When I am out and about, I like to watch parents interacting with their children. As a speech-language pathologist, I am interested in observing how parents make use of life's constant opportunities to nurture their children's language-learning.
This article is the first in a series about missed opportunities for parents to be good language mentors. I will identify what the situation was, what the parent opted to do with the occasion, and what I would suggest as a language-rich option.
While waiting through one of those "must-do," every-other-year required emissions check-ups for my car, I stood at the observation window watching the technicians using a variety of pieces of equipment, wondering what each one did. I was fascinated by the rollers that the car's tires whirled on, the car staying in place and just slipping a bit side to side.
About halfway through my experience, a young boy came bolting through the door to the observation room, head eagerly tilted up, with an expression on his face that broadcast, "Ooh, I'm in a new, interesting place!" His father was right behind him.
My first thoughts were, Great-this dad will surely show his boy what is going in with their car.
I was disappointed to see that this young dad had his boy sit on the adult chair next to his chair. This very compliant three or four-year-old sat on the chair without protest, craning his neck unsuccessfully, trying to see over the sill of the observation window. The father did not notice his son's interest in seeing what was going on, since he opted to do some browsing on his cell phone.
Within a few minutes, the dad picked up his son. I thought, Good! Now he is going to take him over to the window. But, sadly, no. He did hold him and give him about 8 rapid kisses, which showed me that he loved his boy, but, to me, the kisses did not make up for his silence during what could have been an enjoyable and productive shared verbal interaction.
We know from research that children who hear about 25,000 words per day acquire much richer language skills than children who hear far fewer quantities of words spoken to them. And, children with stronger language abilities show higher intelligence than those who do not. Guess which children do better in school.
In my view, this 15-minute encounter could have supported at least a 1,000 word investment in this child's language development. What follows is an example of what a parent who is "tuned into" what a child needs might have said. I will provide examples of what the father could have initiated, so this will sound like a monologue. Of course, in a real situation, the parent should listen to and respond to anything the child says, to further shape the verbal input to the child's interests.
Wow, son--this room has big windows. We get to see what the people do to our car! We can observe what the technicians are doing with their equipment. That man is in the driver's seat. He is making the car engine go fast. Look! Our tires are spinning-they are going around and around really fast. But our car isn't moving! Hmmm--I wonder why not? Oh! Look at those big rollers under the tires! That's why our car isn't going anywhere. But our car is slipping side-to-side. Interesting! There's an orange cord going through the open window. I wonder what it is plugged into. Oh, and there's a big funnel. It's checking if our car has clean-enough exhaust. We don't want our car to put dirty air into the air in our world. We want to breathe clean air.
And so on! Giving a running commentary of a situation is easy. It's just like the sports play-by-plays sports announcers make.
If you use a "big" word, just precede it or follow it up with simpler words that "anchor" the meaning of the new word. You will find several examples of that technique in my example.
Even if you don't think of yourself as a talkative person, stretch yourself for your child's benefit. Think of this type of talking as just being a play-by-play on the game of life. Your child will be all the better for your efforts.
Mary Lou B. Johnson, M.S., CCC-SLP, is a speech-language pathologist with over 36 years experience working with children and their families at Children's Hospital Colorado. In her eBook, How To Help Your Child Learn to Talk Better in Everyday Activities, Mary Lou provides the information, insights, and ideas that she has shared with parents in her practice to enable parents to gain new ideas and more confidence in their abilities to help their children acquire strong speech-language skills. View the Table of Contents at http://helpyourchildspeak.com/.
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