At his 2 year check up, my son's pediatrician recommended we try to encourage him to talk more. He was evaluated to be in the normal range (and his receptive language is great), but I estimate he only has somewhere around 25-30 words and only uses a small handful regularly. Some words I heard clearly and in the correct context once or twice months ago, never to be heard again. Anyway, her suggestion was to withhold what he wants until he uses the word (for lack of a better description). We're going to try that, but since he will ask for juice and seems not to care strongly about anything else, I'm skeptical about this tactic adding new words to his vocabulary. I try to narrate my everyday actions, but perhaps can do this more. Any other tips or suggestions that helped with your later talker?
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I have 2 sons, one is 5 and the other is 2. My older son sounds exactly like your son. He wouldn't really use words in the right context and didn't have many of them. with my 2 year old, he's talking full sentences, and I'm blown away by how much he knows.
With both of them, when they get tired, whiney, or hungry, they tend to grunt or whine to get what they want. When they do that, I do withhold whatever it is, and ask them to use their words. If they grunt again, I say "do you want your cup?" or whatever it is. If they grunt, I ask them to repeat it. So my 2 year old is in a teething phase where whining and grunting is in abundance. I force him to ask me for what he wants or I won't give it to him. Sometimes he needs help, and when I say, "Say, 'Cup, please.'" he will usually repeat me. If he doesn't say it, I don't give it to him. There has been more than one occasion where he's started screaming his head off, but I stay firm. If I know he knows how to say it, he doesn't get it until he says it.
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Having been through more speech therapy than I care to admit, there are a few things:
Make a list of the consonant and vowel sounds your child says regularly. Try to come up with some words targeting those sounds and reflecting on what your kid likes to do and focus on repetition during play. Make sure your child sees your mouth when you speak, even point to it to draw attention. Choices actually do work and do push a child to verbalize, but my son had trouble with this due to not being able to make the right sounds. We used signs and verbal reinforcement so signs could work... and contrary to what you may think, signs don't discourage language. Mimicking you and repeating things with good mouth movements were key for us.
ETA: try to determine how far you can push your child and how they respond to praise. Our son would melt down if we wouldn't give him what he wanted so our therapist suggested one to two tries and then give it (this worked much better) Too much focus on getting him to say something Also did not work. Any focus put on him would make him embarrassed and shut down. We praise him with 'great trying!' 'Good talking!' 'Thank you for telling me that!' At any opportunity for ANY verbalization...even a grunt or mouth movement in the right direction. We repeat what we want him to say. Some kids can say something on cue but ours really shut down if we centred him out. It has to be natural and play based for lots of kids.
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This sounds stupid, but what has worked with my son (23 months) is to teach him a new word ("hippo!") and then give him the simple command: "YOU SAY!" This seems to be going well. He wont try new words on his own but he will repeat them when I give him that command. Then we do it over and over and eventually he adds the word and spontaneously says it!
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I talk to my daughter like she's a grown up. At dinner, I'll ask how her day was, what she ate, if she napped at school, etc. Even if she doesn't really answer, I just keep going (she's 26 months now). We also have found she picks up words related to her interests faster (babies, in her case) so encourage those words. Songs are great too. She'll fill in the blank sometimes when we read books she knows by heart, or if I sing a song and stop on a certain word.
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Our son (now 3) was about 6 months speech delayed and didn't qualify for early intervention. However, the speech pathologist from Easter Seals told us the following were helpful:
- Read word books. Both our boys love the Priddy and Usborne word books. They like to point at them, tell me what the words are (when they know them) and then I will point and name the object they don't know. Over time, my eldest went from pointing and following along to "reading" to me - telling me what every single thing was. We also switch things up from me pointing and saying what the object is to asking them to find the object. "Where's the lion? Can you find the lion?" And then when they find the lion, I overannunciate the word "LIIIII-ON. Can you say LIII-ON?" When I do that its funny to them and they follow better. Then I ask what sound a lion makes and they love making a big roar. As they learn more objects, we add on descriptors - like a red apple, orange fish, green leaf, etc.
- Music. We sing songs a lot. If there's a subject my kids like, we find songs about it. If they are able to relate things to songs, they are more engaged and can make the connections better in their heads in terms of context. For instance, my youngest is getting into animals and animal sounds, so we sing a lot of Old MacDonald, and if I can do that WHILE reading a book about animals, great.
- Choices. Would you like an apple or an orange? Would you like milk or water?
- Leading questions. We will often try to engage our eldest in conversations with a leading question like "Did you see AJ today?" Yeah. "How about Enzo?" Yeah.
"Who else did you see?" Then that will get him to list things. "Did you eat a sandwich at lunch today?" Yes. "Did you eat an orange?" Yes. "What did you have for snack?"- When WE are asked questions, we answer like an adult for the most part. My husband is way better at this than I am - he will literally give the most complicated adult answer, whereas I'm more likely to give simpler answers, but research shows my husband's way yields better comprehension and language skills in the long run.
- Ridiculous things/wrong answers. We will purposefully say something erroneous to trigger a correction. For instance, if we're watching Peppa Pig, we'll ask our eldest if Peppa is a monkey. He will say "NOOOOO, Peppa's a PIG!" And I will say, "Are you sure? Peppa is a monkey! She says ooh ooh ah ah!" And he will laugh and say "NO! PEPPA IS A PIG!" And then snort.
