Parents and carers are the best people to support a child’s early communication skills as you know your child best and spend the most time with your child.
The four minute video below will explain why it is important to talk to your child every day. The video gives 5 top tips for talking:
- Talk to me
- Play with me
- Praise my talking
- Look at books with me
- Sing with me
Watch this training presentation created by our NHS colleagues at Hounslow and Richmond NHS Trust.
This training video is 33 minutes long and can be found in the link below.
Early language and communication strategies
The document below contains a summary sheet of the 15 strategies discussed in the training video. You could print this out and choose a strategy each day for yourself or other family members to focus on.
The pack below gives practical activity ideas that you can use at home to support your child. Each activity has a ‘what you need’ and ‘what to do’ section, as well as giving ideas for what language you can model during the activity.
Ideas you can use at home to support your childThe video below, created by Great Western Hospitals NHS Trust, talks about some early language and communication strategies and gives a real life example of a parent playing with their child.
Once you have watched one of the training videos above, you may like to try some activities with your child.
You can use the following advice sheets as a quick reminder of the strategies discussed in the videos above.
You can also watch the following video from colleagues at Herefordshire and Worcestershire NHS Trust which gives more information about how to follow a child’s lead.
Attention and listening
You may have concerns about your child’s attention and their ability to stay joined in and focused in an activity with you. Attention and listening is one of the core skills needed to help a child understand and learn language.
Some children need support to develop these skills and the following activities in the programme below are designed to promote this.
Some other top tips for supporting your child’s attention:
- Give your child your full attention. Try to turn off the TV and put your phone away. By spending quality time playing together with limited distractions, your child will try to give you their full attention too.
- Try not to interrupt your child when they are playing or talking, let them naturally reach the end to whatever they are doing – remember, follow their lead. This can be hard for us as adults as we sometimes want to suggest different ways of playing and introduce new ideas.
- Try to finish an activity before your child has had enough. You know your child best, if you sense they’re starting to get distracted and their attention is waning, end an activity when you can. Sometimes you can plan for this and start a puzzle half complete, or you can explain to your child ‘one more piece/turn and then we are finished’.
- Support your child to engage in focussed activities at a time that is best for them. This will be different for every child, for example, you child might attend best after nap time or snack time.
Play
Children learn best through play. You might be ready to try putting some of those strategies into practice. Here’s a few ideas for you to try at home.
Using snack time
Ready steady go activities
Stacking cups
Ball play
Mr Potato Head
Body parts
Teaching babies about faces – Tiny Happy PeopleWe have also developed some play plans which give you specific guidance and information to support you to play with your child.
