Babies. Children. Teenagers. Their speech and communication. Anything of interest in here for you? If not, move on, or stay, you might find it interesting.

Babies. Children. Teenagers. Their speech and communication. Anything of interest in here for you? If not, move on, or stay, you might find it interesting.

Still here? Great, let’s start with the wee ones. Play based learning is the only way for children to learn. What I mean by that is, it is the best way for children to learn. Children’s brains grow when they play, they develop motor skills, test working theories, develop a real sense of safety, they communicate, they challenge themselves, make decisions …a whole raft of complex processes take place. It is our job as parents and educators to respond to babies and young children in such ways as to develop them further. Look them in the eye, talk to them, sing to them, cuddle, hug, and kiss them. All of these fire the neurons in their brains and what fires, wires. You’re wiring in that love and care. It gives them a sense of safety so they can go out and take safe risks to grow.

Top tips to develop clear and correct speech for your children. 

1.  When you are speaking with young children the most important thing is facing them, children learn by doing so if they can see your mouth as you speak they are more likely to pick up sounds correctly.  

2. Eye contact gives them a greater sense of safety and that you are listening to them.
3. Listening- remove these 5 filters for building a relationship so your children feel safe talking to you now and as they grow.  

Don’t.... 

• Judge or criticize (you are so stupid, why would you do that?).

• Dole out platitudes  (You’re so clever, you don’t need to worry about this) NB – more on this fixed mind-set type of praise later and why it can be dangerous.

• Minimalise their concerns (oh, it’s no big deal, you’ll be right). 

• Give out unsolicited advice.

• Tell your own story or someone else’s around the same or similar situation.

PDF of ages and stages – this is just for ease of understanding. Your child could be any age or ‘stage’ and these tips could be helpful.

TEENAGERS! Yippee. Mumbling (speaking quietly, quickly and unclearly) can be a result of lack of confidence. ‘Let’s get these words out as fast as possible/as quickly as possible so we can move on from me’ can be a couple of reasons why teens are likely to mumble. Is there anything you as a parent can do about it? No, not really. They have to want to do it themselves so give them an option of getting speech lessons (can be online so no one knows about it) and then let it go, they’ll grow out of it. When they’re about 28. 

In 2004 The Ministry of Youth Development conducted a study with the premise to identify the factors that help most young people to lead a happy and productive life and to support them.  “Strengths based approach in young males, with particular emphasis on young men at risk of harming themselves. It found, rather than having a problem orientation and risk focus, a strengths- based approach works at developing the factors that protect young people.” 

My top recommendation for developing a strengths-based approach is “The Strength Switch” by Lea Waters. 

Learning alongside your children is THE most powerful way to learn and connect with your child at the same time. Yes, even capital letters. Teach yourself the 7 aspects of voice development for clear and confident speech with the Say It Clearly training manual and your children will learn alongside you.

Feel free to email me with any questions or comments. Or use the Book A Time button to do just that.

Miriam.