Children’s language development support

Language development in infants and children

Hi;

I want to share an article about alone infants and toddlers language development and activities to support them. Actually, all this information is a total of my experiences and books which I have read starting from my pregnancy. This preparation is for my daughter will be alone and single. Yes, my daughter does not have a sibling but she is very talkative and social.

Firstly, I have to say: babies learn to speak from us. In other words, if you speak, they will speak.

Babies improve their language since their birth. Even, according to research, they started to learn in the prenatal duration from the mother’s language. Actually, they reflect back to us. Their first crying nuances are changing depending on their mother Language. For example, newborn English and Turkish babies are crying differently. This is unbelievable. I mean; they are learning to speak by reflecting, repeating our languages again and again.

Here, I want to mention a little more about the process of speaking of a child. If we learn how we can understand and support them more. Babies have passive and active memory for language. They hide the new words in their passive memory for up to 6 months. If we use again those words ın that limited time, the words transfarred to the active memory. This means they learned it. In short, the more we talk with children, read books and communicate with them, the more we expand their speech and vocabulary.

Now, ıt not surprising that their first words are our most frequently words we used in talking. Mom, dad or who takes care of her/him should talk a lot. Talking is important because of the active memory. And youtube, tv or Netflix won’t help your child if you don’t talk face to face. They change their reflection, mind depends on the other’s reflections. The first 6-8 months is really important to have normal language development. You shouldn’t cut the communication because they can not speak.

Late start of speech in children

There two main reasons. Physicall and others

1. 1. Your infant could have a health problem. The mouth and palate structure or hearing problem can belate the speaking and it is so normal. You should move with your doctors.
2. If they do not have any health problems, the “other” choice includes options such as family attitude, communication level at home and with baby, house psychology, television watching times.

Parents effects on language development

I want to explain my attitude on parents-language relation. In the first two years they try to adapt their environment by recording everything they have hear and see. And the lahguage development speed is unbelievable in this age group.

In this time, parents have to understand and support to express their feelings. If you shout or ignore and behave like there is nothing against a worried child, he/she can not understand the situation and own feelings. That does not make sense to her/him. She/he can affect psychologically from this situation and belate language improvement.

On the other hand, parents must support their expressions and be patient. Maybe the child can not say “shoes” correctly. Actually, in time he/she could understand the difference and the reason. He starts to read your mouth and repeat it again and again. You should get it serious his effort and help. If you get angry or kidding, he could easily understand this and give up. In addition, this type of parent attitude will affect your child’s character and damage his personality totally. Please be careful about this.

The other important issue is watching TV, Netflix or youtube etc.. Watching anything like these are all detrimental for them but if you let, please limit the time. Television and the other one-side communication downgrade the conversation capability of your child.

Should we correct the wrong pronounced words?

Yes, yes, yes. But here, the most important question is “how?”. They are very curious about talking and learning. They always try to use new words in the sentence, but sometimes they can’t. I know they are so cute. At the same time, they want to see support to learn the true way. You should be patient and behave for the need. You should speak more slowly than usual, talk one by one instead of repeat again and again at a normal speed. Correcting their pronunciation takes time. Actually, you don’t have to make the same process every time. You will understand when you need the apply the technic above. They will look at your mouth to understand the word then you repeat to show how. But in a normal, they just correct their words in a sentence and then let it. For instance, my daughter says a different word instead of “shoe”, and we just say “let’s get your shoes from the closet” we never shout or apply press to teach her. Now, I forgot when she said it correctly.

Transmission of feelings

We still try to support her communication as her parents. Actually, in books, they always say that you should explain what or how you are doing when you are together with your child to improve them. I and my husband started from this point and follow the same way for feeling. We explain our emotions and thoughts as parts of our characters and bodies.

We interpretations like this. For example, when she cried and we asked her with a feeling “why are you crying, why are you sad?” In her younger age, she was showing the problem with her finger. And again we use the emotions to explain herself. “Did you hurt your leg, and sad for it now” It sounds a bit artificial when I write here but if you use this a language type, It becomes more and easier to understand each other. And I think this type of communication make your bonds strongest. Of course, your personality is really important and a big factor here. Patience, understanding, and empathy are really milestones of dialogues between you two.

One day, she starts to explain magnificently and you’ll surprise. How can she say all this correctly and a good way?

Stay be happy.