How Exactly You Talk to Speech and Language Delayed Children | www.AgentsOfSpeech.com

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Speaking to children who don’t respond is really frustrating. Every effort seems wasted and the more you do it, the more they ignore… So what’s the best way to do it?

Speak slower
First of all, if you’re not sick of hearing this from me already, speak slower! There’s a reason why your child isn’t responding, copying, or doing what you tell him. Probably, it’s too difficult to understand, so slow down. Especially us Asians, we tend to speak faster than we should. Making it incredibly difficult for anyone to actually understand what we’re saying if we don’t speak the language.

Simplify your language
What would you do if a tourist who didn’t understand your language talked to you? You’d decide to simplify what we say. Do NOT take your child’s comprehension for granted. Without an assessment from a speech therapist, you’d never know how much he can actually understand!
A good rule of thumb is to stick to the level at which your child is speaking right now. So if he’s saying one-word sentences, keep yours at around 1-2 words as well.

Talk at your child’s visual field
BY squatting and kneeling down to your child’s level, it makes it easier for your child to actually look and listen to you. You see all we’re doing is to make things as easy as possible so that the chance of your child responding increases. Set your child to succeed not fail!

Referencing and Commenting
As we talked about before, stop the question asking and daily quizzes for your child. It’s stressful and totally not fun. Instead, start giving the correct language models you’d like to hear. Teach by showing and comment on what your child’s looking at. Keep the language simple and keep on narrating and label things as if you were the child. How would you expect your child to talk the way you want to if you don’t do it yourself!?

Imitate everything
Whenever your child does make a sound or say a word, copy it. This makes her understand that her words have power and cause something to happen. But some parents go overboard and get too excited, what is worse is that the parent asks the child to say it one more time. That’s quite unnatural because there isn’t a reason to say something again if you’ve already heard it. In fact, I’ve seen it become annoying for the child. And I sincerely hope that does not happen at home for you.

Praising the right behavior
By making it as easy as it can be for your child to succeed in communicating with you. The last step is to praise whenever that happens. You cannot take anything that comes out of your child’s mouth for granted. Make sure all words and sentences are praised whenever you hear it!