- 07 Sep, 2024
- 0 Comments
- 3 Mins Read
How to communicate with young children.
The discussion around children’s poor oral language continues, which is good, but there has to be changes made to make sure the trajectory is on the rise rather than down.
The following points of advice are what I use when coaching children, parents or educators to help children’s speech and emotional capabilities.
- Opportunity – time; devices down, cuddles, singing, babbling, bath time, bed time, in the car.
- Eye contact – they copy what we do with our mouths, so try to be clear and correct.
- Listening – we listen in 2 steps. So make sure you give them enough time to process what you have said before moving onto the next thing.
- Understanding; we build this up, provide experiences. We might not get verbal responses but we watch their body language and facial expressions closely.
- Verbal replies – aim for 5 turns. Talk as you do things – “let’s cut up the sandwiches into triangles”, “Do you want to wear your red or green t shirt today?” “What did you do at playtime? If a child only hears instructions for the first 5 years of their life they won’t have the vocab to hold a conversation by the time they are 14. Remember to pause to allow for answers before the next comment or question.
- Giving them experiences to build their vocab necessary to converse and learn to read and write. For example, going to the park and telling your child what you see, hear, smell, touch. Dinner around the dining table!! 700 words a minute are lost if you watch TV while you eat.
- Accurate speech sounds: Exercises can help to prepare them as tongue placement is crucial, find these in my book and online courses.
- We have to give them the vocab of feelings and character strengths to self – regulate, handle their emotions and build resilience.
FAQs –
Q – What can you do about children who won’t speak? You ask them a question and they simply don’t respond.
A – I’m not a Speech Language Therapist so I don’t deal with physiological or psychological reasons that could be in behind why a child just doesn’t speak. But from my point of view, I’d say make sure you’ve given them enough time to respond, maybe count to 10 in your head. Model the answer while you look into their face, and speak to them everyday to let them know you want to talk to them. But also look into the why of this with an Speech Language Therapist.
Q – What do you say when a parent is surprised to learn they need to put their phone down or turn off the TV and talk to their children instead, because some parents are genuinely surprised to hear this.
A – Tell them the why. Children learn and grow through contact with other humans. Our eyes, hands, face, our whole body! If we don’t give them our time, they may grow up dis-jointed from people, lacking in social and emotional skills. They also won’t build up enough words to hold a conversation, learn to read or write as easily as they could. A good idea would be to list these reasons, hand it to them and read over it with them so they can ask any questions.
Things are challenging out there in the education world, and becoming more so. We really, really need parents and caregivers to understand the importance of their role in bringing up their children and the danger of devices for overall well-being.
I have mentioned earlier, and it appears in our media quite frequently – our literacy rates in New Zealand are rapidly falling and a phonics programme being touted as the golden ticket that will solve all literacy problems, is not even vaguely close to being the answer. More on that another day.
Here’s to a lovely week, Miriam.
