On June 23, 2014, I shared the blog Playing with words 365, which is run by Katie who is a licensed pediatric speech language pathologist (SLP). Make sure you check out what the blog is all about and why Katie does what she does. I really love her philosophy on how kids learn through play and having fun. This is a quality I use in my personal nannying skills with my nanny families.
Today I am sharing another one of Katie’s great articles, How to Help Your Child Talk: Imitation & Turn Taking in this article she shares various ways to assist in developing speech in your children you work with.
Welcome to my How to Help Your Child Talk series. These posts are intended to give you simple tips to help you work with your child so YOU can be your child’s best “speech therapist.” You may want to try out a new tip/strategy for a week or so and then when you feel like you’ve “got it” and it comes more naturally, move on to a new tip and incorporate that into your day for another week or two. For a list of all my tips, go HERE.
Decrease the Pressure to Speak
One thing we know from research is decreasing the pressure to speak can actually encourage speech production. Too much pressure to speak can result in a child shutting down and not speaking at all. When working with your young child, you want to avoid the following:
- Phrases like “Billy, say _______!” or “Emma, can you say ______?”
- The “testing” type questions like “What is this? “ or “What color is that?”