take one stone at a time, you’ll get to the other side easily.

The same is true for learning to talk. Communication skills build on one another, and if we try to skip a step often we fall off the path completely. Or, in the analogy presented earlier, the house your building would crumble without the proper foundation.

We need to figure out what a child is already great at and also focus the skills they are just beginning to achieve. Think to yourself, what is my child able to do today, and how can I take that skills and make it slightly more advanced? A child who is just starting to engage in play with others is probably not going to suddenly start naming objects (no matter how many times we ask, "what's this?"). A child who doesn’t understand what many words mean isn’t going to be able to use those words to talk.

Let’s take a look at some examples.

Allie loves to play with her older sisters. She can imitate fun play sounds like “beep beep” and “achoo!”. Her dad wants her to be able to use more words, but notices that when he asks Allie to say a word, she doesn’t even attempt it. Instead, he decides to back up and try to add some more sounds to what she can say. He spends a few days saying “whee!” every time her car goes down the ramp and notices on the fourth day Allie tries to say “whee” herself. He and Allie enjoy bananas for breakfast, so he sits with her and models, “mm mm yummy!” after each bite. Allie quickly learns to say “mm mm!” when something is yummy. Allie’s father has added to her repertoire of sounds without taking too big of a leap. Allie’s speech is progressing toward true words.

Rodney has a growing vocabulary of single words to label objects. His speech pathologist suggests expanding his vocabulary to include different types of words, including action words (“go!”, “eat”) and describing words (“hot”, “big”). She also recommends modeling a whole bunch of 2-word phrases by adding a word to Rodney says. When Rodney says “hat”, his mother says “hat on!”. When Rodney says “book”, she says “read the book!” Rodney’s speech language pathologist and caregivers are helping Rodney build his language skills by meeting him where he is and slowly building from there.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t be helpful to try to get this toddler to imitate whole sentences or even long phrases. In fact, it would likely result in frustration and stalled progress.

Lincoln does a great job using hand motions when his mother sings “The Wheels on the Bus” and “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” with him. His mother decides to expand on that skill by teaching more songs with gestures. She also helps Lincoln use the “open” gesture from “The doors on the bus go open and shut”, as a sign to request that she open something. She models the sign every time they open a door, a bag, or a drawer. Lincoln’s mother is taking an action he can already do and expanding it to new contexts.

It’s so important to meet a child where they are and to keep your expectations attainable. Try to set your toddler up for success. And when all else fails, make it fun! Remember that social engagement is the foundation of all of this. If you’re enjoying your little one and having fun together, you’re already doing so much.

How to Talk to a Toddler

Even once in a while, I come across somebody at a mommy group or in a Facebook post offering this not-so-helpful advice: “talk to your toddler like an adult”. The idea is usually that you’ll expose them to a wider vocabulary and bypass that whole toddler-speak stage. It turns out the last three words of this advice really puts a damper on the whole thing.

First of all, talking to your toddler like an adult is not going to make your toddler talk like an adult. Your two-year-old isn’t going to suddenly say, “Oh, Mommy, I would absolutely adore another slice of toast with jelly, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

Second, that sometimes silly sounding way we talk to toddlers actually helps them learn to talk. It draws their attention to what we’re saying and gives them more information to start connecting sounds to meaning. This is called infant- (or toddler-) directed speech, and the benefits of it have been proven through research over and over.

Toddler-directed speech comes really easily to some of us and can be a really challenge to others. Even those of us who are comfortable with that coochy-coochy-coo type of talking can sometimes forget to use it when older siblings, jobs, household chores are dividing our attention. These four ways to speak to your toddler can make sure that they get the most out of your interactions together.

Be simple

You know how on evenings when you’re really tired, you can just lay on the couch and read your toddler a recipe for chicken cacciatore so they can handle dinner? Yeah, me neither. And it’s not just because I don’t trust my kids within 5 feet of our oven. I mean it is because of that, but it’s not just because of that. It’s also because toddlers can’t understand and remember complicated instructions like that. Because they’re toddlers. (Spouses, however, should be fully capable of this…)

I doubt you’re expecting your toddler to follow a 20-step command like making dinner, but you might still need to bring your language level down a notch.

When you talk to your toddler, keep it simple. Think short phrases, familiar concepts, and keywords. For starters, try to say one thing at a time. For example, instead of “You must be so hungry because you’re eating so much of that crunchy apple!”, try saying “Mmm apple! So crunchy. You must be hungry.”

Here’s another complex sentence: “The dog on the porch is laying in the hot sun.” Consider all of the information you can squeeze into one short breath! We know that there’s a dog. He’s on the porch. He’s laying down. It’s sunny out. It’s hot out. So if we wanted to say one thing at a time to a toddler, we might say, “A dog! He’s on the porch. Doggy’s laying. What a sunny day. It’s hot!” We might choose to say some or all of these phrases and sentences, depending on our child’s attention span and what is significant to them.

Next, make sure that at least some of the words you’re using are familiar to your child. For example, in the above sentence we probably wouldn’t say to a toddler, “Oh look, the Golden Retriever is basking on the veranda!” because it’s unlikely that those are familiar words and concepts to your toddler. Use simple, child-directed vocabulary. You can definitely introduce new words and concepts, but you want to connect them to what your toddler already knows. So if you make eggs for breakfast, your toddler is probably familiar with what eggs and a pan are. But you could teach your toddler about a spatula by talking about the new concept in the context of something they already know.

A good rule of thumb is to model language that is only one step ahead of what your toddler is saying. So if your toddler is saying single words but not yet combining words, use lots of 2 or 3 word phrases when you are talking to them. You could say things like “open the door”, “hat on”, “kiss Daddy”, “cold hands”, and so on. Or if your toddler is not using any words yet, model lots of silly sounds and common words.

Sounds are so much easier for a toddler to imitate than words! Try something fun like pretending to sneeze… “ah ah ah choo!!” or saying “wheeeee” when you slide a car down a ramp. Not everything you say has to be at this level, but make sure you offer plenty of examples that are only a step or two above what you child is already saying.

Using these strategies will help you simplify your language in a way that highlights important information for your child and makes it easier for them to learn new words. Remember, the goal is not for your child to immediately start saying these words themselves. They have to learn language before they can use language.

Be grammatical

Simple sentences, cutesy words, and silly sounds are all good! But make sure that what you say to your toddler follows the structure of the language you are speaking.
⁣
Toddlers have to learn how we put words together to form sentences and communicate ideas. Words are strung together in a really specific way. All those little words and endings are important. ⁣
⁣

Now there’s an important, yet subtle, distinction here: When I talk about grammatical, I’m referring to what sounds good to someone who speaks the language natively. I’m not talking about “proper grammar”. Your high school English teacher might cringe if you end a sentence in a preposition, but that’s not what I’m worried about. (stick that in your pipe, English teacher!)

If you speak a dialect of English (or any other language) that is not considered “standard”, I promise you, from a linguistic perspective, it is grammatical. Speak to your child in whatever language and dialect you feel most comfortable using.

The way you speak most of the time is adequately grammatical. Fragments, contractions, “who” instead of “who”, and “me and Jody” instead of “Jody and I”… all of that is beautiful.

But try to avoid anything that sounds funny to your ears, like “Daddy going”, “Give kitty toy”, or “Me eat cupcake”. Don’t leave out those little words like “is”, “the”, and “to” that help words fit together into meaningful phrases. Yes, they make your utterance longer, but the truth is that toddlers often tune them out anyway. Give your child a grammatical model so that they can learn the complicated system of language.

Now, what if your toddler is the one who doesn’t form a sentence correctly? That’s totally part of the process. When that happens, you can respond to the content of what they said and model it the correct way. For example, if your toddler says, “Daddy eat cookie”, you can say “yes! Daddy is eating the cookie!”. If your toddler says “Mommy goed store”, you say “Yes! Mommy went to the store”.