We started doing all these things around the time my son is 2 and he's in normal range now.
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If your LO is into books, some of the more repetitive ones have helped my almost 2-year-old. We like:
- Who Hops? He gets to shout "No they don't!"
- Little Blue Truck. He says "beep beep beep"
- Hungry Caterpillar. He points out the egg, moon and leaf, and says "POP!" when the caterpillar hatches. And we say "but he was still..." and he says "hungry!"That and just continuing to narrate, ask questions when we're out and about seemed to have helped my LO become more verbal.
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Thanks for all the replies! Sorry I didn't have time to get back to everyone last night, but it was one of those evenings . . .
@muffinsmuffins: Your child sounds a lot like mine. He only wants to say things on his own terms. We've always talked to him about his day at dinner time, read to him, etc., and it's always hit or miss whether he'll even try words he knows well. I consider myself lucky if he gives me a "Seriously, mom?" look over being completely ignored! He usually clams up or moves right along.
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My 2yo is also really into songs, so if we find a song he likes, we sing it OVER AND OVER AND OVER Again and he learns the words in the song. He loves Old McDonald Had a Farm (animal noises), Jesus Loves Me, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and a Spanish colors song from daycare. Also repetition in general - we read the same books over and over again and like others said, he gets to know them so well he is able to repeat some of the words/phrases. Rhyming books are good.
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I've been asking my daughter to say words before I give her what she wants and it works pretty good... like if she's whining because she wants down now I'll say ok but say down and she yells "da!!!"
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@nanilani: it's so hard! Our SLP told me at like 18 months that she thinks even little kids know when things are difficult for them and lots shut down. I didn't believe her! But seeing how much my son has improved as his confidence has taken off proves it to me. He tries EVERYTHING we say now and has gone from using 'guh' for everything to using nearly all consonant and vowel sounds and even stringing 3-4 words together.
One other thing I thought of is that our SLP keeps all toy pieces in clear plastic ziplock bags so while we/they play, he has to ask for the piece he wants or at least try and it doesn't come out of the bag until he tries to say something. Rewards are big. We used mini chocolate chips and another turn at whatever game that he likes a lot if we want him to do some specific activity. Over time, we don't have to reward but it can help at first.
Keep doing what you're doing and encourage him as much as you can!
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My LO had sounds he just could not make (for example, "L") and when I would ask him to repeat words with those sounds he would just stop trying to talk. When I figured out which sounds/words shut him down, I stopped asking for those words and asked for alternative words with sounds I knew he can make (You can ask What do you want mama to turn on? Answer "lights" which he wouldn't say or you can ask What should mama do to the lights? Answer "on" which he would say). This seemed to really help his confidence and slowly I just introduced words with those difficult sounds make. At almost 2.5 he's no longer discouraged by these words and mostly just mis-pronounces them (he says "ights" for lights for example).
I echo previous posters with the point to images in books and say the name and encourage LO to repeat the name and allowing LO to "read" the book to you. My LO loves "reading" and it really encourages him to use lots of different words including verbs and directionals (Where is dog going? "going down" What is baby doing? "eating")
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My son is also a stubborn 2 year old. He qualified for Early Intervention as he was in the 2nd percentile for verbal communication. Now he is about 6 months delayed and we are still seeing improvement.
We give him choices all the time. Even if he doesn't respond or if I can't understand his response, I pretend I got something from him and say "Yeah, and the car is blue too" type things, where we are still talking about the object, just layering a description on it.
DS seemed to have a bit of performance anxiety, so sometimes he'd say a word perfectly and I still have never heard it again. Now when he says a new hard word, I try and make a big deal out of how excited I am that he said it and repeat it like 30 times in the next few sentences and try to get him to say it again.
Overexposure (at least in our adult minds) is crucial to learning a new word. Using it consistently and a lot helps them figure out the context and how to string the sounds together.
My son didn't get into songs at all and still just gives me a look when I try to get him to sing with me, but hey, persistence will win out I hope
Now that he's out of the embarrassed phase, he chats at me all the time. I only understand like one word in ten, but I still pay very close attention to him talking and try to carry my end of the conversation with relevant descriptions and questions.
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@codeitall: Excellent points. Sometimes my son will try to tell me a story or something and half of it is jibberish but intoned in a way that you know he's trying to get something out. So I act along like what he said made perfect sense, like "Yeah, I see. Okay. Really? Mmmhmm. And then what happened?"
We also overannunciate words all the time and put funny intonations on them so they stick more. We had a bath time book and one of the pictures was for a bottle of shampoo and we always read it like "sham-POOOOOOOO" and even now, our son says it that way, which is pretty hilarious. But it stuck in his mind because it was intoned a certain way and because we broke words up into syllables constantly. Whenever he asks us "what's that?" we say "ROO-TAHH-BAYYYYYY-GAHHHHHH." And repeat it slowly like 3-4 times. People look at us like we're nuts in public, but, IDGAF.
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@muffinsmuffins: That is a really good tip about the bags.
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@muffinsmuffins: Our EI speech therapist recommended something similar. We put a bunch of favorite toys into clear bins so that he needs to ask for help to get them and needs to be specific.
Choices are also big to get them to say one or the other.
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Thanks, everyone. I'll be keeping these suggestions in my back pocket. We're off to a slowish start this week b/c I feel bad changing the system on him when he's sick. Maybe next week!
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