SD 2 year old

Play is one of the greatest forms of learning to communicate. ‘Parallel play’ by playing with your child’s toys even if it appears they aren’t watching you, they’ll get intrigued by what you’re doing, e.g play with ‘little people’ as they can ‘talk’ and then eventually your child will mirror that and use those words in play (e.g) making a toy person walk and saying ‘i am walking’, build up to adding more actions such as building a house out of building blocks and have the person cook etc, at first you feel really daft playing by yourself with your toddlers toys but it does work, even if it’s just 5 minutes every other day.

Using words they can repeat ‘brush my teeth’ ‘i am eating’ as they’re likely to repeat phrases, so them literally saying ‘brush your teeth’ wouldn’t make sense for example .

adding words, apple > red apple > red juicy apple. train > moving train, helps build up sentences

Buying toys that are linked to education, like pretend food for role play, 2 player games to learn to take it in turns, drawing, flash cards, building toys. Limiting screen time so they can mirror face to face engagement

Doing games where you are practising exercising the mouth muscles like making snake noises ect. Breaking up words by clapping el-e-pant. Blowing bubbles. Games like putting items into a pillowcase and guessing what it is ie ball, bear, doll.

Sorry to jump on this post but my boy (3) says all the words but can’t converse. He just echos 99% of the time (he has been referred for speech and trying to get him referred for an autism assessment) he can read but I can’t get him to converse! We watch and play! He hears us talking all the time! He doesn’t really watch any children’s tv, which may hinder him in some ways- he just isn’t interested in anything that isn’t numbers or letters!