Let’s chat about an important topic – toddler speech development! Language skills are essential to your child’s future. Strong communication skills can help children manage their emotions, develop healthy relationships, and succeed professionally. As a parent, you can accelerate and enhance their verbal development by the way you interact with your child. Read on for tips on how to help your toddler develop language skills and how to improve language skills for toddlers. Let’s chat about how to encourage toddler to talk.
Last updated February 2023
How can I help my child develop language skills?
Toddler language development is an important part of their growth. Do you know how to help your toddler talk? Many studies show that talking and reading with children from an early age helps them to increase their vocabulary and other verbal abilities. Developing your toddler’s speech is an important life skill to help them function independently.
Follow these practical tips full of simple and fun activities to help develop language skills in toddlers and preschoolers. This article shares activities to develop language skills in toddlers that you can do right at home!
Tips for Talking with Your Toddler and Preschooler for Speech Development: how to encourage toddler to talk
These are all great examples of language development activities for toddlers.
Discuss routine activities.
Turn household chores and errands into teachable moments. Describe what you’re doing as you cook, bake a cake, or go shopping. Talk through bath time or as you’re getting dressed. What do you do when brushing teeth? Talk about all the tools you are using (toothbrush, toothpaste, water) and let them explore the ideas.
Sing and dance.
Children enjoy sounds and movement. My son is obsessed with songs and has specific ones in a particular order that we must do even before bedtime. Music also makes lessons more memorable and demonstrates the rhythm of language. Focus on repetitive lyrics and funny tunes. Singing and dancing are also great sensory input activities that help tremendously with speech development.
Share stories.
Imagine and make up stories with your children and have them help create stories too. Use the names of family members and other familiar information to make the stories more relatable.
Play word games.
Make learning fun with puzzles, puns, and riddles. Show how words that sound the same can have different meanings. Laugh about silly noises like ducks quacking and balloons popping.
Do crafts or activities.
Doing fun toddler-appropriate activities and crafts provides opportunities to connect with your child and encourage learning and language development. Talking through all the steps and the final product of your activity opens up the communication avenues while having fun.
Plan field trips.
Bring language to life by visiting places where your children can see what they’re learning about. Attend special exhibitions at art and science museums and check the calendars for hands-on family activities. Visit amusement parks, state fairs, and toy stores. Check out the lovely aquarium at your local Bass Pro Shops or the fountain at the mall.
Follow their lead. Ask questions.
Give your child your full attention when they’re talking to you. Build on what they’re saying. Ask them how they feel and what they like. Children learn by asking questions, and answering them can help too. Include open-ended questions that will stimulate conversation.
Give Choices.
Letting your child choose between two objects, whether it is what to wear today or what snack to eat, isn’t just great advice to help give toddlers some control. It exposes your child to new words and motivates them to use words to communicate their power.
Tips for Reading with Your Preschooler or Toddler to Develop Language Skills:
Create a home library.
Fill your home with attractive and enriching books and other reading material. Design an inviting reading nook like a table covered with blankets to look like a fort or a stack of soft pillows on the floor. Here are some great books for speech therapy at home. You can also make an amazing toddler busy book to help with language concepts.
Encourage their interests.
Pick books about your child’s favorite subjects. Are they obsessed with spiders like mine? Or robots. You can easily find fun board books on any topic with any characters.
Use add-on words.
Illustrated books are lovely for word exploration and language development. As your child points out a flower on the page, add on a descriptive word such as a color or size.
Take turns.
As your child grows older, encourage him or her to read to you. Toddlers and preschoolers can point out pictures and describe what is happening in them.
Give gentle feedback.
Children are bound to make some interesting guesses as they’re learning about pronunciation and grammar. To guide them without discouraging them, try repeating back the corrected version of what they said while praising them for their efforts.
These are the best ways how to help toddler learn to talk!
What can be done to help a toddler develop language skills? With the tips in this post we hope you have some answers. This post will also help you with language development for preschoolers.
Would you like a printable of this post about language development in toddlers? I have one for my subscribers!
How to develop language skills in toddlers? Help your child to succeed in school and beyond by teaching them how to express themselves and understand others at an early age. Spending time talking and reading with your child draws you closer together while you encourage their growth and toddler language development.
Here’s a great infographic showing a child’s development by months of age, up to 3 years.
Join the Working Mom List
Join the Working Mom collective and get support and tools to help you thrive! Subscribers get access to my library of resources and printables.
Nibra Robinson says
I would love a printable of this resource!
Julie says
What a great idea! I’ll whip something up. Are you already on my email list? I’ll send it out when I have it ready.
Sarah says
Fab tips here thanks so much!
Shania says
These are perfect for my son’s mini meltdowns when he can’t find his words! Love the illustrations and posters!
Kelly says
Great post! I like the idea of describing things as you’re doing them. Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to myself but my son definitely picks up on more than I realize!
Seema Mehta says
This is a very useful blog with good illustration, I would like to know how to tech a bilingual child? My child is bilingual we are speak different languages, please give tips on it. Post more blogs on parenting which will help us to guide our children in the right way.
Julie says
You would follow similar techniques but in both languages to expose the child to each language.
Lori | Choosing Wisdom says
My daughter was speech delayed. Our speech therapist recommended many of these same tips. Simply talking about what you’re doing while you’re doing it seems like a no-brainer, but really does help.
Thanks for sharing on #WanderingWednesday with Choosing Wisdom! ?
Shiree | Confessions of Parenting says
Great suggestions! My older two kids developed their language skills really early and quite quickly, but my third child has struggled. This was a good post for me to implement some easy things into our day-to-day life.
Thanks for joining #WanderingWednesday!
Katelynn|hampersandhiccups.com says
Great ideas! My 22 month old has been saying things like “vitamin” and “margarine” for months now. She’s (what I think is) well advanced for her age, and I often wonder if it’s something we did or just the way she was made. We never use “baby talk” and dabbled in some baby sign language, as well as the tips you mentioned. Thanks for sharing
#wanderingwednesday
Katelynn, hampersandhiccups.com
Christy says
These are great suggestions! I do a lot of these with my toddler, but always feel like I need to do more.