Today’s post will focus on pragmatic language development and the ways to stimulate the development of these skills with your children. Pragmatic language can be thought of as social language. Communication serves a social purpose. To be effective communicators, we need to be able to understand others’ intentions and express ourselves. Pragmatic language skills are composed of verbal (speech and language) and non-verbal (gestures, eye contact, facial expression) abilities that we use in our day to day social interactions.
Pragmatic language skills are critical as they allow us to interact easily and seemingly with others in our community. Without these skills, children would have unsuccessful social interactions due to poor social communication.
The following is a brief guideline of the development of pragmatic language skills according to age. I will also give you some examples of activities to help stimulate your child’s social language development.
Spend quality time face to face with your baby. You can have your baby lying down on their back or sitting on you while facing you. Talk to your baby, sing to them, and make silly faces.
You can engage in vocal play and see if your child turns their eye gaze to you. For example, have your child on your lap facing you and engage in some vocal play. You can say things like “aaah, oooo, eeee, bababa, mamama”, you can also make funny sounds. If your child looks away then stop making the sounds, see if they look back at you. Once they do, keep smiling and making the sounds/noises.
When you talk about certain things, point your finger in that direction. It helps direct your child’s attention to look at what you are talking about and also starts to teach them intentional communication (i.e. children point to things as a way to request non-verbally).
In play – point to the specific objects as you name them (e.g. ball, book, cow, etc.).
In the daily routine – point to objects/food/people you see on a daily basis as you name them (e.g. cup, blanket, diaper, shoes, tree, cloud, plane, juice, milk, water, apple, mommy, daddy, etc.)
Engage in vocal play turn taking (your child should be babbling). You can practice having “conversations” by taking turns babbling with your child. Imitate what your child says back to them. Try to see if they imitate you. Remember to pause after your turn to let your child have a turn and attempt to say something back. For example, your child says “babibiba” you say back “babibiba” and wait to see if they take another turn. You can try different sound combinations and see if your child attempts any of them (e.g. dadido, doodoodah, mimami, googoogaga, bidibada, gigibooboo).
There are a variety of ways you can play peek-a-boo. You can control the game and hide/unhide your face as you please with your hands or a blanket. If your child is tolerant, then you can also change it up and hide their face instead of yours. You can give the control to your child by placing a blanket over your head and waiting for them to pull it off. You can also play with more people. Have mom/dad/sibling sitting with the blanket on their head while the other parent encourages the child to go take the blanket off.
Model greetings for your child, say hi/bye to those you see around you. Have them practice waving and attempting to vocalize hi/bye. I also like to work this into play when I clean up the toys with the child. For instance, if we were playing with the farm animals I would say “bye + animal name” (e.g. bye cow) before putting each animal back in the box and wave bye at the same time. If the child is imitating then they will likely either wave, say bye or do both with you.
Around 18 months, communication starts to become more functional. Your child understands that words and gestures have meaning and that they can use these tools to meet their needs and wants. If your child is only using gestures be sure to imitate that same gesture and add a word to it. For example, your child puts their hands up signaling that they want to be picked up, then put your hands up like your child and say “up.” After a lot of repetition your child will start to attempt to use words along with their gestures.
Children strive to be independent and in control. However, they have not yet mastered the ability to request verbally independently. It is up to you to show them how to ask for things to meet their needs. One way is to teach them gestures for “give me” and practice saying “gimme” or “I want.” For example, if your child is pointing to something they want, then you can show them a more appropriate gesture for “give me”, say “gimme” , then give them the desired item. You can also add further language by naming the item. If your child points to the cup, you can say “cup, gimme cup” while gesturing and then give it to your child.
Often times, we will smile and nod when we do not understand someone so as to not be rude. However, this behavior will be a disservice in the long run to your child.
If I don’t understand what a child says I say “I didn’t understand what you want/said” nicely and then I will wait to see if the child can try to say it again in a different manner. It is important for children to try and practice re-iterating utterances in a way others around them can understand. Your child may need more specific feedback. If you can’t understand them because they spoke too fast ask them nicely to say it again slowly. If it was long and complicated ask them if they can tell you in a shorter way. If your child is unable to re-iterate what they said, then see if you can guess what they are talking about and model some examples for them to choose from/ask questions like “Did you say you want to eat? You saw a big green leaf outside?”
Encourage your child to integrate dialogue into play between their toys or themselves and the toy. You can help by modeling and initiating a play scheme. For example, the cow and pig are going on an adventure to find some apples. Then have the cow and pig talk to each other and change the voice of each animal a little. Encourage your child to talk as if he/she is the pig or the cow while you both play.
