Communication

Child care, preschool and school programs all provide rich opportunities to improve your child’s communication skills. Your child will be already benefiting from being included in any of these settings.

Communication & Your Child

Communication is more than just talking. Communication involves connecting with another person, and exchanging information about ideas, feelings and needs. Communication includes talking; the words a child can say, understanding; the words a child can understand and things like pointing or looking to help people understand what the child wants or needs.

This ability to send messages on purpose directly to another person to achieve a specific goal is described as ‘intentional communication’.

As parents, you know your child best, and you are always interacting with your child. Here are some extra tips to help you in supporting your child’s communication.

Articles referenced in video:

Raising Children Network

• Toddlers
• Preschoolers

Hanen

Speech Pathology Australia

Talking and Understanding

One of our senior teachers, Jen Galvin, joined Lou in conversation to talk about what you can do to help your child with these early building blocks of talking and understanding. She also read a book for us, demonstrating some great ideas of how to interact with your child when reading with them.

Late Talkers...What We Know and What We Don't

What does the research say about Late Talkers? Are they at risk for ongoing delay or do they catch up on their own? This article on the Hanen website helps clarify the facts about this group of children and what we can do to help them.

Reading with Young Children

At the end of a busy day, it can be hard to find the time to read stories with your children, or maybe you have a child who moves away when you try to read to them?

Recently I was reminded of this wonderful quote from the Centre for Community Child Health at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne:

“Reading with children from birth to five years is probably the single most important activity families and educators can undertake to enhance the child’s future ability to read and write.”

Here are some tips for reading with children that may be helpful for you:

• If your child finds it hard to stay with you or concentrate, try a lift the flap book, or a feely book so that they can do something while you read.
• If your child wanders away while you are reading, keep going with the story. They are probably still listening and learning. Young children can take a while to learn to listen to a story.
• You can also try just looking at a pictures in a book, or even a catalogue with young children and talking about the pictures with the child.
• Try and choose a book that your child is interested in. If they love dinosaurs, choose a dinosaur book to look at together.