⁣
So if your two year old says…⁣
⁣
👶🏼: Shoe dirty.⁣
⁣
All you have to do is model back the phrase correctly.⁣ Try to say something like…⁣
⁣
✅ Yeah, the shoes are dirty.⁣
⁣
✅ Look at those dirty shoes!⁣
⁣
✅ Dirty shoesies.⁣
⁣
Instead of…⁣
⁣
❌ Baby have dirty shoes⁣
⁣❌ Shoes dirty⁣

❌ Yes.⁣
⁣
You don’t have to speak like the grammar police are out to get you. Just follow the structure of the way you would normally talk so that your toddler can learn the structure of language in addition to the words. They have to learn how we put words together to form sentences and communicate Ideas. And the way they learn that is by listening to us use structured or grammatical language.

Be repetitive

Toddlers learn words best when they hear the same word over and over. Saying keywords multiple times gives your toddler more chances to make the connection between the word and its meaning. (Bonus points if you change up the tone of voice you use each time you say it!) Now hang on: don’t go around saying the same word over and over like a possessed Furbie. Your child is going to tune that right out (and you’ll probably start wondering whether it’s still a real word. Word…word…word…word…).

Instead, try one of these two strategies.

First, repeat the word in different phrases. For example, if you want to teach your child the word “foot”, you might say something like “where’s the foot? Brr cold foot! The sock goes on your foot!” You can talk about a hot bowl of soup and notice, “Hot! Hot soup. It’s too hot, let’s blow.” Or if you’re pushing trains around a track you can say “go, go, go, go… STOP!”, then start again. If you’re dressing a doll, you might say “shirt ON, pants ON, hat ON!” (Putting the keyword at the end of the phrase is extra credit).

The second way to naturally repeat important words with to turn one repeated phrase into part of the game or expected part of an activity. Think about one or two simple words or phrases you can repeat over and over that are related to what you are doing. So maybe if you’re playing with a ramp and car, you say “up, up, up, up, whee!!!” when you let it go. Or you can link up a phrase to a task you do all the time. So whenever you open a door in your house, you say, “knock, knock, OPEN!” However you do it, repeating an important word gives your child lots of opportunities to link it up with its meaning.

Okay, you’ve already got repeating a keyword over and over down pat. You understand how repeating can help teach your child a new word. Now, as your child’s language skills progress, you’re can start to repeat the idea using different words. That’s right: echo, reiterate, and rehash the same thought with different vocabulary. This is a way to grow your child’s vocabulary even further. Your child can anchor your child’s understanding in a word that they know, as you add in new words for them to connect their meaning. In other words, use different words to say the same thing.

For example, you might talk about how your child’s ice cream is “cold”, then mention how it’s “freezing” and “icy”. Or the bunny in your yard might “hop” and “leap” across the grass. These synonyms can be introduced in a natural way. Shouting “hop, leap, juuuump!!!” might not have the desired effect. But noticing, “The bunny hops! It’s leaping,” could be pretty effective.

Be animated

Bueller… Bueller… we’ve all had that teacher, pastor, or professor whose voice was an instant ticket to dreamland. (Like, did I really deserve detention for falling asleep when Mr. Price’s voice was like a lullaby?) Think about who you would rather listen to: someone who said every word the same and didn’t vary the way they spoke, or a very dynamic speaker who was exaggerated and animated.

When we’re talking to toddlers, it’s our job to be interesting. It’s our job to draw in their attention and make them want to engage with us. Be fun and exciting! Be interested and interesting. Use your excitement to increase your child’s concentration to the language around them. Remember, you have to Concentrate on words before you can Comprehend them. (And you have to Comprehend them before you can use them to Communicate.)

Yes, I know you were up four times last night and that if you drink any more coffee your hands are going to start shaking. But once in a while, try to crank up your excitement notch in the name of teaching your toddler to talk. When you’re excited something, your child is much more likely to be into it, too. If you say “here’s a car” or if you say “oo wow! A car!!” it can make a huge a difference. This way of speaking is important because it helps our little ones latch on to what we are saying.

This exaggerated intonation (making a bigger rise and fall to your voice) can also help emphasize keywords. When you use a sing-songy intonation, your pitch usually rises and you might slow down when you say the important part of a sentence.

For some parents, this way of speaking to toddlers comes very naturally. For others, it feels awkward and has to be done more consciously. That’s okay! Try your best to be a little more animated when you talk to your little one. Up the excitement in your voice and in your face and see how they respond! I had one parent tell me that she was in the kitchen by herself experimenting with a more animated voice, and her daughter came running to see what all the excitement was about!

What if baby talk just isn’t your thing? Don’t sweat it. Just focus on being responsive to your child. Respond to what they’re doing, saying, and feeling. You just want your little one to know that communication is fun, relevant and worth noticing. and what you say is worth paying attention to.

Try this: Repeat a short phrase related to what your child is doing with a little melody. Use the same rise and fall of your voice each time. Pair it with a fun action and see what happens! For example, say “up, up, up… down!” as your child climbs up and slides down the slide. Or say “hat on… hat off!” while playing dress up. Do they pay attention? Smile? Try to hum along?

Have FUN!

This is literally the most important section of this book. When I say “Have fun,” I don’t mean it in the lighthearted way a t-ball coach tells his team of Kindergarteners to “have fun out there”. I mean, yeah, it’s be great if you enjoy this process and have fun teaching your toddler to talk, but this advice really isn’t about you. (Sorry but you had kids, so now nothing is about you anymore. Just kidding!)

But really, having fun is a serious matter here. Kids learn best when they are interested, involved, and engaged. Play is the best way for toddlers to learn. Some might even argue it’s the only way. Every strategy you’ll learn about in this book should be used during play.

There are two important things you should know about play:

Playtime can be anytime

Emptying the dishwasher? Play! Getting dressed? Play! Changing your toddler’s diaper? Play! Any activity can be playtime if your toddler is interacting with people or things in their environment in a low-pressure way. Everyone moment isn’t gong to be playful, but your mission is to infuse a little extra fun into your day.

There’s no wrong way to play

Your child might not naturally play the way that you do. That’s okay! Your job is not to restrict the way they play. Instead, be curious about what they like to do. Show them all different ways they can play. Join in and connect.

The next section of this book covers six areas of speech and language development. In each chapter, you’ll get specific strategies to try with your child. Even though I’ve taken care to give recommendations that encourage gentle, child-led learning, there may be strategies that don’t seem well-suited for your unique toddler. Remember, you are the expert on your child. Not that you need permission from a book, but here it is: feel free to skip anything that feels like it may cause strain for your child. Learning to communicate should be joyful and empowering! Above all, enjoy each other and your time together. Always fall back on fun

Side bar: 10 ideas to add fun to your day

Sing the Hokey Pokey while you get your child dressed.
Say “PU!” and wave your hand by your nose when your child has a stinky diaper.
Splash in the tub with your child.
Pretend you can’t find your toddler after you pick them up.
Walk to the car like elephants.
Collect leaves on your walk.
Let your child help you put the groceries away.
Say “tada!” after you get your child’s shoes on.
Play basketball and throw toys into a bin as you clean up.
Look for Elmo in your child’s mouth when you brush their teeth.

The 6 C’s: Concentration, Connection, Copying, Comprehension, Communication, Clarity

Teaching your child to talk is so much more than getting them to open their mouth and make sounds. Unless you’re raising a little marionette doll, it’s going to take a lot more than that!

The sounds we make are just a tiny piece of what it takes to talk. It takes more than sounds to use language in a meaningful way.

When we teach a toddler to talk, we are teaching them so much more. They are learning to…

... Pay attention to the people and things around them

… Be interested in interacting with others

… Realize that their words can change someone else’s thoughts and actions (whoa.)

… Practice saying the sounds and words they hear others making

… Understanding what other people are saying

… Put words together in a specific order that follows rules

… Take turns in a conversation

… Speak up when they have something to say

…and so many other lessons, including moving their mouth to produce the correct sounds.

But, wow. That is way more than just getting your child to produce a word. There are so many skills that a child masters to become a skilled communicator.

