How Parents can develop their toddler's speech and language skills using toys

Parents often ask me what they can do at home to encourage speech and language development. The best way to teach communication is by being interactive and talking to your toddler during playtime. Although it is nice to build your toddler's vocabulary with educational videos, there is one crucial piece of language development missing in videos. It is almost impossible for real communication to take place without face to face interaction with another person. Language is a process of reciprocal interaction, one person is the sender and the other is the receiver of the message. The goal for parents is to develop a continuous back and forth interaction with their toddlers. It is sort of like a game of tennis, if the other person does not hit the ball back, the game ends. Similarly, if you ask your toddler a question and you get no verbal or gestural response, the game of communication ends also. At first, it may seem like you are doing all the work to keep the game going, but if you are persistent, your toddler will soon begin to respond and even initiate a playtime interaction with you. I have listed some suggestions for parents to help their toddlers develop speech and language skills during playtime. If your child is non-verbal, it is fine to play using gestures or sign language while you model the words outloud that go with your actions and those of your toddler as well.

1. Select a small play room in the house to organize all your child's toys on shelves. Keep some of your toddler's favorite toys up on shelves or in clear containers so your toddler has to name the toy or point to the one he or she wants. If your container has a hard to open lid, that is even better since your child will need to ask you for help to open it.

2. Try to take turns with your toddler while playing with the toy. Some children may not like you to take a turn , but be persistent and say "Daddy's turn, or Mommy's turn." Your turn may have to be very short until your child gets used to the idea that they get the toy back when your turn is over. If your child has trouble with giving up a toy to let you have a turn, try buying 2 of the exact same toy truck and then exchange the same toy back and forth with your toddler.

3. Once you have established good turn taking with your Toddler, begin adding simple words that go with your actions when it is your turn. Toddlers learn new words by imitation. So, if you add words that go with your actions, your Toddler will eventually try to imitate what you did and said. If you ever watched two toddlers play together, they are constantly imitating each other. A simple example of this is to take a toy truck and bump it into another vehicle while saying "beep-beep." For older more verbal toddlers, try pushing the truck and say "Truck go" or "Daddy drive truck."

4. Select toys that are good for turn taking and have multiple pieces or some action associated with it. CEO Toddler toys are all interactive toys and are easy to take turns with. If you need help thinking of things to say and do in order to stimulate language during playtime, just follow the play 2 learn language activities included with each CEO Toddler toy. I personally wrote all of of these activities myself and I recommend them to parents I work with everyday.

5. If you would like more language activities to challenge your toddler in the areas of listening, speaking, interaction and thinking, the CEO Toddler Work Manual contains over 4o different receptive and expressive language enrichment activities. It also allows you to keep track of your toddler's progress. It is best to make learning language fun for your toddler. Many parents have enjoyed using the manual with toys they already have at home while including siblings or other family members too.

I hope your toddler enjoys being a CEO Toddler... I invite you to have fun and
"Play 2 Learn Language" with us everday!