How do you teach a child to talk?

When parents think about how to teach a child to speak, they do not understand that even the smallest children are already learning language. Long before they learn to speak, children still communicate with you. The more you listen to your child and respond to his most incomprehensible sounds, the better he will navigate in communication with you and with other people.

How to learn to understand a small child?

You have already learned to interpret the different sounds your baby makes, from delight to extreme distress. As you learn to listen attentively to your baby, you will become better and better at understanding his verbal and nonverbal communication.

Children react more slowly than adults. This is something to keep in mind when you are teaching your child to speak. When listening to your child, keep in mind that it may take time for him to give you feedback. If you cannot understand what your child is saying, do not worry. No parent can understand every cry and babble of their child. However, when you listen carefully to your child and try to understand him, two things happen. First, your child understands that someone is interested in his thoughts and feelings. Second, over time, through trial and error, you will eventually begin to understand most of what your child is saying.

At five or six months, your baby will be making strange sounds, often meaningless, but how joyful it is for mom and dad to hear them. This babbling is good practice for speech development. By six months, your baby will want to practice his new "language" with anyone who will listen. Six months is a very social age. Your baby will enjoy the company of others and will begin to speak to them in his own way. Almost everyone the baby sees will be the object of his new speech skills.

The most pleasant conversationalist is a child

Once your baby starts making vowel sounds, he begins to think of himself as a real conversationalist. It doesn't matter that you can't understand him and he can't understand you. After all, the same is true of many conversations between adults. Your baby wants to talk to you just as much as you talk to others.

You may be surprised the first time you realize that your baby seems to be waiting for you to respond to his strange sounds. It seems incredible that in just six months he is beginning to understand individual words and phrases from adults. When he begins to pause in his babble (perhaps to make sure you are listening), you must treat him as an adult. Your baby will begin to understand from your behavior when it is his turn to listen and your turn to talk. Listen and watch your baby: he stops to listen to what you are saying and may indeed be a better conversationalist than adults.

Imitation of speech by a child

Your baby's imitation and repetition of your words can be very common over the next few months. Even if you don't understand it, you can still both enjoy the "conversation" and your baby will enjoy talking to you, too.

When your child tries to "talk" to you, be polite. Respond to your child's words as you would to any adult. When engaging in face-to-face conversation with your child, maintain eye contact. You can respond to your child's babble by using real words or by repeating sounds and syllables after your child. Once you stop talking, your child may begin to "talk" to you again, trying to keep the conversation going.

When talking to your baby, remember that variety in communication speeds up the learning process. In general, the more you talk, the more your baby will try to talk with you. This is how he or she gets the first social skills. In the coming months, your conversations will become a way for your baby to learn more complex sounds. Discuss things with your baby, but don’t monopolize the conversation. Don’t forget to let your baby know that you are listening.

Watch your speech

Make it a good habit to tell your child something even before he can understand what you are saying. Describe what you are doing. For example: "Now I am going to change my diaper. First we have to take off my romper..."

Also describe what your child is doing. "Look how dirty you are. Let's go to the bathroom and clean up." Your conversation will keep your child interested, help him polish his social skills, and lay the foundation for learning words.

What is the best way for parents to talk to their child? Let's start with the basics. Try not to feel too silly when talking to your child. Even if your child has a very small vocabulary, he is beginning to understand the process of speaking. The more you talk to him, the more he will learn.

Don't be shy about speaking to your baby in that high, sing-song voice that parents have used with babies for centuries. Babies respond better to higher-pitched sounds, so using a high-pitched voice will keep your baby's attention longer.

Remember that it is natural to talk to your baby. You don’t have to simplify your words and grammar for your baby. Remember, no matter how much you simplify your language, your baby doesn’t understand everything you say (at least not until he’s six months old), but he enjoys your stories. Your baby just loves to talk to you. He doesn’t care whether you talk about the weather, housework, or the thermodynamics of nuclear fusion.

Don't spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure out what your baby is saying. He may not be saying anything at all, just making sounds. The meaning in a baby's phrases usually appears before the age of one. In the meantime, the baby is just trying to make sounds and learn to be sociable, just as he sees adults do.

By the end of the sixth month, before your baby says his first words, he will begin to understand a few simple phrases that you say. So now is a good time to start teaching him words. The more you talk to your baby about what is happening here and now and describe how it happens, the easier it will be for your baby to make connections between what he sees and his own speech.

How to teach a child to speak correctly?

If you love music, you can choose from a huge selection of melodies. Most of the rhythmic songs will be a good investment in your child's speech development. Keep the lyrics and melodies simple, but your child will enjoy them no less, listening to them again and again.

With a baby from six months (or even earlier) to a year, you need to speak slowly and clearly to give your baby more opportunities to understand and distinguish individual words. Emphasize the most important words in your speech, especially nouns (a person, place or thing), through musical accents and frequent repetitions.

If you repeat the same nouns in your poems often enough, your child will soon understand what these words mean: names of things, names, events, phenomena. Even if the child does not yet understand what these objects are for, he will associate the names with real objects.

Speech development and dancing

Although talking to you will provide the bulk of preverbal language learning for your child, there are other ways to teach your child to speak. Like all language learning tools, the best ones for children are those that encourage them to speak. Dancing can be a fun and entertaining way to do this. While dancing, you can tell your child how and what to do, sing songs, and he will remember the words very quickly.

It is too early to teach your child to read and speak. He can read something with you or play by himself, but at this age you should avoid books with paper pages. Your child will not only "read" books, but will also tear pages, chew them, throw them and spoil them in every possible way.

There are special books made of thick cardboard or plastic for children. They are difficult to tear or spoil. These books can be given to a child to learn words and simple phrases.

What else can be done to teach a child to speak?

Respond to the child's calls and cries

Babies can't tell you anything intelligible, but they can communicate their emotions and needs through crying. In the first year, crying is the basis of their communication system. When we respond to crying, babies understand that they are in a world that will hear them, that they are in a safe place where their needs will be met.

Talk to your child, even if it seems to you that he does not understand you yet and cannot answer you. Tell him about your feelings, emotions, describe the simplest actions. The child will get used to the flow of speech and will gradually begin to distinguish words. And then he will talk to you himself.

Communicate with your child regularly

If you regularly talk to a small child and listen to him, it will be easy for him to learn the language. Speech modeling is the best teaching aid. Children, listening to correct speech, learn to speak correctly themselves. When modeling correct speech, they will gradually learn to construct sentences and phrases.

Sing songs to your baby

These songs can be anything: a song while bathing in the bathtub, while washing dishes, while walking in the park, while changing diapers, as well as a traditional lullaby before bed. The rhythms and melodies of music, according to psychologists, contribute to language learning. After a year of regularly listening to songs, the child will learn a lot of new words and will be able to repeat them.

And remember: when you buy music CDs for children, it's only half the battle. Your child will remember many more words from your live singing than from listening to electronic music.

Reading, singing, poetry, talking to your child - all of these help develop your child's language and communication skills. But the most important stimulus for your child is the sound of your voice and all the love you can give. To teach your child to talk, enjoy communicating with him.