In this section, we’ll take a deep dive into six essential skills for talking:

Concentration

Connection

Copying

Comprehension

Communication

Clarity

Earlier you learned how these six skills fit together and the importance of each one. In this section, you’ll learn even more about what each skill entails and why it’s so important. Then I’ll walk you through specific strategies to improve each area, so that you can confidently move your child’s skills forward.

Concentration

Imagine you’re in the grocery store ready to buy all of the ingredients for a fancy dinner. You have your list in hand and you’re ready to go. But here’s the catch: you’re not allowed to stop. You have to move from one shelf to the next so quickly that it’s hard to even pick items up.

Or maybe you get stuck in one aisle and it’s hard to move to the next.

Or you’re just not sure where to start so you keep ending up back in the same section.

By the end of the shopping trip, will you have gotten everything you need?

It doesn’t matter how much food is in the grocery store if you can’t access what you need.

These are challenges a child with concentration difficulties faces when they’re trying to learn language. Even if a child is in an environment with lots of wonderful language, concentration difficulties can make it hard for a child to access and therefore learn language.

That’s why it’s so important to help support your child’s concentration skills.

Concentration (or attention) is how easily your child notices and then focuses on something.

As a rule of thumb, a young child can pay attention to something they really like to do for 2-3 minutes per year of age. So a 2 year old can concentrate on something for 4-6 minutes. A 3 year old can concentrate on something for 6-9 minutes. A 4 year old can concentrate on something for 8-12 minutes. And a 5 year old can concentrate on something for 10-15 minutes.

(chart)

Concentration is one of many cognitive or thinking skills that can affect a child’s ability to understand and use language. Another related skill is shifting attention from one thing to another. When a child has difficulty shifting attention, they might have excellent sustained attention skills and be able to concentrate on one thing for a long time. But when they need to notice something outside of their current focus, they might miss important information. Similarly, a child may need help getting started with an activity or even with their talking. In this section, you’ll learn four strategies that both improve your child’s concentration skills and support your child’s learning.

Strategy 1: Single Goal Activities

A Single Goal Activity is a toy or activity that has one, obvious final outcome.

So you know what it will look like when you finish.

Think of a shape sorter. The obvious outcome is the shapes go through the holes and into the container.

Another example is a Mr. Potato Head- the goal is to complete a face

An inset puzzle (the kind with pieces that each fit into their own spot) is another Single Goal Activity. The expected outcome is usually to put all of the pieces in their place.

A Single Goal Activity helps a child with difficulty concentrating by clearly defining the task. When your child understands what the beginning, middle, and end of an activity looks like, they can stick with it longer.

Be sure to show your child how to do an activity before you expect to do it themselves.

Strategy 2: Take one more turn

Your child may lose interest or attention before an activity is over. That’s okay! You don’t have to force your child to sit until they’re all done. That has power struggle written all over it. Instead, try to expand their attention to the activity by encouraging them to take one more turn.

For example, if you’re reading a book with your child and they begin to lose interest, encourage them to sit with you for just one more page before you move on to something else.

If you’re doing a puzzle together, have them put one more piece into place before walking away.

By encouraging one more turn of an activity, you can start to slowly expand your child’s concentration skills.

Strategy 3: Consider sensory input

Sometimes a child has a hard time concentrating because something just doesn’t feel right in their bodies. Many children require more or less sensory input in order to be able to feel comfortable, interact, and learn. If we can anticipate and meet those sensory needs, we can help our toddlers be less likely to get frustrated and more available for communication.

First, what is sensory input? Sensory input is anything that registers in our brains. It could be how something feels, tastes, smells, or sounds. It can be feeling where our bodies are in space. Some children are very sensitive to certain sensory inputs while others require extra sensory input. I highly recommend consulting with a skills occupational therapist if you have any concerns about your child’s sensory system.

Whether or not your child has sensory differences, many children benefit from big movements and heavy work activities to help get their sillies out before they’re ready to calm down and learn. Here are 10 ideas for sensory-heavy activities that help some children feel better in their bodies. You might want to have your child do an activity like this before they are expected to be calm or to communicate.

Pushing a heavy basket

Running games

Sensory bins (rice, dried pasta, pompoms, etc)

Playing with ice

Swinging or sliding

Jumping on a trampoline

Eating crunchy foods

Doing an obstacle course

Being wrapped or swung in a blanket

Digging in a sandbox

On the other hand, consider sensory overload. Sometimes too much sensory input is uncomfortable. A child may be highly sensitive to the information coming into their little systems and become overwhelmed quickly. For an oversensitive child, a tag in a shirt might or a busy store feel very uncomfortable or even painful. Consider how the environment is affecting your child’s ability to feel regulated and to learn. A skilled occupational therapist can help you figure out your child’s specific sensory profile.

Strategy 4: Work language into preferred and everyday tasks (work with, not against attention)

Trying to get a toddler to do a task while they’re focused on something else can feel like paddling against the current (or let’s be honest, banging your head against a wall repeatedly). When a child has difficulty concentrating, forcing them to sit calmly and do what you want is probably not going to end well for either of you. Sure, it’s a good idea to offer structured tasks and encourage directed attention, but at the end of the day, your child is going to learn more if you work with their attention, not against it. So when your child is in their own little world, you better have your bags packed and be on the first flight there with them. This might look like talking about what your child is doing during play, joining your child in however they play with a toy (even if it’s the “wrong” way), and using the strategies you learn in this book while your child is engrossed in whatever it is your child already loves to do.

Even if your child is choosing the activity, you can improve their attention to you by being at your child’s eye level, being animated (above), and showing genuine interest in the things they are already doing and noticing.

By the way, if your child is having some difficulty in the area of concentration, an occupational therapist is an awesome person to connect with. An assessment by an OT can do amazing things for your child’s communication, behavior, and well-being.

Connection

Connection refers to how you and your toddler share experiences. It includes noticing what others are doing and being able to guess what they’re thinking or feeling.

When your child points to the bubbles on the top shelf and looks at you, they are connecting. When your child notices the silly way you crunch your crack and tries it for themselves, they are connecting. When your child rolls a ball to you, they are connecting.

Connection is not a measure of how much your child loves you. It’s not how happy your child is or how successful they’ll be in life.

But it’s an important prerequisite skills to talking because it helps establish a reason behind communication: to change the thoughts and actions of another person or to participate in a shared moment.

Joint attention is a key concept in building connection. Joint attention is being aware of what someone else is paying attention to. When I ask for something from “that drawer”, my husband looks for which one I’m pointing to. When I look at a box of cookies, my son follow’s my gaze and asks for one of his own. They are following my non-verbal cues to bring their attention to the thing that I am noticing.

Stanley Milgram’s “Street Corner Study” in the 1960’s illustrates the power of joint attention. They placed people on a street corner in New York City and had them gaze up at the empty sky. Famously, the more people they staged looking up at the sky, the more passerbyers looked up, too. (When 15 people were gazing upward, 80% of passerbyers glanced at the sky to see what all the fuss was about!) This study was about social proof, but the results only occurred thanks to the strong joint attention skills of the duped sidewalk walkers.

I’m not saying you should play a game of “made ya look!” with your toddler, but teaching them to notice what others are noticing is good for their social skills. The strategies you’ll learn in this section help build joint attention. Let’s dive into three specific aspects of connection and how to build your toddler’s skills in each area:

Interest
Interaction
Initiation

Interest:

Interest is your child’s genuine desire to experience something. In this section, you’ll learn ways to increase your child’s interest in others and in what others are doing, which can be an asset to communication. But at the end of the day, what your child is interested in is your child’s business. Interests can be shaped and encouraged (okay, after watching 5 million hours of Mets games with my husband, I find the game moderately interesting), but often someone’s interests are inherent and deeply related to who they are. Trying to change your child’s interests would be counterproductive. Instead, we want to encourage taking an interest in others in a supportive way.

Strategy One: Be animated

You already learned how cranking up your level of interest and excitement can draw in your child’s attention and make them more interested in interacting with you. Sing, use funny voices, be delighted by the simplest things. “Wow! The car went so fast!!” “These Goldfish are SO crunchy! Crunch!” Go back and read the “Be Animated” section and become the most interesting thing in the room.