Set up a tea party with all of your child’s favorite stuffed animals/toys and give them each a name. Then encourage your child to talk to them and ask questions. For example, “Mr. teddy do you want some tea? Do you want sugar? Drink your tea. Oh too hot! Blow to cool it down.” This will help expand their imagination and practice certain conversational skills that can later be practiced on social beings who will respond back. In the meantime you and your child will have the control over the toys’ “responses.”
Start having discussions about ideas and feelings with your child when reading books. When reading a book, ask them about what they think the character is thinking/feeling within the context. Model the language for the different emotions (e.g. sad, happy, angry, excited, worried, scared) and give explanations (e.g. “She is sad because she misses her friend”). Make connections to the characters and discuss when you or your child felt the same way. For instance, you could say “She is sad because she misses her friend. I would feel sad if I had no friends. Remember, this morning you were sad when daddy went to work. Did you miss daddy?” Also, ask questions such as “What makes you happy, sad, angry, worried?”, “Why do you think she/he did that?”, “What do you think will happen next?”
One of the best ways to practice turn taking skills is to play a board game. Teach your child the conventions of social games and how everyone has a turn and you have to wait your turn, don’t allow cheating and let them know it’s okay to lose sometimes. Practice saying “my turn, your turn” or if multiple people are playing you can ask “who’s turn is it” and have your child say “Bob’s turn, Linda’s turn, mommy’s turn, her/his turn.” That way your child still stays active within the game while they await their turn. Encourage them to make comments to others such as “good job, nice play, too bad, almost, so close” during the game. Help them learn appropriate statements if they lose/win such as “maybe next time, good game, congratulations, I had fun.” Your child may also experience some frustration once they understand the concepts of winning/losing. That is a good teaching moment and helps them learn to talk it through by saying things like “I’m frustrated I didn’t win, I don’t like losing but its okay, I had fun but I’m upset I didn’t win.”
The following are some of my favorite board games to play with preschool-aged children.
It is important for your child to advocate for themselves and be able to say what they want or don’t want. When you observe your child, see if they are able to resolve conflicts/compromise/provide their thoughts in their interactions with adults and peers. If they do not do so and you notice a moment they could have said something then bring it to their attention during or after the event (depending on the situation). You may intervene during the event to help your child communicate in the moment and/or to prevent behaviors from escalating.
For example, your child and her friend wanted to play different things and instead of compromising they played separately. You could pull your child aside and say “Your friend came over to play with you. I know she wants to play with dolls and you want to play with trucks. Maybe you could ask her if she wants to play trucks first and then dolls or play with both at the same time. You both love playing together.”
Remember you are your child’s model so they are looking to you for examples of how to express themselves in social contexts to make requests, problem solve and reason.
A lot of these pragmatic skills can be targeted through reading books. Encourage your child to ask questions while reading and ask about what words mean. If they don’t ask these type of questions then you can ask them “What do you think _ means?” For instance, repeat the sentence with the new word (e.g. the frog leapt over the pond) and ask them for their thoughts on what that could mean (e.g. what does “leapt” mean?). Always provide the context of the sentence for the word so that your child can try to figure it out. You may also need to explain to them what meaning is, if they don’t know the concept “means.” Also provide examples of other words (e.g. leapt means jump, the frog jumped over the pond). You can then act it out (e.g. leaping like a frog) and say “let’s leap like frogs” so that your child integrates the meaning of the word using different modalities. Similarly, you can draw pictures (e.g. a frog leaping over the pond) and have your child talk about the picture using the new vocabulary. Using more than one modality (tactile, visual, auditory, kinesthetic) can help your child better intergate new information and improve comprehension.
At this age, children love arts and crafts as their fine motor dexterity for coloring, cutting and gluing has vastly improved. Pick out some fun and simple crafts that you and your child can make. I like to have the pictures for each step of the craft so as to provide a visual guide for the child. That way they can participate with you and tell you what needs to be done according to the picture and what materials are needed.
If your craft doesn’t look right you can ask your child “What did we do wrong? Let’s look back” and see if you can work together to find what step you forgot or how to fix it. If you are not into crafts you can do other types of projects such as simple science experiments, recipes, gardening, etc.
Information about communication milestones was referenced from Linguisystems – Guide to Communication Milestones 2012 Edition.
This concludes our series of the whats and hows for the development of language. Look out for the whats and hows series as related to speech development in the near future.
Leave a comment down below or e-mail me with any questions or ideas that you have. I hope you enjoyed this series and found it informational!
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