3 Super Tips for Building Your Child’s Language Skills at Home

by Kelci Santiago

Sometimes mom and dad, you just need some quick tips on how to build your child’s language in the home environment. Well, here you go!Tip #1 Use self pronouns (me, my, mine).How to:While you play an activity or game with your child, model and support turn-taking. Ask your child, “Whose turn is it?,” and encourage him to respond using the following self-pronouns: me, mine, or my turn. Depending on the age of your child you may need to model the phrase for him by providing a visual using hand gestures to emphasize whose turn it is. Do this by placing your hand over your child’s hand and then placing your child’s hand on his chest while verbalizing the correct self pronoun.Why is this important?Understanding self-pronouns allows your child to comprehend who the speaker is referring to in conversation. Tip #2 Talk through your daily activities with your child.How to:Just talk through the action you are doing out loud. For example, as your child is washing his hands, imitate him and say, “I wash my hands” or “I wash hands” while encouraging your child to do the same. Remember make it seem natural!Why is this important?As your child develops, his sentence length increases making it important to model the correct parts of speech and apply rules to put words together in the appropriate structure. Imitation + Reinforcement! Tip #3 Use nouns with an article!How to:Add ‘a’ or ‘the’ in front of the object’s name! Seem too easy? It is! Take a walk around the house, yard, or beach and point out different objects you see together. Model and encourage the use of article before the object.Why is this important?You are expanding on your child’s sentence structure by imitating and reinforcing the appropriate language structure!