Ming at Agents of Speech shows how bubbles can prompt speech-delayed kids to communicate. Give bubbles freely, blow them, let the child try, then gently prompt them to hand the bottle back. The routine teaches requesting and exchanging, not just words.
This is applicable for anyone who is speech and language delayed. First way is to create a very strong routine. And if you've been to speech therapy or any type of early intervention, you will realize that they use a lot of bubbles. What you need to do is to give them something for free first. Whenever you're trying to communicate or make a child to start talking to you, you need to give them something for free. In this instance, it's bubbles. So what I would do usually is to open it first, blow a few bubbles to show it to them, let them pop it, let them have fun, and then later on when they know, oh, okay, so I'm here to pop some bubbles. It's fun, it's cool. This guy is blowing me bubbles. That's very nice. Then when he wants more, I am in the position to ask for more from him. So I would start off getting him to start giving me this bubble. I would give the whole thing to him. And then he will try to open. Or she's going to try to open. She cannot. And then I put my hand out as a helping hand and he'll give it back to me, and then I will open it and I'll blow again. So I do this a few times. He quickly knows that he needs to give this to me. That's already communication. So that's what we're teaching. We're not teaching a child to speak, per se, we're teaching a child to communicate.
