Like many mommies you must be enjoying the phase when your little one has reached to the next milestone. It’s an amazing feeling to watch your baby learning something new every day. This is the time when there is a huge development in terms of speech and language. Now toddlers start speaking the proper single words and also start putting them together. Parents play a very crucial role in a child’s speech development. In some cases this may be a challenging phase not even for your little one but for you also. Many mommies are worried that her toddler isn’t speaking at all or still babbles. You should always keep this in mind that many toddlers take longer than other toddlers of his/her age reaching this milestone.
Here are few tips to help your toddler reaching the speaking milestone.
- Keep Talking and Talking: This is a very simple mantra but you have to follow it religiously. Just keep talking to your toddler as much as you can. Children learn language from everyday routine for example ‘this is the time to have food, let’s go to park we will play there, its sleeping time’ etc. Talk about everything around them like ‘this is a book and we are going to read a story’ if you are feeding him use simple phrases like ‘tasty food, baby likes it, I am hungry’.
- Pronounce the words clearly and correctly: It is important to make sure that your toddler knows how to say the word that you teach him. For this you must always pronounce the word loudly and clearly. You should avoid baby talk as it will lead the baby to learn wrong pronunciation. Keep repeating the words or phrases and be slow in speaking so that your toddler will hear the words properly and try to speak. Every time you introduce a new word try to use it in a different ways. The more your toddler hear the same word or phrase, he will learn it better and will use it more.
- Start Reading to your toddler: One of the most effective ways of improving vocabulary and increasing interest in speaking is reading out loud to your toddler. Buy books which are not too heavy and have big colourful pictures in them. It will help your toddler stay interested in reading ritual every day. Schedule a time each day for reading like bedtime, playtime and stick to that routine. If your toddler likes a book keep on repeating the same book to increase the interest of your toddler. Here is a list of best books you can start with.
- Limit the screen time: It is recommended that children below 2 year of age must not have screen time at all and children above 2 year should not have it more than 2 hours a day. TV shows, mobiles, computers don’t interact or respond to kids thus doesn’t help in any way in helping them to learn language. So limiting screen time will help them learning language in better way.
- Make the instructions clear: Make sure that your specific words are giving specific instruction to your toddler. For example if you are using the word ‘no’ to your toddler make sure that you maintain the same tone every time. So that your toddler would know that ‘no’ means that he is not suppose to do a certain activity or behave in a certain manner. If you use the word ‘no’ in a playful manner you may end up confusing your toddler. When the instructions are clear your toddler will also learn how to use that particular word in the sentences.
Following these tips can help your toddler in reaching this important milestone of his life. You just need to keep praising you little genius for every effort he makes towards speaking; this will encourage him to speak more.
– Yashoda Datta Sharma –
Mommy of twins with a passion for writing. Loves to help fellow moms to in the wonderful journey of motherhood. She has done B.A. LL.B and LL.M and her hobbies include writing and photography. She also loves to travel.