‘How to speak to your two year old,’ – Talking to toddlers.

There's nothing like the anxiety of a parent, is my child developing 'normally?' The language we use towards our children is crucial for their language development, how else would they learn?

 

Keeping it simple. Keep to these simple rules and you will soon notice the difference in your children's lexical development. 

-       Be sensitive to your child's expressions and react to them – it's key to developing their response.

-       Take turns – Play interactive games, trigger reactions.

-       One word only – Do not confuse your child with many different words for one object.

-       Expand – From words to sentences. A child says "car go," so you say "the car is going."

-       Discuss, tell and ask – Discuss your day, tell a story and ask a question, keeping the grammar simple but developing more complex discourse structures.

 

Child directed speech is patterning of the speech used towards young children or toddlers by their caregivers or parents.

 

'Parentese,' is another name for child directed speech, or you may have heard of 'Motherese,' but this name is no longer used as significantly as before as it suggests gender stereotyping. Well related theories suggest that men use more –wh interrogatives and demand more response lexically from their child than women! But women tend to be more 'talkative,' using longer utterances.

 

What makes you similar to other parents? You all subconsciously use a variety of phonological features of language to gain responses from your child.

 

"Children's innate language learning ability is triggered by hearing language." Chomsky

 Although you may not realise you most definitely use high pitched intonation, melodic pitch and deliberate tempo to make your child respond. If you were to speak in monotone, your child would find difficulty in understanding the concepts of speech. It is natural to feel like you're over exaggerating!

The interrogative! There is nothing like the simple form of question and answer, it demands a response, so use it repeatedly with your child and you can't go wrong. Simplify grammatical constructions, elongate your words and your child will be understanding speech sooner than you think. There is truth in the meaning of "Enjoy it, as soon you will not shut them up."

 

"Children learn turn-taking and pragmatics before they can use words." Bruner

Pragmatics is to do with the social use of language, they understand when the language is used and in what context before using the words themselves. INTERACTION is the most important thing, other contacts to the child and yourself are the most important tool, YOU make their language develop! So play those early interactive games, its more useful than you can imagine.

It's normal to feel an itty-bitty bit anxious as a parent; you are more than likely to be using the theories and concepts of language mentioned above subconsciously, so for now stop worrying.

By Chloe Knott