In this video, Sophie Deaner, a speech language pathologist, talks about ways you can help grow your child’s communication skills at home.

3 Ways to Grow Your Child’s Communication Skills

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Hello, I am Sophie, one of the speech language pathologists at Therapy and Counseling Services. In this video, I am going to talk about a couple of strategies to increase opportunities for your child to grow their communication skills. The strategies that I want to talk about are choice making, environmental setup, and modeling.

You’ll be able to see these strategies demonstrated throughout the video. Children have a growing sense of self and desire to do things on their own. It is important that we as caregivers and communication partners give them these opportunities while also maintaining the motivation for them to communicate with us.

This can look like laying out their clothes and having them pick out a color shirt that they want to wear. Choice making can also be done during typical routines like snack time and playtime. You can do this by presenting two choices, [00:01:00] for example, like a bag of gummies or a pack of animal crackers, and have them select what they want.

This is also a great opportunity to practice refusals and clarifying preferences. Knowledgeable communication partners can anticipate what their child may not want, but can also help them refuse by presenting a non-preferred snack or toy with their preferred one. Are we gonna put in Bluey or bingo?

Another strategy to build communication opportunities and motivation is to set up your child’s common areas in a way that makes it necessary to communicate with you.

This can be done by placing preferred toys up and out of their reach, or using clear containers or bags to store items. Another fun way to set up the environment is to place something unexpected in their area or switch up a routine. For example, you can place something silly like a toy dinosaur in their sock drawer.

How silly would that be? Think of all of the things that you could talk about if something like that happened. One of my go-to environmental setups is handing a kiddo an unopened pack of cookies or a juice box. This gives practice not only for requesting, but also for [00:03:00] modeling vocabulary, like help open, rip and twist.

It’s important to give your child a little bit of wait time or an expectant look to put the communication ball in their court, so to speak.

I believe one of the most important strategies we can incorporate as communication partners is modeling all of the [00:04:00] different ways that we communicate. We use communication to comment, describe protest, refuse among so many other things.

Children are sponges. They are gathering information about their world through all of their senses. It’s important too, that we make their communication development just as sensory. We can model important communication skills by thinking out loud. It is good to incorporate descriptive and observational phrases in your think alouds while engaging with your child.

For example, if you see your child trying to reach for their drinking cup. You could use a think aloud like, oh, you are reaching for your cup. I think you are thirsty. Modeling is also very useful when your child is dysregulated or frustrated. It is important to note that frustration is a side effect of the learning process.

A little frustration is a [00:05:00] natural way for caregivers to support their kiddos to communicate what they need. If your child is experiencing a lot of frustration. That may be your child’s cue that they need a little more support or are not ready to work on a particular skill at that given time. Feel free to modify the communication demand by encouraging your child to use what works for them at this given time in their communication development, such as gestures or pointing to a picture.

Again, modeling comes in handy to help take the communication pressure off of a kiddo who is still growing in their speech and language skills.

Hopefully these strategies and clips will be helpful to you and you feel motivated to try them out with your kiddo. If you would like more strategies, feel free to talk with your child’s speech therapist.

Thanks for watching and please stay tuned for more videos from Therapy and Counseling [00:07:00] Services.

Need more support? Contact us to schedule a speech therapy evaluation.