Communication through verbal is the main method people use to communicate. Every parents dream their child to be able to talk clearly as soon as can be. Talking skills is important for each children to serves many purposes. Children express verbally their emotions, daily needs, educational needs and also for them to engage in play with peers.

Parents play an important role to help children learn how to talk according to the development. Here are some of the useful tips for parents to help their children to talk:

Children learn mostly by imitating adult’s behavior and speech. Children learn to imitate the movement of the mouth and word production by observing adults doing it. Eye contact also helps strengthening parent-child interaction.

Effective eye contact occurs at the best when their eye is at the child’s eye level. Parent can just sit and lower down their body in front of the child and sometimes parent can lie down to get appropriate eye contact.

• Singsong voice

   

  Talking using singsong voice is a normal way adult talk to children. This helps children gives attention to the interaction. When children hear words in different loudness, pitch and length, it attracts them to listen in a longer duration. Parent can use singsong voice during daily situation such as calling name, changing diapers or during feeding.

• Talk About Daily Activity

   

  Children are depending on their parents for daily activities such as eating, changing shirt and taking bath when they were small. Parents can use this opportunity to stimulate language by talking about these activities. Continuous repetition of words/sentences in the same context is effective in children language development.

Language stimulation in daily activity can take place especially during dinnertime. Parents can name or comments about the food and ask questions.

• Encourage Children to Take Turn in Communication

   

  Taking turn in talking is an important element in communication. A person talks while another/other person is listening. It is much easier to help children learn to understand and talk when they are aware and understand this element.

Children can learn to take turns as early as baby. Mommy or daddy can initiate vocalizes then wait for child to response. Baby response usually by vocalizing sounds. Continue turn taking by imitating your baby vocalization and add on new sounds. Give time for your baby to respond. The waiting time is important to make sure your child understands his turn.

• Create Opportunity to Communicate

   

  As children grow bigger, parents can usually promote taking turn in communication by giving opportunity for the child to initiate. Parents can create opportunity for communication by asking the child to respond when they want something.

Parents can create opportunity by asking directly to the child whether he wants the things or not. Example, “Hilmi, do you want bread or rice?”. Encourage your child to response with answering verbally or by using gestures. Child usually indicates what he wants nonverbally by head nod and finger pointing. Children will learn to initiate when they understand their response give impact on others.

• Use Simple Sentences

   

  Parents are encouraged to use sentences length that appropriate to the child’s language development. Usually, parents are encouraged to use short sentences with 2 to 3 words. Eg: “It’s dinner time” or “Yummy chocolate”

The sentences length and complexity can be increased once the child showed development of their language. Use sentences or phrases instead of single word when talking with your child. Say “open the door” instead of “open” when you are opening the door.

• Repeat Daily Activities for Stimulation

   

  Repeated daily activities are really useful for language development as it involves the repetition of words/ sentences. Daily activities that gives benefits includes reading books eventhough they still unable to read, playing and singing.

Parents can use the same book for few days depending on childrens interest. Share the books with your child according to his development. Parents can use one word extra compared to the child’s current level. Eg: Parents use 2 or 3 words while the child is at one word level.

Encourage child to imitate the word being produced by you. These activities are really helpful to polish your child language and potential when its use daily.

• Encourage Child to do Simple Task

   

  Language not only being stimulated by continuous language stimulation, as gross and fine motor skills also has roles to stimulate language and learning. Encourage child to be independent in daily activity/skills according to their age, for example feed themselves at the age of 18 months and put on clothes at 3 to 4 years old..

• Encourage Physical and Art Activity

   

  Negative emotion that suppressed can affect development, particularly language development. Children usually did not know how to express their desire and feelings besides cries, whines and rage. Usually adult did not understand this way of expression.

Parents can encourage children to do physical and art activity to reduce and help them manage their negative emotions. According to a research, this activities can help child express their feelings effectively and help to promote better speech-language development.

All children have their own hidden potential that is different from others. Some children talk faster than the others. Therefore, parents play an important role to facilitate children’s optimum potential by using tips and techniques discussed above.

Success are guaranteed when parents use the techniques with sincerity and confidence. Praising on positive effort of a child also can help the child to continuously maintain the goals.