A short YouTube segment (speaker Ming @ Agents of Speech) giving practical strategies for encouraging young children to be more specific and combine words. Advice centers on 'sabotaging' routine understandings—pretending not to understand a vague request—to prompt the child to produce more specific language, illustrated with a cookie example and parent prompting cues.
So how do we sabotage it? Is by them saying something and you take it too literally or you don't understand them. The only reason your child can say one word or pull you or, like, put your hand on something and they get what they want is because you understand the situation. Right? So in turn, what you should be doing is do exactly what their language tells you. So what do you do that? Next point is you require your child to be very specific. So how do you get your child to be specific? For instance, let me just talk about the cookie thing. So if your child wants a cookie, first of all, pretend you don't understand. What do you mean, I don't understand? Oh, and before they say anything, you want cookie, Right? So when he says cookie, and then you're like, yeah, the cookie's right there. Sabotage it. Afterwards, before they get too angry, you start prompting and give cues and give a helping hand, and you say, yeah, the cookies. There you want it. Let me help you.