Strategy Two: Follow their lead

Your child already has interests. Maybe they can play on the train table for hours. Maybe your dog provides non-step entertainment. Maybe spinning in circles is the best thing ever. Whatever it is, you can encourage your child’s interest in people by diving into whatever it is that already interests them.

First, take the time to notice what your child enjoys most. Knocking down towers? Raiding the pantry? Taking off their socks? There are no wrong answers here. From there, try one of these simple ways to engage with your child within their strong interest:

-Sit quietly and watch them play without any distractions:

TV off, phone in the other room, sitting at the same level, just observing. Find a moment to be present for your child. Show a gentle interest in their play. Watch in awe as their little mind works. You might learn something new about them.

-Give your child simple words to narrate what they are doing:

"Vrrmmm! Go truck!"⁣
"Round and round! On the floor."⁣
"Bang bang bang!"⁣

Narrate without any expectation for your child to copy you. Just model the words for the things that are interesting to them. Build their vocabulary with the words that are most relevant to their thoughts.

-Copy your child

Copying a child during play means doing whatever they are doing. If they are pushing a truck, you push a truck. If they are rolling on the floor, you roll on the floor. If they are banging 2 puzzle pieces together, you bang 2 puzzle pieces together. ⁣If your child is using a toy or object, try to get your hands on something similar to mirror their actions. After a while, do something different and see if your child copies you.

Follow your child's lead to invite a response, build trust, and make connection feel safe and even fun for your child.

Interaction:

Interaction goes further than just interest. Interaction involves wanting to participate in an activity or experience with another person. Interacting does not have to be verbal. Without a word, you interact with the driver who stops for you when you stand by a crosswalk. You interact with neighbor you wave to on your morning walk. My son interacted with the nurse he kicked at the doctor’s office. Interactions don’t require verbal communication, but successful verbal communication requires interaction. The strategies in this section will help build your child’s interaction skills to build their foundation for communication.

Strategy One: Non-verbal turn-taking games

Back-and-forth interactions are an important part of communication. A conversation is like a game of ping-pong: You say something. Your child answers. They look to you for a response. You respond and wait for their reaction.

Encouraging natural back-and-forth experiences without words can build some of the social foundation for communication. We can do that with simple turn-taking play. With toddlers, turn-taking is not about sitting patiently while someone else plays with the toys you want (not fun) or forcing your child to share. (definitely not fun)

Instead, try engaging in fun, natural, back-and-forth interactions during the activities you do every day. Toddlers can start to learn this rhythm and how to include others in a meaningful way even before they start using words. To improve your child’s interaction skills, try some of these simple turn-taking games together.

Inherent turn-taking games: These are activities that require more than one participant. The game just doesn’t work as well with only one person. Your child may benefit from watching you and other person model these activities first, so they understand their role. A spouse, friend, or older sibling can make a great accomplice for teaching your toddler one of these games. Some inherent turn taking activities include:

-Rolling a ball back and forth

-Throwing a balloon, frisbee, or ball

-Rocking back and forth while you sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat (holding hands)

-Chase or Tag

-Hand clapping games (like “Pat-a-Cake”) or high-fives

Many other games and activities can be played as turn taking games. Start playing one of these activities and encourage your child to take a turn. In the next strategy you’ll learn how to gently take a turn in an activity your child is already engrossed in.

Stacking blocks

Rolling a ball into bowling pins

Putting shapes into a shape sorter

Playing and stopping music during freeze dance

Pour water from a pitcher at bath time

Shaking a shaky egg instrument

Trying on a hat

Turning pages in a book

Tasting a drink

Encourage your child to take turns by saying “my turn” and “your turn”. Use gestures like pointing to yourself and your child to help them understand the expectation. What if your child takes two turns in a row? What if they won’t want to pass their toy back and forth? No big deal, this is playtime! Enjoyable interactions is the priority.

Strategy two: Make yourself part of their play

Sometimes children strongly prefer to play solo. Independent play can be a strength. If your child is happy to do their own thing, you don’t have to force them to play with you. However, when you can find a way to join them in their interest, you can give them more opportunities for interaction and therefore new learning experiences. Try making yourself a part of their play to encourage more interaction with your child, while meeting them where they are and respecting their comfort level with others

First, try taking a short turn in whatever your child is already doing. So if your child is enjoying pushing a train down a track, take one turn pushing the train down the track yourself, then give it right back to your child. If your child is pretending to talk on the phone, take the phone and say hello before handing it back to your child. The goal is to involve yourself, but not to make your child frustrated. Each time, your child may be more willing to let you take a turn.

Second, try giving yourself a job in your child’s play. If your child is coloring, be the crayon holder. If your child is doing a puzzle, be the puzzle piece dispenser. Don’t just sit there, make yourself useful! Eventually, your child may look to you, point, or say a word to ask for the item you’re holding. Involve yourself in your child’s play but don’t impede your child’s play. Even if your child isn’t playing the way that you would, take a moment to step into their world. Help your child enjoy interacting by keeping it on their terms.

Initiation: Communication temptations, verbal routines, expectant pause

Initiation means getting started. If you’ve ever committed to a regular exercise routine, you know all about it. You know how getting started can be the hardest part sometimes. You know what you’re supposed to do, and you know it’ll be okay once you get going. But uggghhh it’s a serious struggle to push play on an exercise video or to get out the door to go to the gym. That first step is the hardest.

Initiation is the little push inside you that gets you out of bed when you hear your toddler calling for you at 3:30 in the morning. It takes you from knowing what you have to do to actually doing it. Sometimes we all struggle with initiation- like when you have to peel your exhausted behind from the couch to make dinner when you’d really be cool with watching another episode of Paw Patrol with your kids. Getting started can be hard.

Some kids have trouble with initiation for communicating and connecting. They may know how to respond, but their brains are having a hard time getting going. When initiation is a challenge, try these strategies to encourage your child.

Strategy One: Communication Temptations

We’re about to put a little pressure on the Low-Pressure Principle. Communication temptations are when you do something that tempts your toddler to comment. They give your child a really good reason to speak up (or point, or sign, or look at you like you’re a crazy person… however they want to communicate to you in the moment).

You might do something very silly like putting a toy on your head and pretending you can’t find it. Or holding their favorite book upside down when you snuggle in to read. You might even make something your child wants a slightly more difficulty to access to encourage them to ask for help. For example, you could put one of your child’s toys in clear, hard-to-open container, or you could hand your child their usual milk cup with nothing in it. Communication temptations should be playful. We can encourage communication and provide more opportunities, but we should never demand a specific response.

A communication temptation is not telling your child they have to say “cookie” before they get a cookie, especially if they’ve never said “cookie” before. While this strategy may be well-intentioned, asking your child to do something they can’t do yet is cruel. Even asking them to perform just to get what they want is a little dehumanizing. Imagine if you came to my house, and I insisted that you change the oil in my car before I let you have a drink. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t come back. When it comes to communication temptations, you can entice your child to communicate, but stay away from ultimatums.

When you give a communication temptation, your child may notice the problem right away, or they may need some help noticing and communicating that something isn’t quite right. Try these steps to give your child a little hint and nudge them to clue you in.

Pause: Give your child a minute to notice what’s going on and to react to it. Observe what they do. You may be amazed by their language or problem solving skills.

Say “Hmmm”: Tap your lip, squint your eyes, and look toward the problem. The goal here is to alert your child that something is amiss.

Gasp and point: Turn up that emotion and excitement! Point directly at the issue to further cue your child into the problem. You might also say “uh-oh!” or “oops!”

Model: Say what the issue is, like “The book is upside-down!” You might even speak from your child’s perspective. You could say something like, “Open the box, please!”

Retell: Laugh and repeat what the problem was. “Silly, Mommy!”

