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Curious Minds and Razor Sights, our toddlers are learning at every step they venture. A quiet house will lull them to sleep; a dark atmosphere will make no crackles. So let us be proactive, trigger their talking buds and make room for a happening life. So what if they communicate in cries and laughter, keep yourself going and talk to them in little clear sentences with actions, with plays, with songs and with our neighborhood. Of course, children have their own pace to grab words but that shouldn’t stop us and our efforts to make them express language. Here in this post we present to you the 10 tried and tested effective ways to encourage talking in toddlers .
10 Simple Ways to Encourage Talking in Toddlers:
Maintain Eye Contact:
The young clan needs a lot of attention, love and care. Make it a point to talk to your baby as much as you can. Have a good eye contact while you talk and be clear in your speech.
Example: When you ask your child ‘what is your name?’ ask her looking at her eyes, maintaining eye contact in a clear tone.
Benefit: This helps to build up confidence in your toddler to speak up.
Pay Attention:
As you start talking, your baby also responds. Pay attention when your baby calls you, talks to you and after your baby completes, repeat the sentence. Ask a question with the same sentence and emphasize on the main characters.
Example: When my Jianna says “I want Keem” then I question her with “You want Cream?” Keep your expressions clear too.
Benefit: This helps the child to be assured that her or his questions are well received by you.
Read Aloud:
Read aloud from picture story books and make your baby acquainted to the images in the book.
Example: Choose a picture book and point to CAT. Read aloud C-A-T and then join to say C-A-T CAT pointing to the image of the cat.
Benefit: The image of the cat along with the reading of the letters combined to form the word CAT helps the child to visualize the cat. So next time when he sees a cat in real, he would point out to say CAT.
Learning On the Go:
Go out for evening walks in the garden, in your locality. Show her the things around – like Car, Scooter, animals and familiarize her with their names and then ask her questions accordingly.
Example: Show her a car and tell it’s a car. The next day again show her another thing around her and get her familiarized with its name.
Benefit: Helps a toddler to get familiarized with the things around him like cars, birds, animals etc. easily.
Role of Neighborhood, Day Cares or Playschools:
Go and talk to the neighborhood kids along with your baby, invite them home and let them play with your little one. Even Day Cares, Play Schools do a lot of shaping up and building up in the toddler’s development.
Example: Toddlers pick up words easily from other kids. Hence it’s good to let him mingle with neighborhood kids.
Benefit: The pronunciation and the lip movements are easily learnt from other kids; hence grasping power increases.
Sing and Play along with Videos:
YouTube is flooded with educational videos, nursery rhymes etc. Show her and do the actions along.
Example: Songs like – Ringa Ringa Roses, I hear Thunder, Twinkle-Twinkle, Row-Row-Row your boat, Old McDonald had a farm, Chubby Cheeks, 5 Little Monkeys, Johnny-Johnny, etc are evergreen and ever loved songs by kids. Play them again and again, do the actions, do the dance.
Benefit: This will encourage them to sing and play on their own too memorizing the song and dance.
Show and Tell:
When you introduce new words in your dialogues, show her the new things too.
Example: If you say “Plate” then show the plate and say what you intend to do.
Benefit: Demos, actions make a greater impact and she will remember them well.
Focus on ONE Language:
Don’t mix up several languages in your conversation. Stick to one or at the most two – maybe your mother tongue and a common language so that she is able to communicate to outsiders also.
Example: If your mother tongue is Hindi, try to converse to your child in Hindi all the time. No mixing of languages.
Benefit: Toddlers when they start grasping their mother tongue, develops stronger language skills in multiple languages.
Letting Free to Explore:
Expose her to new things and give her the freedom to explore those things.
Example: Let her explore everything and ask you questions like ‘What is this?’.
Benefit: This will get her to thinking and subsequently ask questions pertaining to the same.
10. Be Motivated:
Lastly, never get de-motivated if your child doesn’t talk like other kids. Remember God has made every child special. Each child has his own pace of development.
Hope this article on encouraging toddlers to talk helps you in a very good way . Let me know which way you use/used to make your toddler speak up? I am all ears now!
