It can be scary and overwhelming when your child isn’t talking yet and you feel like they should be.
If you’ve been asking yourself questions like…
Where do I start?
Why isn’t my child talking yet?
What can I be doing at home to help?
You’re in the right place.
We’re going to take a deep dive into exactly what you need to do when your child isn’t talking.
We’ll break this up into 3 parts:
- The Starting Point
- The Wrong Goals
- The 4 Pillars of Language Development
This will give you a detailed framework for evaluating where your child is at with their development and how to start supporting speech at home.
Let’s dive in…
Part 1: The Starting Point
If your child is a late talker or you’re worried they might be behind with their speech, the first thing you need to do is evaluate where your child is at in their development.
It’s important to keep in mind that all kids develop at different rates…
So even if your child is technically “behind” with one of their milestones, that’s not automatically a reason to be concerned.
But it is important to get an idea of where your child is at.
You might find that they’re actually right on track…
Or maybe a couple months “delayed” with one milestone, but that everything else looks great.
On the other hand, you might find that your child is struggling with several of the attention skills that typically develop before talking…
And while that might not be the results you were hoping for, you now have a great idea of what to work on to help them start communicating more effectively.
Part 2: The Wrong Place to Start
When their child isn’t talking, most people are looking for a technique, an activity, something to practice at home that will make their kiddo start using words.
And that makes perfect sense. The big goal is for your child to talk.
Unfortunately, that’s not usually the best place to start.
There are foundational language skills that kids need to develop before they’re developmentally ready to start talking.
If we jump to working on words before building that foundation, practicing words may take a lot longer than it needs to.
What we need to do is help support the natural progression of development.
We need to figure out which foundational skills your child needs support with, then use those to create the stepping-stone goals that take us to that big goal of actually talking.
Part 3: The 4 Pillars of Language Development
These foundational skills can be divided into 4 main categories. These are the 4 pillars that create the foundation for speaking and other more advanced language skills.
What are the pillars?
Social Skills.
Attention Skills.
Play Skills.
And Pre-Verbal Communication Skills.
There’s a lot to each of these, so let’s break them down a little more.
Social Skills
This pillar involves interacting with others. And this is critical for language development.
Why? Because your child learns language, and just about everything else, by watching and interacting with other people. Whether it’s you, their siblings or friends, teachers or other adults they spend time with… all those interactions are teaching your child valuable skills.
If they aren’t able to participate fully in those interactions, they’re going to miss out on opportunities for language development.
So what are some social skills kids need to develop to help support speech?
1. Responding to Sounds
Does your child react to the sounds they hear around them? Do they turn and look at you when you say their name?
2. Turn-Taking
Will your child go back and forth with you during activities like stacking blocks or pushing a ball to each other? Do they babble in response to things you say like they’re having a conversation with you?
3. Imitation
Does your child copy your actions? Do they copy the sounds you make?
4. Initiation
How do you know when your child needs something? Do they tug on your hand to show you something? Do they come get you when they need help?
Attention Skills
This second pillar is all about your child’s ability to focus on things, and it’s broken up into 2 main parts:
1. Sustained Attention
How long is your child able to focus?
If your child’s attention span is shorter than what you’d usually expect at their age, it’s going to make it more difficult for them to learn because they can’t pay attention effectively when you’re teaching them things.
2. Joint Attention
Is your child able to pay attention to you, and to shift their attention between you and something else?
Why does this matter? Well, if you’re trying to teach your child something like new words or how to take turns, but they don’t focus on you, or they get distracted as soon as you show them something new, they’re not going to be able to learn very well.
Play Skills
This third pillar is all about play. Play is so important for language develop, because that’s how kids learn best.
When kids are playing, they…
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- Learn new vocabulary
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- Explore their environment
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- Learn about cause and effect
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- Try new things
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- Practice communicating
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- Expand their imagination
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- Develop social skills…
…and the list could keep going on and on. Because when kids play, they learn.
The full progression of play development involves 4 types of play skills and 5 stages of social play. We dive into all of those in our early language development course, but for now, you just need to focus on the 2 that are prerequisites for talking.
1. Exploratory Play
Does your child chew on toys? Do they shake them, hit them together, and throw them on the floor?
Believe it or not, this is all a form of play for a young child. This is the kind of play you’ll see lots of before your child’s first birthday, and gradually see less of as they develop more advanced play skills.
2. Functional Play
Does your child play with toys the way the toys were made to be played with?
In other words, do they make a tower out of blocks instead of throwing them? Do they drive the car around on the floor instead of spinning the wheels?
You’re likely to see this kind of play if your child is two or older. It usually starts developing sometime between the first and second birthday, and is typically seen before your child is ready to start talking.
Pre-Verbal Communication Skills
When we think of communication, we usually think of talking. But there’s so much more to it than that.
Pre-verbal communication involves both receptive and expressive language, just like verbal communication. In other words, even before kids start talking, they need to understand language and have ways of expressing themselves.
The key pre-verbal skills that typically come before your child’s first words are…
1. Understanding Words
Does your child understand the things you say? If you say the name of their favorite toy, do they look at it? If you were playing with farm toys and you said “cow, mooooo”, would they know which animal to grab?
2. Following Directions
Can your child follow directions when you ask them to do things? In early language development, this involves simple instructions for familiar activities, like… “get your shoes” or “eat your food”.
3. Gestures
Does your child use gestures to express themself? Early gestures include waving to say “hi”, or pointing to something they want.
4. Meaningful Sounds
Does your child babble to try to communicate or let you know what they’re thinking?
So to recap…
If your child is a late talker, you need to see which of the 4 pillars and language development they’re having trouble with.
Those 4 pillars are…
Social skills like responding to their name and imitating you.
Attention skills like staying focused and shifting their focus between different things.
Play skills like hitting blocks together and using toys for their intended purpose.
And pre-verbal communication skills like following directions and using gestures.
What to do next…
As you were reading through those lists, did any of the skills or questions stand out as something your child is struggling with? If so, that’s what you want to start working on first, because your child needs those skills to be developmentally ready to start talking.
If there were multiple things, that’s okay. It’s very normal for kids who are late talkers to struggle in several if not all of those 4 main areas.
In that case, think about which you see them struggling with most often or which seems to impact them the most in everyday activities. Then prioritize those first.
And if you want some extra support learning how to work on these skills during daily activities, check out our Everyday Activities Mini-Course.