Here are a few more communication temptations to try:

Put your shoe on your toddler’s foot when it’s time to go outside
Set the table with paintbrushes instead of forks
Put your child on a swing, but don’t push them right away
Close the bubbles before handing them to your child
Give your child the markers with the caps on

If any of these make your child upset, move on to something else. Our goals are playful interactions and opportunities to communicate, not frustration.

Strategy Two: Expectant Pause (verbal routines, familiar books, songs)

Remember “The Importance of Pausing”? Leaving space for your child to participate in the back and forth of communication is essential. The expectant pause is a way to highlight that space and entice your toddler to jump in with a response. It’s like a fancy pause with neon lights flashing all around it. The idea is to make the response feel so automatic and natural that your toddler can hardly help filling it in.

There are a lot of ways to dress up a pause and make it irresistible to fill. If you’ve ever watched Password on the Game Show Network or if you were super cool like me and had Taboo parties in high school (the game… easy!), you’re very familiar with the voice I’m talking about. It’s the voice you use when you want your teammate to fill in the blank so you can win the point. It’s also the voice you use when you want your significant other to remember the one errand you asked them to do today: “I asked you to go to the…….” It’s the voice you use to lead them as far as you can so that they prove that they should have remembered because you definitely did tell them six times. Sometimes we use this voice to jog our own memory, too: “My new neighbors who we met at that one barbeque last summer has two kids named Joey and……... Rebecca! Yes, that’s it, Rebecca!”

This leading voice is a great cue for our brains to gather up everything we know and instinctively spit it out. The same goes for helping a toddler initiate a response. A child who needs help with initiation may benefit from an expectant pause to get things going. As you approach the pause, this is what you’re going to do:

Slow down
Make the pitch of your voice go up high
Smile
Raise your eyebrows
Lean in

And then there’s the pause itself. Three to five seconds is usually a good place to start, but feel out what works best for your child. Some children may need significantly more time. You want to give them plenty of time to process, but not enough time to lose interest and walk away.

So when should you use an expectant pause? First, it’s important that the word you are leaving off for your child to fill in is a word that they know how to say and have said before. Meet them where they are and keep the pressure low. If you’re staring at them to say a word they can’t say, the result will be frustration and low-confidence for you both. It doesn’t matter how high you raise those eyebrows- your child isn’t going to magically say “weasel” if they don’t know that word.

Second, the word you’re going for has to be a part of a somewhat automatic or expected phrase.

You can find these over-learned phrases in familiar…

(nice chart)

Songs⁣
Old MacDonald had a farm, E I E I…..(O)

5 little monkeys jumping on the bed. One fell off and bumped his….(head)

Ashes, ashes, we all… fall….(down)

Nursery Rhymes⁣

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great…(fall)

This little piggy went whee whee whee all the way…(home)

And put it in the oven for baby and…(me)

Repetitive Books⁣

Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? I see a red bird looking at…(me)

Goodnight, cow jumping over the…(moon)

Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house…(in)

Phrases associated with daily routines

Rub a dub…(dub)

Nighty night, sleep…(tight)

Home, sweet….(home)

Anything you say to your child often!⁣

That was a piece of… (cake)

Everyone buckled? We’re ready to… (roll)

Ready… set…(go)

Remember, it’s about inviting your child to participate… not forcing them to say a word. If they don’t fill in the blank, say it and move on. If they respond in a non-verbal way, great!

Have fun with it, and as always, meet your child where they are. If initiation is a challenge for your child communication temptations and expectant pauses can be a nice ramp to help them get started more easily.

Copying

Copying is one of the ways that we learn. Many children are little mirrors.

Your child sees you brush your hair -> They try to brush their own hair.

Your child watches you packing the diaper bag -> They try to put their toy in it, too.

Your child hears what you yell when you stub your toe -> … good luck with that one!

In a typical brain, “mirror neurons” are special brain cells that help us imagine would it would be like to do an action we see someone else complete. They are part of the reason toddlers learn to copy.

Copying is not the only way a child can learn. But it’s one avenue that can help a child try out and eventually master the skills needed for communication.

(Visual chart)

When it comes to copying, toddlers need to achieve one step of the ladder before they can move on to the next. At first, babies usually start out by copying actions. These can be actions with objects- like eating with a spoon or putting on a hat- or it can be whole body actions such as dancing or kicking. Next they learn to copy gestures or hand motions. Then a toddler starts vocal imitation, copying simple noises or play sounds like a yawn or “choo coo”.

Once a child can imitate some play sounds, we can encourage imitation of exclamations (Wow! Yay!) and animal sounds, which tend to be easier than true words. Finally we expect a child to be able to imitate practiced and familiar words in context, and eventually imitate new words and phrases.

Davey is 19 months old. He has about 5 spoken words and uses 3 signs regularly. He loves to play and seems to be understanding simple instructions easily. Davey’s dad has been working hard to get him using more words, but it seems like the more he asked Davey to say, the quieter Davey becomes. Davey’s speech therapist encouraged Davey’s dad to encourage Davey to copy simple play sounds instead of whole words. At meals, Davey’s dad started making an exaggerated “ah” sound after taking a sip of water. Davey quickly picked up on this game and started imitated “ah” after taking a sip himself. Davey’s dad came up with a few sounds to use during other activities “choo choo” and “brrr”. Davey started copying many of his dad’s sounds, becoming more vocal and having more fun during their interactions.

This imitation hierarchy is another important place to apply principle four: meet your child where they are. If your child is just starting to copy some gestures, they are not developmentally ready to attempt to copy a word, and asking them to do so would probably make your child less likely to attempt a response. On the other hand, if you know your child can say imitate some gestures, you can build on that skill by teaching them gestures to a new song, showing them new gestures, or even introducing a sign.

What if your child won’t copy you at all? Back it up! Your child may need a stronger foundation in the areas of concentration and connection first.

Steps to improving imitation:

Pick an action/sound/word that is at the correct level for your child.
Try one of these techniques:

Mirror: Copy what your toddler is doing. This sets the stage for joint attention and encouraging your toddler to copy you.
Model: Do the action/sound/word that you've selected in a fun and animated way.
Pass: If there is an object, try passing it to your toddler after you use it. For example, if you're encouraging your toddler to copy making a noise through a paper towel tube, pass the tube to your toddler after you make the noise.
Pause: Wait and look expectantly at your toddler to communicate that you want them to give it a try.

Real-life examples

Maya is banging her cup on the table.

Mirror: Her mom takes another plastic cup and joins in, banging it on the table.

Model: Maya’s mom says, “boom, boom, boom!” each time the cup hits the table.

Pass: Maya’s mom gives her cup to Maya (even though she already has her own).

Pause: Maya’s mom looks at her with a big smile on her face to give Maya the chance to copy her.

Alex is pushing a car down the track.

Mirror: When it gets to the bottom, his dad sends it down the track again.

Model: His dad says, “wheee!” as the far zooms down the track. He takes turns with Alex and says “wheee!” for his turn and for Alex’s turn.

Pass: Alex and his dad have already been taking turns and passing the car back and forth.

Pause: Now it’s Alex’s dad’s turn again. Instead of sending the car right down the track, he hold it at the top and looks at his son with a wide-eyed, excited expression. He silently forms the “w” sound with his mouth and waits a few seconds to give Alex a chance to say “wheee!”.

Franklin is playing with a hat by putting it on his head and taking it off.

Mirror: Franklin’s mom expands on Franklin’s play by putting the hat on her head.

Model: Franklin enjoys sharing the game with his mom, so his mom expands even further by teaching him “The Sneeze Game”. She puts the hat on her head, then says, “aah… ahhh.. choo!” and “sneezes” the hat off her head.

Pass: She passes him the hat and says “your turn!”

Pause: Franklin’s mom waits to give Franklin a chance to play with the hat how he chooses.

Comprehension

Comprehension is understanding the words someone else says. This is sometimes called “receptive language’ Comprehension is crucial because in most cases* a child needs to know what a word means in order to say it and use it meaningfully. That’s why it’s so important to build comprehension skills to help your toddler talk. Improving comprehension means your child will be following more instructions, more aware of the world around them, and yes, using more words.

