Within a blink of an eye, your infant starts crawling, walking and grows more curious about the world around them. From birth to three years of age, your baby will go through several stages of their developmental milestones, such as vocabulary development and social interaction skills. Though these developments occur at a unique pace for each child, parents must offer guidance and support to their children through the stages.
How to Improve Your Kids’s Vocabulary
Your baby starts making many sounds right from birth, including gurgling, cooing and crying. By the end of their first year, you will enjoy hearing them utter their first word. This is an exciting milestone for both you and the baby, but you might start wondering how their communications skills compare to other children the same age as time goes by.
Sometimes your baby might take longer before talking, and in most cases, it’s not something to make you worried. However, below are the typical language milestones that can help you pick abnormalities in your child’s development early.
- 0 to 6 months. At this age, a baby may make babbling and cooing sounds. They can also hear voices and sounds and turn their heads towards you when you speak.
- 7 to 12 months. By 7-12 months, babies understand some simple words such as “no.” They use gestures frequently and may have one to three words of vocabulary. However, they may not utter their first word before turning 1.
- 13 to 18 months. At the age of a toddler’s language may include 10 to more than 20 words. At this point, they can repeat words, can understand some commands, and may verbalize specific concerns.
- 19 to 36 months. By the time your toddler is three years, their vocabulary consists of more than 250 words. They can ask questions, follow detailed instructions and request items.
Improving Your Toddler’s Vocabulary
Though the milestone guideline above is just a general range, some kids pick communication skills much earlier than others. However, that need not be a problem. Though your child will catch up on their vocabulary skills in the future, it’s essential to encourage them to use their speech and language skills.
Engage Your Kid in A Conversation
You should have a conversation with your baby as much as possible. Even though your baby can’t talk, they can learn vocabulary quickly and at a young age by listening to you speak and express yourself. It means that instead of imitating the Googoo and gaga sounds from your child, you should use proper and meaningful words in a conversation.
Read Together
Introduce your child to the joys of reading at an early age and as much as possible. Reading can be a fun learning and bonding moment that promotes language development. Exposing children to reading materials gives a broader vocabulary than listening to adult speech. For more reading materials, use reliable internet providers for quick and reliable reading material online.
Speak Parentese
It refers to a specific language used to communicate with babies in a singsong, high-pitched voice that matches exaggerated facial expressions. It catches the baby’s attention and encourages the processing of different words and their occurrence in a sentence.
Expand on Their Requests and Responses
Some kids point at the items they want instead of asking for them. It will be best if you interpret and help your toddler understand the names of the things they want.
How Can You Improve Your Toddler’s Social Interactions
Helping your child develop social interaction skills may mean more for the happiness of your child’s life than any other conventional measure such as finances and academic gain. Instead of spending time staring at screens, experts advise that kids should interact with others.
Teach Them to Empathize
Kids who are showered with empathy by their parents are more likely to develop compassion for others earlier. Empathy for others is known as the cornerstone for maintaining healthy social interactions.
Stay Close During Their Playtime
Getting overwhelmed and frustrated is a significant cause for kids hitting others during social interactions. When you are close by, you can back them up when they get overwhelmed and don’t know how to react.
Don’t Force Them To Share
While sharing is a vital concept in developing social interaction skills, forcing a child to do so only delays its development. Instead, use the idea of taking turns.
Let Them Decide on How Long They Want Their Turn to Last
Snatching a toy from your toddler might potentially model the habit of grabbing and makes the toddler more possessive. Giving the child freedom to play with the toy for as long as he pleases will allow him to give it away with an open heart.
Encourage Eye Contact
Encourage your toddler to look at somebody in the eyes when talking for better communication and building confidence.
Teach Them Emotions
Let them know and imitate various emotions such as joy, disappointment, anger, excitement, weirdness, terror, etc. It helps them understand and express different feelings better without getting confused when interacting with others.
What To Do When a Toddler Is Not Communicating
Despite your efforts to get your child to communicate, but it’s not forthcoming, they might be experiencing some verbal communication difficulties. Language delay symptoms include:
- Not uttering any words by the age of 2
- Trouble following simple directions
- Difficulty in constructing simple sentences
- Limited vocabulary for their age
If you have any of the above concerns, you should seek the opinion of your child’s paediatrician. Possible reasons for the delays could be hearing impairments or intellectual disabilities. It can also be an indicator of autism spectrum disorder.
A comprehensive assessment may be necessary to identify the cause of the delay. You may need to seek the services of a child psychologist, an audiologist, or a speech pathologist. These professionals can identify and make recommendations that can help your child meet communication milestones.
Conclusion
Hearing your child utter the first word is an exciting moment, and as they develop the ability to put sentences together and follow the directions, you will be equally excited. If your toddler is experiencing vocabulary development delays, you can use the above tips to help them hit this milestone. It’s also important to allow kids to mingle with other kids and develop a broader range of communication and interaction skills.
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