Building Your Child’s Ability to Communicate: Talking

Building your child’s ability to speak and to understand others is a three-pronged endeavor. It includes talking to your child, listening to your child, and reading with your child.  This blog will focus on talking.

A child learns much from conversation. Conversation, and the vocabulary that develops because of it during the early years of a child’s life, helps to build your child’s cognitive power. In conversation, words are symbols consisting of sounds created by the vocal chords. For a child who does not yet have a vocabulary and who has not mastered the capacity to get meanings from sounds made by the vocal chords, this is indeed a complex and challenging learning situation. Remember that listening to and getting meaning from sounds requires the ability to associate these sounds with something familiar to the child. This is more complicated than you might think, particularly if this task is analyzed from the point of view of the child. Remember that your child is beginning with zero vocabulary, and does not even know that vocabulary exists.


Very young children need consistent speech stimulation, and parents should converse frequently with them. Some studies of child behavior indicate that children will make earlier attempts at speaking and will jabber and make conversational mimicry if, during the early months of their lifetime, they live in an environment where they are talked to frequently. Even at an early age when you may not think your child is understanding you, it is important that conversation (even if it is a one-way chat) occurs frequently. The entire first five-year period of a child’s life is critical to building vocabulary and developing language skills.


Children begin to develop a “word recognition” vocabulary before they can speak. That means he will recognize and be able to respond to many words before he can say them himself. You can enhance your child’s ability to recognize words by clearly repeating simple words for him. When you are putting on his shoes say, “Shoes.” Repeat the word “hand” as you stroke your child’s hand. When you see a dog strutting by, point and say, “That’s a dog. Dog.”


A child who is spoken to as if he can understand will soon learn to understand. He will develop a keen intellect and a powerful means of expressing his thoughts as he listens to you.