Weaknesses in comprehension are very common and often go unlooked. Parents will often assume their child understands everything, but when we take a closer look, we notice their understanding only goes so far.

Toddlers are smart. They pick up on the subconscious gestures you use. They keep track of their daily routine. They know you so well, they can almost read your mind. Sometimes those amazing skills charade as understanding every word we say. If you have any doubts about your child’s comprehension skills, it’s worth a second look. For many children, working on understanding words is a great place to start.

Consider these comprehension skills:

Pointing to body parts
Looking for a person when named
Going to get an object that you ask for
Pointing to an object
Following 1-step commands (“Open the door.”)
Following 2-step commands (“Sit down and put on your shoes”
Following complex commands (“After you wipe the floor, hang the towel up next to the bibs.”)
Understanding a “yes” or “no” question (“Do you have an orange?”)
Understanding a a question starting with “what”, “who”, or “where” (easier), and “when”, “why”, and “how” (harder)

*Sometimes toddlers use lots of words but don’t know what they mean. Often these words are from a phrase your child has heard many times. Even if your child doesn’t know what the individual words mean, these rote phrases serve a purpose. It may take some deciphering to figure out what your child is trying to communicate, but it’s important to recognize that they are using these chunks of speech in a meaningful way.

Many of the strategies in the “How to Talk to a Toddler” section of this book will improve your child’s comprehension skills because they help your toddler connect meaning to words. You already know general strategies such as repeating key words and talking to your child at eye level. In this section, you’ll learn even more specific strategies to teach your toddler to understand what you’re saying.

Strategy One: Use gestures to help your child understand what you are saying.

Gestures can be pointing at the object of interest, pantomiming an action, or moving your hands to emphasize a particular word.

When you’re talking to your child or you ask them to follow a command, consider what you can do with your hands to help support your child as they try to understand you.

“Give me your cup” -🡪 make a cup shape with one hand and put out the other to accept the cup

-“Look, a bird” 🡪 point to the bird with your finger, then use two fingers to make a beak shape

-“Put on your hat” 🡪 pat your head

When you use gestures, your child is hearing the words and seeing what you mean. In this way, gestures help a child connect meaning to words.

Strategy Two: Hold items to your face when you label them

Help your child link meaning to the sounds you’re making by physically presenting them in closer proximity. When you put the object next to your mouth as you say the word, your child hears the word, sees how your mouth makes the sounds, and gets a very clear idea of what you are referring to.

Strategy Three: Ask your child to do what they’re about to do anyway

When you ask your child to follow a command, but your child doesn’t understand what you’re asking, it can be frustrating for everybody. Instead, try asking your child to do what they are doing or are about to do anyway.

Your child is walking toward the bookshelf and you say, “Get a book, please”

You offer your child a cracker and say, “Bite the cracker.”

Your child is pulling on their sock and you say, “Take off your sock.”

Let your child hear the words that describe their action. Give them a chance to get familiar with how commands sound. Show them how you react when they do what you asked. Set them up for success.

Comprehension Activities

Try these simple activity ideas to encourage your child to get used to listening to you and to learn the meaning of more words.

Keep your child with you and talk about daily activities.
Take pictures of special moments/events and talk about them together later
Play listening games like Stop and Go and Simon Says.
Ask your child to give you certain items during clean-up time.
Read together every day. Point to the pictures and label them as you go.

Communication

Communication is sending a message to another person. Actually, communication entails all aspects of sending and receiving a message. But for the purposes of this framework, we’ll focus on the sending side of communication.

We send communication to each other all day long with words, with our gestures, with the way we stand, the clothes we wear, the actions we take. We communicate with the tone of our voices and other sounds we make. Your child may communicate by pointing, taking your hand, crying, laughing, singing, or leaving the room.

Communication functions

Why do we communicate, anyway? Whether it’s verbal, with our hands, or even our behavior, there are a lot of reasons to send a message to another person.

Think about all of these reasons someone might want to communicate:

Get someone’s attention
Ask for help
Request something
Protest or refuse something
Label objects
Make a comment
Participate in social routines or games
Ask questions
Express feelings
Tell stories⁣

Sometimes a child uses lots of words, but has difficulty with functional communication. That is, they aren’t able to communicate some of the above ideas. Consider these communication functions and whether your child has a way to communicate each one.

Each of these reasons to communicate can be implemented in spoken or unspoken ways.

Imagine everything you might say to a roommate or partner if you noticed the garbage was getting smelly

“Hey”(Get someone’s attention)
“Did you notice the smell?” ( Ask a question)
“It’s the garbage can.” (Label)
“That is awful!” (Comment)
“Yuck!” (Express emotions)
“Can you take it out?” (Request)
“Thank you!” (Participate in social routine)

Now imagine the same situation, but you’re throwing a party so you don’t want to draw attention to your stinky trash receptacle.

Throat clear (Get someone’s attention)
Wrinkles nose and raises eyebrows (Ask a question)
Points (Label)
Makes a worried face (Comment)
Sticks out tongue (Express emotion)
Shrugs and tilts head (Request)
Puts hands together (Participates in social routine)

Same messages, different way to communicate.

We want to make sure kids have some way to execute each of the above communication functions, even if they’re not using words consistently yet. Gestures and signs are often a great place to start.

A quick note about gestures, signs, pictures, and any other visual form of communication:

It’s important to acknowledge that words are not the only way to communicate. Even if your ultimate goal is for your child to talk , remember that communication is a human right. Everyone deserves a way to communicate. We want a toddler to have a way to communicate as soon as possible. This builds language skills and reduces frustration, so your child can learn to their highest ability.

Some parents fear that using supports like signs or pictures will discourage their toddler from talking. Nope, uh-uh, not true! Let's dispel that myth right now. There is solid research that shows non-verbal means of communication like using sign language or pictures to communicate doesn’t hold back verbal communication. It actually acts as stepping stone to talking. When you support your toddler’s communication, you’re moving them in the right direction.

Here are a few benefits of providing non-verbal communication options to a child with limited verbal output:

Practice with primary skills

A way to communicate means your child gets to practice sending and receiving messages with another person. They get to build up all those primary skills like concentration, connection, and comprehension.

Learn their own power

Communication is powerful. When a child has a way to communicate their wants and needs, they can see just how amazing it is to send a message that changes someone else’s actions. “Wait, if I point to the picture of a cookie, I get a cookie??” Learning that communication is powerful builds intrinsic motivation to talk.

Grow language skills

Non-verbal means of communication ensure that a child continues to interact with the people around them, which is essential for building vocabulary and growing overall language and cognitive skills.

Gestures and Signs

Most people communicate a lot of information with our hands. We point to bring something to a friend’s attention. We ask our child to give us something by putting out a hand. We even use movements of our hands to punctuate sentences and emphasize keywords. Then there are gestures with other parts of our bodies like nodding our heads or folding our arms.

We know that young toddlers who use gestures are more likely to speak more by the time they head to preschool. By 16 months of age, we expect a toddler to be using 16 gestures already! Some common early gestures for toddlers are giving or taking an object, shaking their head no, holding up their arms to be picked up, holding up an object to show it, waving hi and bye, pointing, blowing kisses, clapping, and nodding. The First Words Project offers excellent resources about teaching early gestures. (www.firstwordsproject.com).

Signs are different from gestures because, while gestures are naturalistic movements that communicate a general message, signs are often non-intuitive movements that mean specific words. A child might use a gesture naturally. On the other hand, a child would not begin using a sign without learning it from another person. When you consider how many words your child is using, you can count a sign as a word.

Try these strategies to build your child’s ability to communicate without spoken words.

Sing songs with hand motions, like The Wheels on the Bus or The Itsy Bitsy Spider.
Model exaggerated gestures, like throwing your hands up when you say, “hooray!”
Pick a sign or gesture that is relevant to your child. Throughout your daily interactions, use the sign while you say the corresponding word.
Respond immediately and positively when your child uses a sign or gesture.

