The skills for early communication come at the root of our Speech and Language tree. They are the foundations of communication development.
They include
- attention and listening skills
- play development and shared enjoyment
- taking turns.
Attention and Listening Skills
The ability to listen and pay attention is vital to your child’s communication development. These skills need to develop for your child to learn to understand and use language and to use language.
Very young children have fleeting attention skills or rigid attention where they focus only on a task of their own choosing. By age 3-4 years your child should be able to listen and focus on an activity together with you.
Top Tips to help a child at any age:
- Be face to face with your child – try to sit in a position that is on your child’s level and shows that you have time to engage with them.
- Stop, Look and Listen – first watch what your child is doing and what interests them before you jump in and interrupt their focus of attention. Try to engage them in activities that they are enjoying.
- Set aside some special time in your day. Use this to play with your child, look at a book together and complete a shared activity.
Play and shared enjoyment
Very young babies can enjoy play and social interaction. From birth your baby is learning to listen to your voice and even young children may enjoy exploring new objects or playing a simple tickle or peek a boo game. As children develop there are lots of types of play that your child may engage in:
- sensory and exploratory play – exploring the world around you through sight, touch, sound and even taste.
- constructive play – such as building with blocks or engaging in craft activities.
- imaginative or pretend play – pretending with toy items such as play kitchens or playing at being a doctor or a spaceman.
- social play – playing with others in simple games such as peek a boo or tickling games or if your child is older may include games with simple or complex rules e.g. tag or board games.
- Physical play – playing with balls or going on a bike or scooter or simply running around.
Top Tips for supporting your child’s play and shared enjoyment
- Follow your child’s lead – join in with your child’s interests and allow them to lead the play. Look out for what they are interested in or engaging with.
- Have Fun – this is the most important rule when playing with children. Children learn best when they are having fun and play is a child’s work.
- Create Opportunities – opportunities for play can arise at any time and don’t need to cost money. Children can enjoy games and involve everyday activities such as putting out the washing. Young children love to copy what the grown ups are doing. Different environments such as gardens, parks or beaches provide plenty of stimulation for young minds to get creative.
Some children don’t follow typically developing patterns of play and shared enjoyment. These children may be described as Neurodivergent and may be diagnosed with Autism, ADHD or a learning difficulty. Parents of neurodivergent children may have to try different or additional strategies to engage with their child in social interaction and play such as Intensive Interaction https://www.intensiveinteraction.org/ or the Curiosity Programme https://attentionautism.co.uk/curiousty-programme/
Taking Turns
Taking turns or ‘turn-taking’ is an important communication skill that when fully developed allows adults to participate in conversation by taking turns to speak and then also to actively listen to others and respond appropriately. This skill develops from a very young age when we engage babies and young children in social interaction that is shared such as taking it in turns to smile or pull faces, or turns in simple games such as pushing a toy car to each other.
Speech and Language Therapists are keen to promote turn-taking in children of all ages as this is a fundamental skill that supports children in all areas of communication such as play, shared enjoyment, active listening and language learning.
Here are some activities that promote turn-taking.
- Take turns to complete a puzzle with your child.
- Put objects from around the house into a ‘feely’ bag and take turns to pick something from the bag.
- Take turns to put bricks together and create a crazy design.
- Take turns to turn pages over in a book. Instead of reading the book, you can try pointing to the pictures and labelling what you can see.
- Take turns to draw on some paper and create a magnificent picture.
- Play games with simple rules such as pop-up pirate or hungry hippos.
Top Tips
- Be patient – young children are developing this skill and when excited will struggle to wait for their turn.
- Use positive language – good taking turns, well done you waited, thank you for my turn.
- Label each turn, e.g., ‘my turn, your turn’ or ‘Billy’s turn, now Katie’s turn’.