5 Speech Therapy Secrets to Get Your Child Talking

Try one of these next time you're playing with your child and watch their language grow

When I was in grad school I was assigned clients to work with in the student clinic. Each room had a 2-way mirror into an attached observation room where parents could sit during their child’s speech session. I remember wondering whether the parents would think I was actually doing any speech therapy since at first glance, a speech session with toddlers can look a lot like regular old play time. That’s because when working with little ones, speech therapists tend to use play-based, natural techniques to encourage language use. Don’t be fooled: these techniques can look like normal play, but they are actually evidence-based practices that, when used consistently, can increase your child’s language.

Here are my top 5 speech therapy “secrets” to get your child talking.

Secret #1 - Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

This is definitely my number one tip when working on developing language. Repetition is key to your child learning a new word. Remember to pause and give your child an opportunity to say the word. It might not sound exactly right yet. Repeat the word again after them to keep modeling it.

My toddler is learning the word “again.” Today we practiced while blowing bubbles and it sounded like this: ”Bubbles! Again?“ (Pause) She says “Unga” I say “Again! Again bubbles!” (Pause) She says “Unga” I say “Again. Again! Again bubbles!”

Secret #2 - Self-Talk

This secret is simple: narrate what you are doing as you are doing it. Let’s think of a scenario where you and your toddler are playing with cars on the floor. As you play you’re saying “I have a blue car. Vroom! See my car driving fast. Crash! I crashed into your car! I found another car. This is a red car. The red car drives around the blue car.”

Self-talk matches words and actions together in a way that makes it easy for your child to imitate you.

Secret #3 - Parallel Talk

We’re not done with narration yet! Where self-talk is narration of your own actions, parallel talk is narration of your child’s actions. This is an extremely helpful technique if your child isn’t using many words yet. Let’s look at a play-time scenario with legos. As your toddler plays, you’r watching what he is doing and putting words to it. “You picked a yellow block. That block is bumpy. It goes on the green block. You’re building a big house. It’s getting so tall!”

Parallel talk helps you share your child’s focus and encourage joint attention.

Bonus tip: Although self-talk and parallel talk are play-based interventions, you don’t have to limit narration to play time. Try to narrate yourself and your child through daily activities, like doing the dishes, buying groceries, or folding laundry. The more language your child hears, the more chance he has to imitate it.

Secret #4 - Expand

Expansion is a technique I use so often in speech therapy, it has become second nature whenever I am talking to little kids. Expansion is useful for children who are speaking in single words or simple phrases. The secret is to take what the child says and make it into a grammatically correct sentence. Here’s some examples:

Your child says “dada shoe” Your child says ”ball”

You say “That’s dada’s shoe” You say ”The ball is bouncing”

Your child says: “outside” Your child says ”car go fast”

You say ”Let’s go outside” You say ”the car went fast”

Secret #5 - Extend

Last but not least, we have *drumroll please* extension! Extension goes hand in hand with expansion, but instead of repeating what your child said as part of a full sentence, you add semantic (meaningful) information to your child’s utterance. Let’s use some of the same child examples and context from above:

Your child says “dada shoe” Your child says ”ball”

You say “Yeah, he put it on” You say ”it’s a red ball”

Your child says: “outside” Your child says ”car go fast”

You say ”it looks hot today” You say ”I saw it zoom away”

Cool fact: expansion and extension decrease the amount of new information your child has to process and increase the likelihood of your child imitating part or all of your phrase

These secrets are the real deal!

But don’t just take my word for it. Pick one or two of these and try them consistently for the next few weeks and watch the magic happen. Tell me what you picked and what changes you saw! Don’t forget to subscribe so yon can keep getting more tips like this.