Children begin to develop an understanding of their environment and ultimately develop social communication and language through routines. Children with delays benefit even more from structured routines and repetitive exposure to routines and language throughout their day. Additionally, children will more likely engage in activities that are motivating and fun to them. Therefore, developing language routines around activities or toys she enjoys will increase her engagement in these routines. She will begin to anticipate the next step, will begin to imitate and/or vocalize and will become an active participant in the activity. With this participation you can open the doors to encourage social interaction and communication, imitation and vocalization which are stepping-stones to latter developing language and communication skills.
How to: After determining the activities/toys your child enjoys the most, begin to engage her in these activities several times during the day. Some routines can be done throughout the day with a variety of activities (e.g., "uh-oh" whenever something silly or unexpected happens). Develop routines around specific times of the day or specific activities in your child’s everyday schedule (e.g., bath-time, bedtime, mealtime, diaper-changing time). You can choose to engage in one, two or three specific activities and engage in them with your child at specific times in her day (book routines at bedtime, one specific song at bath-time and one at diaper changing time, and the same language routine every time you sit down for playtime). These can be pivotal times of learning and social engagement in your child’s life. The most important thing to remember is to make time to play and engage purposefully with your child frequently throughout her day.
Some suggested routines:
Songs Language routines
Pat-a-cake Peek-a-boo
Twinkle-twinkle “Uh-oh”– (when something unexpected happens in play)
Eensy, Weensy Spider Ready, set, GO!!!!
Ring around the Rosie Bubbles routine
Language Routine Example
With language routines, you are facilitating your child’s development of social turn-taking and pre-verbal communication (gestures). When you sit down to engage your child in a language routine, the first stage of teaching entails a lot of exposure. At this point you are not expecting any response from your child other than attention to the activity and for her to smile and have fun with the activity. Be silly in order to keep her engaged!! If you’re not having fun, she isn’t having fun either!!! Pair the language routine with some sort of gesture or movement. For example, with “ready, set…go” you can pair the word “go” with one arm up over the head and sweeping it down as if you were starting the race cars off on a race! By 9 months of age children can imitate gestures and should begin to participate in the activity. If your child is not imitating your arm gesture, you can have older siblings join and everyone models the gesture or you can have her sit in another person’s lap facing you and the other person helps your child do the motion while she observes you doing it and saying the word, “GO”. Eventually, as your child becomes familiar with the routine, you can begin to pause at a strategic point in the routine (ready, set....) waiting for her to signal to you to continue or to “finish” the routine (in this example doing the gesture independently or vocalizing in some way). You’ll want to hold your arm up (as though you are about to do the gesture) with an expectant look to communicate to your child that you are waiting for her to take her turn. Don’t rush her. You can count in your head to 10 and if she doesn’t respond, continue with the activity, and just keep playing as long as she’s enjoying. You’ll get there eventually!!
You can begin to engage your little one in fun activities like this as early as 6 months of age when she has a little more motor control to sit up, or to pull a blanket off her face in peek-a-boo. By 9 months of age she should begin to participate in the activities by attempting to do some of the motions, and/or by vocalizing in some way to be part of the activity or let you know that she wants you to do it again. Your little one would typically be enjoying these types of activities and even initiating them with you by 12 months of age.
Enjoy your little one and treasure these times together!!!
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