It is important not to make up your own baby language, as it will just confuse, your toddler, using simple words is far more effective.
Put yourself in the position of your toddler when you ask him,
heslovelyOhesalittledarlingcoocheychhchecoohehasyoureyesOyoursuchalovelylittreboyarentyou?
Does that make sense?
Now you can understand why its takes him so long to talk!
But don't do a Dori either!
hhhhhhoooooooowwwwwwaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeyyyyyyyooooouuuuu?
Talk, Sing and Talk some more to your toddler at every possible opportunity.
Throughout your day tell him what you are doing, and ask him what he is doing. Pause briefly, to allow him the opportunity to express his point of view, even if its not with words.
Your toddler will understand more words than he will actually say, so you can practice with simple early learning games, such as naming.
Where is Johns foot? Where is Johns nose?
It is important to reward your toddler when he shows understanding, acknowledging of his understanding with excitement and enthusiasm can do this.
So in this example, where is Johns foot?
When John touches his foot you would say,
Yes, there's Johns foot, in an excited and enthusiastic tone.
It also important to repeat the naming game word (Johns foot) in your acknowledgement, so that your toddler will associate the word in the question, with your excited response to his action.
There are now many Early Learning Games that encourages language skills and can hold your toddlers attention, as they are interactive bright and colourful.
Toddlers love to listen to simple stories and nursery rhymes, reading and repeating these stories will help his language development.
Eventually, your toddler will start singing or repeating some of the words.
You can encourage his imitation, by pausing briefly when reading or singing, to give him the opportunity to join in and sing a note or two.
Use simple language, repeating and expanding on what your child says.
Expand his sentences to voice what he is trying to tell you. If he says Gone, answer Yes, Daddy has gone, to work with emphasis on Daddy and Gone.
Over the next months and years he will gradually expand his language, filling in the little gaps.
First Gone expands to, Daddy gone and then perhaps Daddy gone work before finally producing the whole sentence.
Reading is one of the most important activities that you can do, it opens up their minds to new ideas, explores their imagination, and is a big stepping-stone for future development.
It is not just a book; it is an adventure that opens the door to a whole new world.
Reading to children, especially babies and toddlers, is a great way to boost development, early reading skills and a great way for you to communicate and bond.
When choosing stories for your toddler, it is so important, to get the appropriate book for their stage of development, we all know that it is important for our child to learn to read, but do you know how important it is that our children have a positive start to learning to read.
There have been many studies that show that children have an advantage when they begin school, across all areas of learning, when parents and carers have given children, a happy experience with books from an early age.
At 1-2 years old, your toddler will like to look at pictures in a book, with you as his entertainer and stories teller.
They will enjoy recognising familiar objects and animals. Your toddler will listen to you name the objects and animals, and may be able to repeat names and the sounds that animals make.
From the age of about 2 years old, your toddler will enjoy listening to a short story and exploring books with the help of pictures or puppets, talking to your toddler about the contents and its meaning will make it even more fun.
Any book that deals with events that your child is familiar with is usually successful, such as getting dressed, having a birthday party or going to the park.
Most importantly of all make reading exciting, fun and enjoyable.
As your child gets older this positive start to reading and talking will insure that they will listen, respond to and take part in language games, it will help them to associate sounds with patterns in rhyme and song and they will start to recognise letters by shape and sound.
This developed of communication skills is a key-learning objective, and importance should be given to both talking, as well as listening.
Listening to music will also help their speech and movement, music benefits their self-confidence, self-expression and helps them to listen and concentrate.
Action Songs help your toddler experience music physically through play, and is great way of interacting between you and your toddler. Your child wont know that he is actually doing educational music games, its just fun to him.
There are many simple action songs that just involve you singing and clapping while your toddler imitates your actions.
Actions songs allow children to take part even when they cant sing all the words and above all, action songs are great fun.
Children love joining in and doing activities with you, an action song can even change their mood, and yours too, making you both happier and content, my personal favourite for changing my mood is Johnny Taps With One Hammer, it just makes me laugh.
You can go to the library and get a range of different music, so you can find out what music makes your toddler tick, and then make up your own educational music game, to get your child involved more in music.
Every child should have a few basic instruments, so that can experiment with music as the wish.
A child's concentration span can be very short, if they are enjoying a piece of music they may well express this the only way they know how, at this age through movement.
Singing simple songs teaches your child how language is constructed and repetition helps your child learn the basic structure of spoken language. They also build on their vocabulary.
Music also offers children a way to explore a whole range of moods and emotions they can identify with, but cant put into words.
Make a musical activity part of your toddlers day, sing their favourite songs with them, make your own instruments, encourage him to sing with other children, play musical games and repeat rhymes and sing funny songs
