5 Strategies to Promote Communication in Your Young Child

Curious about simple ways to promote communication in your infant or toddler? In this episode, we speak with Carrie Clark, a pediatric speech-language pathologist and the creator of the website, “Speech and Language Kids.” Carrie offers 5 simple strategies families can implement into their everyday lives to promote communication in young children. These include use of: Sign Language, shorter utterances, parallel and self-talk, expansions, and visual supports. Carrie and Ayelet go into detail about how to use each strategy, discussing specific examples and useful ways to implement each one with a child at different communication levels. Great resources we mentioned in this podcast episode (in order they were mentioned): Carrie’s Sign Language Flashcards Sign Language Dictionary (Lifeprint) Carrie’s e-book “Jump Start Your Late Talker” Carrie’s “late talker” resource page “Let’s Talk: Infant & Toddler Development” facebook group Carrie’s “Speech Therapy Solution” membership site with ASHA-approved CEU’s Connect With Us: Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest Carrie: Website / Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest Text Transcript of this episode Ayelet: Hi! Today on Learn With Less, I’d like to welcome Carrie Clark, a speech and language pathologist and creator of speechandlanguagekids.com which provides free resources about speech and language skill development for families and speech-language pathologists. Carrie is also a mom of young kids. Carrie, how old are your kids – and welcome, by the way! Carrie: Thank you! I am a mom. I have two kids, my oldest is 3 years old and my youngest just turned one… so, things are always a little bit chaotic at my house, especially because my oldest has sensory processing disorder, and some days are pretty challenging! It’s always a journey! Ayelet: Exactly! I think pretty much anyone could agree to that! Good, so in your career, you’ve worked with clients of all ages. Let’s talk a little bit about those early communicators. So, infants and toddlers who are not yet using verbal language. Can you describe to our listeners a little bit about what that means and what that might look like? Carrie: Sure! Generally, we expect to see our children get their first words between about 12-15 months. So, we’re going to see that first word or two appear during that timeframe. But, a lot of our children just tend to net get those words right away. And it may be a little while before we see that language emerge. Now,