Communication & Language Development

As we all know, there are four main aspects of children development which grow and develop rapidly in their first five years.

❤️ Cognitive Skills Development (Intellectual)

💛Motor Skills Development (Physical)

💚 Communication and Language Development, and

💙 Social and Emotional Development

The communication our children learn in their early years will help develop reading, writing, and social skills, later. Parents can begin to communicate with their children since born. Some even start while their babies are still in wombs.

Of course before our children can say their very first words, all they do are crying, cooing, making facial expressions and some body language but many parents forgot that these are the ways the babies communicate to us!

From birth, babies begin to develop two sets of communication skills: receptive skills and expressive skills.

Receptive Skills

Receptive skills is all about hearing and understanding. It is the ability of babies to receive voice signal, thus as babies understand, they will response towards the voice and turn their head over, etc.

For instances, whenever I call Harris, he turns his head to me and whenever Harris hears the sound of aeroplanes, he will quickly look up to the sky ✈️

Expressive Skills

Expressive skills is about conveying. It is the ability of babies to convey messages to the parents through crying, shouting and babbling. Body language are also examples of babies’ early expressive skills.

Harris loves calling me Momma and then start babbling happily. Sometimes he points to something that I can actually understand his message somehow even though he’s just 17 months old. He makes conversations 😊

“Momma, up..” Everytime Harris asks me to lift him up 😂

Smiling, laughing, talking, playing, babbling and reading with babies can help them develop the crucial communication skills. It is all about encouragement 😉

How To Encourage?

• I use high-pitched, sing-song voice to get and keep Harris’ attention while I talk.
• I play and make silly sounds to connect with what Harris is doing.
• I use facial expressions and gestures to communicate the meaning of words to Harris.
• I describe actions to develop language. The easiest way to do is just describing daily routines such as bathing, feeding, playing, etc.
• I encourage two-way communication. When Harris communicates with me using sounds, words, or gestures, I’ll respond and so we take turn in the “conversation”.
• I read together. “Reading” can sometimes mean describing pictures without following the written words. I bought books with large, colorful pictures, and encourage Harris to point on the pictures of objects I ask him.
• I expand Harris’ vocabulary by building on the words he already know. For example, when Harris says “cat”, I would say “Yes, that’s a cat. The cat is orange in colour!”
• I reword Harris phrases by responding with the correct one when got some errors. This will help our children learn proper pronunciation and grammar. For example, if your child says “Kitten small” you can respond with “Yes, the kitten is small.”

Communication and language development is more than just talking. Children develop from making just sounds to words, to phrase and eventually to speak a language.
 
Communication and language development is crucial because speaking is an indicator of fine motor skills development and also a reflection of cognitive skills development.

Every children develop at their own growth rate but here is some milestones chart for your reference.

(Sources of info : pathway.org, helpmegrowmn.org)

Although Harris do his talking mostly by using only one word, he’s developing quite rapidly as he starts making two and three words phrase now such as, “Momma, nak Ayah” and “Vom vomm, jalannnn nakk” while pointing to the car outside of the house! 😂

Harris can also repeat whatever words I say and he’s excellent in flash card games despite he is in a dual language family!

I also believe that promoting more high-quality language interactions between Harris and I will expose him to experiences that can foster his growth in language and communication especially in grammar and vocabulary. What say you? 😊

Love,
Momma Hana 🌹