How to Teach a Toddler to Talk (Top Tips from Speech Therapist)

Hey, this is ming here from agentsofspeech.com today, let's talk about how to teach your toddler to start talking. And you want to hear those sounds, hear those speech and words coming out of your child's mouth. The first thing is to refrain from question asking. So you must have been looking on Google a lot. Maybe you're trying to find how to get your child to talk. And you see this advice a lot. So not asking questions is actually quite important. And we talk about this a lot inside of agents of speech. And. And the reason is because when you ask a lot of questions, it creates a lot of stress for the child. Right. No matter where your child is in terms of language development, asking questions usually isn't the best way to actually teach your child to start talking. We use questions a lot more when your child is around, at least knowing how to answer questions. Right. If you go up to a child who isn't talking yet and you ask a lot of questions, what you're doing is setting up your child to fail. Right. Whether they are speech delayed or they're just typical developing children, if you ask a lot of questions, what's going to happen? They don't know the answer. They're going to go like, oh, I don't know. And at the end of the day, it's going to be very hard for them to feel comfortable talking to you because every time it feels like a quiz when they're interacting with you. So stop doing that. So instead of asking questions, what should you do? So the second point is to name everything you see and to talk about everything that you see. Okay. What does that mean? So you see that when children are watching children tv, a lot of the programs they do, they show different items and repeat the name over and over and over again. Right. And how you learn language is just through repetition. When you have repetition, you want to have quality repetition. What does that mean? So a word actually has a link towards a real object inside of the world. Okay. Whether it's a real thing that you have. Like, for instance, the thing I'm speaking to right now is a camera. We call that camera. Right. If you look at a camera and you say camera multiple times, you will remember the name of it. Okay. That's number one. Number two is that if you do it over and over and over again, and just by chance, any child who is smart, Most of them, 100% of them can learn language, will learn it this way. And you'll see this in a lot of children who watch a Lot of tv, who uses a lot of videos and they can name the ABCs numbers, you know, the planet name, so on and so forth. And that's because through repetition and there's link towards the word and the object, okay. And what a lot of children are lacking is actually the verbs. So what happens is that when children cannot express themselves properly is because they don't have enough action words. And that's why if you watch a lot of our videos, we always talk about, oh, can you teach your child some verbs? Is this something that you can, you can do? All right. If you want to learn more about it, I suggest you go into our YouTube channel and type play skills and you will see a bunch of videos about that. All right? So other than that, you have to keep it at your child's language level. All right? So I see a lot of parents asking me, oh, should I add, should I talk down to my child? Meaning should I make it into a shorter version or whatever. Inside of our, of our industry, we call it telegraphic speech. The reason behind this is because back in the day when we used to use telegram, right? Not the app. Right. The legit telegram, right. What happened was that all the functional words are gone. So is. Are in on all these, at these words and articles and whatever you call them are gone because they're not really that important to the message. So a lot of parents will ask should I say this or not? Because it seems like children are actually doing that. Right. And that's because they don't know where to put it. The grammar rules haven't developed 100% yet. Right. So my opinion, and you know, there are loads of opinions, there are loads of experts in this field that differing opinions. Some people say, oh, you should use telegraphic speech because it's helping the child to understand and learn how to communicate effectively. Right. In a shorter way. Yeah. And other experts are saying, oh, no, you should speak adult form. And my opinion is that you should always operate at a little higher than your child's language level. So let's say they're not talking. So a little higher than that should be single words or two words. Right. Two word phrases. @ the very least, you shouldn't be talking in full on sentences with a nonverbal child because that means they don't really understand. It's pretty impossible for them to understand each and every word. Okay. And it's hard to pick it out and link it to a concept in the world. So what I suggest you do is just above the language competency and this is, you know, we learned this a lot in child development. If you've read some books, there must be something called. There must be a concept that you learn called Vygotsky, this dude who talks about zone of proximal development, meaning, like, every time you teach, it just. It's like a little circle just a little bit bigger than their current skill set, and it becomes easy for them to learn. And that's what I'm trying to teach parents as well. Just a little bit over your comfort zone. I will try to teach you how to do home therapy, right? Okay. So if a child is speaking at single word level, you want to do at like and talk at two to three words, phrases, right? If a child is talking at two to three phrases and a little telegraphic meaning, the grammar isn't that great. What you want to do is to start talking in full sentences, but a little shorter, right? If they speak in full sentences, what you want to do now is to make sure that as full sentences and you expand a little bit on the other semantics and the meaning, okay? All right. So the last thing I want to talk about is asking for repetition. A lot of parents always say, oh, can you repeat now? Can you say it after me? Can you repeat? What do you say now? Like say, I say it one time. You say it one time, okay? So that is actually quite stressful. So imagine yourself learning a new language, right? We talk about this inside of channel a lot, right? And some of the parents who learn with me, they cannot get rid of this thing because all they want, all you want is just to hear those words come and you will never stop until the child actually says it. So imagine yourself learning a new language, let's say Japanese or whatever. If I tell you a really long word and I tell you to repeat after me, what's going to happen is that you're going to miss a word here, miss a sound here, and so on, right? So what's going to happen now is that you feel incompetent in front of me because my language is a lot better than yours. Well, not English, right? It might be Japanese, it might be Cantonese, my mother tongue. It could be anything, right? But if I every time I tell you to repeat after me, meaning, I'm trying to teach you, right? Then how would a child like you? Right? So when you see therapists who are very child friendly, you will see that there are very little times where the therapist will ask the child to repeat after them, all right? Unless it's a structured task and they have Rewards. And the child knows exactly why they're saying something. And it might be inside of a game. That's the reward itself. Or there's something external, right? So we won't get into that right? Now what I want you to understand is that you shouldn't ask the child to repeat what you say all the time and try to correct them word for word. Because that although you think that it's helping them, which it is, but at the same time it's creating a very stressful environment, okay? And if that's 24, 7 with you and you want to want your child to catch up or learn to talk to sooner, that is not actually nurturing to them. It's in fact, it's stressful. All right? So, well, you don't ask for petitions. What should you do? You should repeat after what your child says, okay? Language teaching is a game of giving, right? It's the same as me teaching you. It's a game of giving. I cannot ask too much of you because maybe you never ask for help. Your child never asks for help, right? They never said, mom, I want to talk. Can you teach me? They never said that. So therefore, you cannot extend your helping hand and try to force them to talk or talk so much, or ask them or tell them to repeat and so on, and try to correct them until they start talking, because that's not what they want. What they want is just to have fun, right? Very normal. Very, very pretty. Much all children are thinking that. So therefore, whatever, Dane talk, whenever your child talks, what you should do is to repeat after them and up them one level, right? Let's say give me an example, right? So if they say mama ball, right? Then you say, oh, mama ball. You imitate them and you say, oh, right? You mean mama give me ball or mama give ball, like just one, one more word or just adding a little meaning and semantics to what they said already. But here's the kicker. You don't ask them to repeat after you, right? Because you have already done what you wanted and which was to enrich their language, let them hear it and also imitate. And so that they know that. That you got their message, right? And therefore they want to talk more with you, right? And other than that instance, what you're doing is you keep on giving, you keep on talking, you keep on saying, oh, yeah. Oh, the ball's rolling. Whatever you keep on describing, keep on naming, right? That's what you should be doing. All right? So that's the end of this video. And if you haven't Please go to agentsofspeech. Com Handpooling for a five minute activity to reduce your child's tendency to hand guide you to the things that they want and start communicating with you. Start talking. All right, that's it. I'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.