Other ways to support communication, with or without words

You’re already a supportive parent. You kiss boo-boos and cheer when they get to the top of the ladder at the playground. You already rock that kind of supportive.

So how can you support your child’s communication?

Toddlers use supports when they're learning all kinds of new things.

Holding onto furniture when they're learning to walk

A lid or a straw when they're learning to drink from a cup

Training wheels when they're ready to start riding a bike

You get the idea. Supports are a natural and important part of learning any new skill.

And yet we often forget to support our toddler’s talking. I'm going to give you two powerful techniques you can use to support your toddler’s communication so that they can tell you what they want more easily.

Picture communication boards

Just a few pictures on a piece of paper can give your toddler another way to be heard. It doesn’t have to be fancy. Try this:

Select a routine your toddler does every day

Something like dressing, playing, or eating

Choose 2-6 items related to the routine

Pick things that you child has strong opinions about to start

Take a picture of each item and place into a simple grid

Use a program like Word, Powerpoint, or Canva, or print, cut, and glue the old-fashioned way!

Print out the grid and put it in a plastic document protector

Voila! You have your picture communication board!

Keep it with you each time you do that routine

Keep it somewhere both you and your child can get to it

Model how to use the board by touching the picture each time you talk about the items
Encourage your toddler to choose between two or more of the pictures

If that’s a challenge, go back to modeling or make the board simpler with fewer pictures

Choices

Giving choices gives your child a supported way to communicate to you. It also creates more opportunities to help your child learn words, give responses, and understand the power of communication. ⁣

That’s a pretty good bang for your buck.

Have you ever drawn a blank when someone asked you to pick a restaurant for dinner? What’s the first thing you do when you can’t decide?

You say, “what do you feel like eating?” to the person who asked.

Your brain wants you to narrow down the options so that you can make a decision without getting overwhelmed.

The same is true to toddlers who are faced with a decision. They need some help making their options feel more manageable.

That’s where choices come in.

Instead of saying “Where do you want to play?”

Say “Do you want to play in the living room or the backyard?”

Instead of “What do you want to wear?”

Say “Elmo shirt or robot shirt?”

Choices take some pressure off of your toddler when they try to communicate, while also empowering them to have a voice. They help toddlers feel like they’re the ones in charge, but in a safe way. Your toddler can respond to a choice using eye contact, pointing, signs, or sounds

Try this:

During snack time, hold up two items your toddler might want.

I will use _________ and _________

Get your toddler’s attention and present the choice simply. For example: “Apple or cookie?”

The choice I give will be: _____________________

Pause

(This is an important step! Give your child time to process and respond)

Respond positively to any attempts to communicate, even if it’s not how you want them to respond. If they point or grab for the item, it’s okay. Model the word for the item, give it to them, and move on.

What if you know your child is capable of a better response than they’re giving you? Let's say they point and you know they can say the word.

It’s okay to hold out for a better response. But after three opportunities or so, give them the item and move on. Otherwise you’re setting yourself up for a power struggle and nobody wants that!

Try giving choices with:

🚜Toys

Tractor or choo choo train?)

👕 Clothing

(Mickey shirt or football shirt?)

📚 Books

(Ten Apples or Hop on Pop?)

👶 Routines

(Comb or toothbrush?)

Communicating with Words

By now you understand that words are not the be all and end all of communication, but talking is a pretty awesome form of communication. Those first words can be pretty exciting. When your child starts realizing that every object, action, and feeling has a word, it can feel like their world opens up.

Keeping a list of the words your child says can be really helpful for tracking your child’s success to k. That way you can monitor their progress and keep an eye on any concerns. ⁣Let’s start by getting clear on what counts as a word.

A true word sounds (or looks) the same every time your child produces it, and it refers to the same concept every time.

You can count the following as words:

Exclamations
Animal sounds
Mispronounced words
Signs
Names
Made-up words
Partial words
Words that also mean something else

Is your child saying “nana” for banana? Count it!⁣
Do they call the dog “Bo Bo”? Put in on the list!⁣
Will they sign “milk” when they’re thirsty? Signs are words too!⁣
Even if they call everything with wheels a “ca”, that counts!⁣

Once you start counting words correctly, you might find that your child is further ahead than you thought.

Remember from the Primary Skills Principle that talking does not come first. In fact, we’re getting to the top of the pyramid right now. But if your child is starting to use words, many of the strategies you’ve already learned about will help them grow their vocabulary and encourage them to try out new words.

-Give choices

-Create communication temptations

-Model single words

-Restate what your child said a new way

-Repeat keywords in an activity

-Use verbal routines

-Pair simple words to simple actions

-Leave off a word to a familiar song or phrase

-Encourage your child to look at you while you pronounce a word

-Pause to encourage your child to take a turn

(include page numbers)

Communicating with phrases and beyond

Language is pretty freaking amazing. You take all of these individual words that mean something and string them together to tell a whole complicated idea. Language is so much more than single words.

One of the most complicated parts of learning to talk is figuring out how to connect those words together. The rules for combining words is called grammar.

Ultimately, we want children to be able to combine words in an original and flexible way. Original and flexible means that a child can put words together to create a message, even if they’ve never heard that combination before.

Side bar: Sometimes a child uses phrases they’ve heard somewhere else, like in a movie or from their parents. These “scripts” can be a helpful bridge to creating phrases. Always look for the hidden meaning in scripted speech, and acknowledge what you think your child is trying to tell you. A child who is using a lot of scripts or chunks of language should be evaluated by a speech-language pathologist.

Typically, a child starts putting two words together into two-word phrases once they can say about 50 to 100 single words. Once your child has a sizeable single-word vocabulary, try these strategies to take their communication skills to the next level.

Strategy one: Use a lot of short phrases.

Crank out those two- or three-word phrases all day long. It shouldn’t be the only way you talk to your little one, but you should give them lots of examples of simply combining words. Try to use words that your child already knows. Let’s say you’re eating pancakes for breakfast. You might say:

“yummy pancakes”

“wipe your fingers”

“my plate”

“napkin please”

“cut the pancake”

Strategy two: Use one-word phrases

One word phrases? Sounds like an oxymoron, right? A one-word phrase is a phrase that technically counts as one word. That’s because the words have to go together to form the meaning. For example, take the phrase “thank you”. “Thank you” means one thing- an offer of gratitude. We don’t really put these words together in a flexible way. I wouldn’t say, “thank Mom” if my mom gave me a present. “Thank you” is a chunk that is learned all by itself. Here are some other examples of one-word phrases:

“I got it!”

“Who’s there?”

“Give me”

“High five”

Try modeling some of these phrases in a fun way. Sometimes they are easier to imitate than original two-word phrases. They also help toddlers get used to putting more syllables together and using longer utterances.

Strategy three: Use a variety of words

You can’t build a sentence with only nouns. “Mommy book bed door” is not exactly grammatical. Also it doesn’t mean anything. Use the acronym LOAD to help you remember to model all different types of words:

L: Location words (under, next to, behind)

O: Objects (fork, Dolly, crib)

A: Actions: (eat, sit, sleep, jump)

D: Descriptions (cold, loud, fast, happy)

These aren’t the only types of words, but remembering to using a more varied LOAD of words will point you in the right direction. When your child can say more types of words, they’ll have an easier time fitting the words together into phrases.

Strategy four: Add to what your child says

When your child says a word, say it back to them in a short phrase.

Dog -> Dog runs

More -> More apples

Stop -> Stop singing

Car -> Fast car

When you expand on what your child says by adding a word, you teach them how words are connected while simultaneously showing them that you care about what they’re saying. ”. This strategies teaches your child new words and longer phrases related to what they are already paying attention to, without getting too complex.

Strategy five: Give a two-word choice

You already know that giving choices is a great way to teach new words and encourage your child to use their voice. We can modify this strategy slightly to take it to the next level. When your toddler is ready to start using phrases, try giving two-word choices. Instead of asking your child if they want the “sweater” or the “shirt”, try asking them if they want the “fuzzy sweater” or the “striped shirt”. At snack time, see if your child wants to sit at the “big table” or the “little table”. This strategy gives your child a direct model of a two-word phrase, meaning all they have to do to use the phrase correctly is repeat it after you.

