Tips for Talkers: Levi’s Language Journey (So Far)
Everyone is shocked by 2-year-old Levi’s verbal skills. Even as a writer and English teacher with a degree in Applied Linguistics, I’m always in awe of my little guy’s speech: He uses complete sentences. He answers “why?” questions with reasonable “because…” clauses. He can explain sequences of events, and he constantly surprises us by jumping into nearly any conversation without warning. (Those little ears are always listening!)
Aside from questions about Jack’s mouth-watering recipes, the most common question we receive is, “How did you get Levi talking so well?!” All children develop at different rates. It is not—I repeat—NOT a race, but if you want to encourage your child to speak more, here are a few tips we can offer from our personal parenting strategy:
1. Ditch the Baby Talk
Speaking to an infant in tiny words and goo-goo-ga-ga’s isn’t doing them any favors. The more grammatically correct language that children are exposed to, the quicker they will learn the language. That’s not to say that they will start responding to you in words of their own right away, but listening and comprehending are the first steps in language development.
As soon as Levi was born, we began speaking to him in normal, every-day English—normal tone of voice, normal talking speed, etc. We would chat to wordless little Levi about everything from our daily schedules, to the steps of unloading the dishwasher, and more.
It can feel draining to speak to a baby all day long when they never talk back to you, but the more you talk to them, the more language they are learning, not to mention that the more they hear you speak the more they will realize that you expect them to “use their words,” too.
2. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
Once your kiddo starts saying words of their own, be sure to repeat what they said back to them. You can casually fill in their missing grammar. For example,
Baby: “Mama! More. More.” (pointing at food)
Parent: “You want Mama to give you more food. Okay! Here you go.”
Doing this all the time will provide countless language learning opportunities for your child. It also enforces the idea of active listening, a skill that many adults need to work on as well!
I also do this as a sneaky way to introduce synonyms into Levi’s internal vocabulary database. Like this,
Baby: “Give me more potatoes, Mama!” (pointing at mashed potatoes)
Parent: “You would like Mommy to get you another scoop of mashed potatoes? Okay! Enjoy.”
3. Define New Terms
Rather than avoiding difficult vocabulary or common slang phrases around our toddler, whenever we use a new word, we make a point to tell Levi what it means. For example,
Parent: “Hey Levi, can you give me a hand with this? ‘Give me a hand’ means, ‘Can you please help me with this?’”
Parent: “We’ve been playing in the sun for a long time. Let’s drink some water! We need to stay hydrated. ‘Hydrated’ means, ‘our body has enough water inside so we don’t feel sick.’”
The best part about this tip is that your child might start explaining terms to you, too! Now, whenever Levi says something that we can’t understand, he will explain what he meant exactly like that.
4. Read to Them
Enough said.
We enjoy reading Levi a book before he takes a nap and again before he goes to bed each night. He gets to pick which book we will read, which gets him excited about story time. (Using reading as part of his sleep training routine was a big help, too, but that’s a story for another time.)
5. Make Learning Experiential
The biggest thing we’ve learned so far is that experiences = memories, which means any new words a child learns while experiencing something enjoyable are far more likely to make it into their verbal repertoire. This is why home-cooking is such a great vehicle for learning! For example, holding an apple in front of your child’s face and saying, “Apple. This is an apple,” might introduce the word ‘apple’ into their vocabulary just fine. However, pairing that lesson with their first discovery of this food, their first taste of it, their first time touching the smooth, waxy skin, or their first time hearing Dada take a big crunchy bite of the fruit adds experiential memory that inevitably boosts word retention.
Luckily for Levi, he is surrounded by family members with things to do! His Papa is constantly fixing things around the house, and Levi is encouraged to tag along and participate. The amount of tools and handy-man words that Levi knows is beyond me, and that’s not from learning from afar. It’s from the hands-on experience of fixing that leaky shower with his grandfather. It’s from the memories that they made together. The vocabulary naturally follows.