5 Ways to Encourage Early Communication
with your baby or toddler
Laura Burnham, Licensed Speech Therapist based in New York City
Most babies will say their first meaningful word around 12-months old. However, as a Speech Pathologist, I want you to know this doesn’t mean we have to wait 12 months to start working on speech and language skills. There are several underlying skills a baby needs to develop first to help meaningful words emerge. We as the adult can support and encourage these skills starting at a very young age. Here are my top 5 ways I encourage early communication development as a licensed Speech-Language Pathologist (also called Speech Therapist) who works with babies and toddlers:
1. Simple social-interaction games
The ability to stay and share attention with an adult is a foundational skill for speech and language development. When a baby or toddler shares their attention with an adult through play or interactions (also called joint attention), it creates the perfect opportunity to learn new words. Joint attention might look like: the baby or toddler looking between an object and an adult, handing over an object or toy of interest to the adult, gesturing towards the adult to look at an object. I like to think of joint attention as an invisible triangle of attention between the adult, the baby, and the object. With joint attention, there is constant interaction between each point of the triangle. Joint attention stretches the baby’s focus and attention onto the interaction and a powerful way to support and encourage joint attention is through simple social interaction games.
Simple social-interaction games such as peek-a-boo (I especially like peek-a-boo with a blanket), using puppets, handing or rolling toys and objects back and forth, or fun movement games such as airplane or bouncing a ball back and forth, are great ways to stretch the baby’s shared attention and keep joint attention going. These simple acts of turn taking and reciprocal engagement build the foundational skills for capturing and keeping the baby’s attention and engagement with you. This will support communication skills and eventually the development of new words.
2. Encourage Babble and Sound Play
Babbling is an incredibly powerful skill to support speech development (for more on babbling, see my blog post here). Babbling gives your baby practice with the motor movements and muscle coordination needed for speaking. We can encourage babbling and sound play by using simple play sounds that emphasizes vowels. Vowels are easier to produce for babies and toddlers and we want to try to stretch out vowel sounds during play as much as possible. My personal favorite early play sounds: wee, uh-oh, boo, boom, whosh.
3. Pair gestures with simple words
Babies and toddlers use gestures to communicate before they can use words to communicate. Examples of early gestures include: reaching with their arms to be picked up, pointing, waving hello or good-bye, blowing kisses to familiar people. Gestures are similar to words because they carry meaning and are used to communicate. We always want to respond to a baby’s gesture to show them that their communication attempts are powerful and they can use communication to get an adult’s attention, change something in their environment, or show or share an object of interest with an adult. We can pair simple words with gestures to help give babies words for their communication attempts (e.g, “up!” when the baby reaches their arms up).
4. Narrate and label throughout the day
We want to help babies make the connection between words and their meaning not only when they are gesturing but also throughout their routines and throughout their day. A baby needs to have strong understanding of what words mean (also called receptive language development) before they can use words to express themselves.
The best way to build up receptive language development is by first focusing on a small set of words that the baby hears routinely throughout their day. This might look like saying, “wash” or “water” every day during bath time or whenever they see an adult washing their hands. As their understanding grows, we can expand receptive language development to more and more words.
5. Work on pre-language skills and bump up the baby’s communication skills from there
Did you know that there are 11 pre-language skills that a child needs to develop before meaningful words really start to emerge? (If this is something you are interested in learning more about, please let me know in the comments below!).
One of the essential pre-language skills is imitation or copying simple actions and sounds from the adult. We can strengthen imitation skills by playing simple reciprocal imitation games such as banging on blocks or copying simple movements to a song. Imitating your baby’s actions will also help them understand the concept of turn-taking. Once the baby has a steady back-and-forth interaction, we can add simple, sounds and words (such as “boom boom” while banging on blocks) to bump up their communication to words and sounds.
If you found this helpful or insightful, please share with a parent friend.
Laura is a licensed Speech-Language Pathologist in New York City. She sees clients in-person in North Brooklyn and Manhattan and also offers virtual parent consultations.
Please note, this is never meant to be taken as medical advice and does not replace speech therapy. If you are having concerns about your child’s speech and language development, you should consult with your pediatrician and a licensed pediatric Speech-Language Pathologist.