Longer Phrases and Beyond

Okay, let’s say your toddler is rocking the two- or three-word phrases. Now what?

As your child develops a larger vocabulary and starts noticing the many ways to string words together, they’ll start using longer phrases and sentences. Here are some strategies to help that process along:

Strategy one: Carrier phrases

A carrier phrase is a sentence starter that can be completed by one additional word. Show your child how to fit words together in a meaningful way by repeating a sentence over and over, only changing one key word. For example, as you go for a walk, point out everything you hear with the sentence “I hear _____.” “I hear birds. I hear an airplane. I hear sirens.” Encourage your child to make their own sentence using the same starting phrase.

Strategy two: Model one step ahead

When you talk to your child, makes sure you use plenty of phrases that are just a smidge beyond their expressive level. That means that if they can put together up to three words in a phrase, you be sure to model lots of four and five word phrases. If your child is just starting to link phrases with connecting words like “and” and “but”, be sure to use lots of those compound sentences with them. Show your little one what the next level looks like.

Strategy three: Continue to grow vocab and concepts (books)

Introduce new concepts and words every day. Expose your child to new environments, people, routines, play, and books. Talk about these new experiences to give them new words and ideas. Go to the library to refresh your book selection and expand your child’s world. Play in new ways. Be curious together.

Clearer speech

Let’s make an important distinction: Speech is not the same thing as language.

Language is the meanings of words and how to put them together. It includes the many ways to communicate and express oneself.

Speech is the way the sounds come out. It’s the physical act of producing the meaningful noises that come out of our mouths when we talk.

A toddler might have great language skills but still need help with their speech. They might have very clear speech for the words they say, but be behind in their language abilities.

Usually clear speech is the icing on the cake. Following the Primary Skills Principle, we focus on language first. A child eventually learns to talk, but their r’s sound like w’s and their s sounds turn to t’s. Their language is great- using tons of words, understanding everything, making sentences and asking questions- but their speech is really hard to understand.

For other children, difficulty with speech- trouble making the sounds correctly- is a real barrier to even getting any functional language skills. The reason a child is a late-talker is because they are having difficulty with speech.

In either case, it is not unusual for a child who is a late-talker to go on to need some help with pronunciation.

There are many reasons a child may have difficulty with their pronunciation. In this chapter, we’ll take a high-level look at some of the causes of speech impairments to look out for.

Deafness/Hearing loss

There are many reasons a child may not be hearing everything, ranging from congenital disorders to ear infections. A toddler may not be hearing certain sounds, or sounds may be coming through distorted. Always get a hearing test when you have any concerns about your child speech or language skills. Many children with hearing loss can follow commands and understand questions, so you can’t rule this out on your own.

Phonological processing disorder

All children follow certain expected patterns with their speech sounds when they learn to talk. For example, it’s very common for a child to drop off a quiet part of a word or to leave off one of the sounds when there are two consonants together, like saying “poon” for “spoon”. However, a child may have a phonological processing disorder when they use these patterns past the expected age or when they use patterns that are unexpected.

For example, if a child five year old child says /t/ for /k/ and /d/ and /g/, they may have a phonological processing disorder because that pattern of moving sounds to the front of the mouth (called “fronting”) is usually gone by four years of age.

Children using many phonological processes can be difficult to understand. Sounds may be accurate in one word and produced incorrectly in another word.

Articulation disorders

An articulation disorder is difficulty with one or many specific speech sounds. It’s often related to incorrectly learned movements of the tongue, lips, or jaw. Sucking habits such as thumb sucking and extended pacifier use can lead to an articulation disorder. If a child has an articulation disorder, the affected sound or sounds are produced incorrectly all the time.

Muscular issues (dysarthria)

Weak or tight muscles of the tongue, lips, jaw, or breathing muscles can affect how a child produces speech. Muscular issues are usually caused by a neurological condition or event, such as cerebral palsy or a stroke.

Motor planning disorders (Childhood apraxia of speech)

When we talk, we move our mouths in such quick and specific without even thinking about it. Motor planning is our ability to automatically know what to do to produce a sound or a string of sounds. A child with a motor planning disorder has difficulty moving their tongue, lips, and jaw in order to precisely and consistently produce speech sounds in words and sentences. Words may come out differently each time. More complex strings of sounds tend to be more challenging.

Anatomical or structural issues

Sometimes the mouth physical can’t guide the airstream to create sounds correctly due to the actual structures (the tongue, lips, jaw, palate, etc.). Tethered Oral Tissues includes tongue ties and lip ties. There is growing evidence that these structural issues have the potential to impact speech production. Cleft palate is another structural issue in the mouth than can impact how speech sounds are produced.

There are very specific treatment approaches to remedy each of these problems. A speech-language pathologist is an essential partner in improving a child’s speech. We have a very specific set of knowledge and skills to a. figure out what the underlying problem is and b. solve it. Always seek evaluation and treatment by a certified speech-language pathologist if you’re concerned about your child’s speech. However, these general strategies will help you support your child’s speech skills at home from an early age.

10 Ways to work on clearer speech (without flashcards or drills!)

Hide objects that start with a sound you want your child to improve in a shoebox full of dried pasta or kinetic sand. (always supervise!)
Make binoculars out of toilet paper rolls and search for items that start with your target sound.
Look in a mirror together while you say the sound and words that start with the sound.
Encourage your child to slow down when they talk. Give them plenty of time to finish their thoughts.
Point to your mouth while you say a challenging sound.
When you child makes an error with a sound, say the word again correctly in a short phrase.
Put yourself at your child’s eye level while you model the target sound.
Gently touch your child’s arm or lips to remind them how to make a sound. For example, slide your finger down your child’s cheek to remind them to say /s/ instead of /t/.
Work the sound you want your child to improve into pretend play. If your child is having trouble with the /k/ sound, pretend to cut cookies and cake to feed to Cookie Monster.
Always respond to the meaning of what your child says first, even if it’s not pronounced perfectly.

Which sounds and words are “easier” to say?

Easier	Harder
Earlier developing sounds: /p/, /b/, /m/, /d/, /t/, /w/, and /h/	Later developing sounds: /th/, /r/, /l/, /ch/, /j/, /s/, /v/, /sh/, /z/
Shorter words	Longer words
Words with one consonant at a time	Words with consonant blends, like /bl/, /st/, /fr/, and others
Words without final consonants	Words with final consonants
Words with repeated sounds	Words with changing sounds

Communication breakdown repair strategies

What do you do when you just can’t figure out what your child is trying to tell you? This happens to all of us at some point, but how we handle these situations can have a real impact on our children’s communication confidence. Try one or many of these strategies the next time you need to get the conversation unstuck.

Empathize: Acknowledge frustration and admit your own difficulty

“Sorry, I didn’t understand all of tha.t Let’s try again.”

Validate: Repeat back the parts you do understand so far

“You’re telling me about going to the park with Grandma.”

Observe: Pay attention to the environment and non-verbal cues

“I notice you’re pointing to the diaper bag.”

“Show Me”: Ask your toddler to point, gesture, or act out what they are trying to say.

“Can you show me what you did?”

Elaborate: Ask your child to tell you more.

“Can you tell me more about that?”

Circumvent: Ask your toddler to tell you another way.

“Tell me with a different word.”

Visuals: Use pictures, gestures, signs, or objects.

“Here’s a picture of the playground.”

Choices: Hold up two objects or give your toddler a verbal choice.

“Was it part of playing or eating?”

Yes/No: Ask questions that can be answered with a “yes” or a “no” to narrow down the topic.

“Did you eat a fruit?”

Move on: Not every message will get through. It’s okay to let it go and leave the door open to come back to the conversation later.

“Hmm, I’m not sure what you mean. Why don’t you tell me again after dinner.”

Conclusion

Appendix B: `

Milestone guide and handouts

Appendix C: When and how to have your child evaluated by a speech therapist

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