11 Suggestions for Successful Language Development in Children

Call your child by his name. From birth, address your child by his/her name rather than various adjectives or nicknames, and raise awareness of the people around you about this. Remember that you will support both your child's language and personality development with this behavior.

Respond to all the sounds your child makes. From birth, try to accompany and respond to all your child's sounds. When he cries, try to find out the reason for his crying by confronting him and talking to him. Why did little Ayşe cry? He's not hungry. His diaper is not wet. Or did little Ayşe miss her mother? Like. Imitate their cooing and purring sounds when they are happy. Be silent when he makes a sound, and when he is silent, repeat the sound he makes to him with different tones of voice. In this way, you will both support your child in making sounds and establish quality communication with him/her in the early period.

Excite your child as much as possible with toys that make noise. Introduce. Hearing the same sounds over and over makes it easier for children to make sounds and speak. For this purpose, you can initially use rattles, sound-making bracelets, sound boxes, sound and moving toys hung on the baby's bed or play mat, sound balls, socks or beds. For older children, you can benefit from musical toys, talking dolls and cars, audio tales and story books.

Support your child in making sounds. It is very important to encourage the child to make sounds in the pre-word and pre-verbal period. Imitate animal, vehicle and nature sounds around you. Frequently use sound and syllable repetitions such as woof woof, whiz whiz, cuff cuff, cluck cuff, cluck cuff, boop, moo, and encourage your child to make these sounds. These sounds, which are easier for the child to produce, will accelerate the speech and language development process. Children love listening to nursery rhymes, lullabies and songs. Sing lullabies and songs to your child as often as possible. Be careful to sing the same nursery rhyme, lullaby or song over and over instead of a different nursery rhyme, lullaby or song each time. Listening to the same melody and sounds over and over again will help your child develop his sense of rhythm and make it easier for him to make sounds and speak.

Talk to your child, talk constantly, talk more. To support your child's language development and enrich his vocabulary, talk to him as much as possible starting from the newborn period. Explain to your child in plain language all the activities you are doing and planning to do while feeding, changing clothes, bathing, playing or putting him to sleep. In your conversations, make sure that your expressions are clear and understandable and your sentences are short. Make sure you are in line with him and face to face so he can see your lip movements. Children enjoy changing voice tones and exaggerated facial expressions. To ensure and maintain your child's focus on you, use ups and downs in your voice tone and use body language effectively with exaggerated gestures and facial expressions. When your child starts talking, name his/her sign expressions such as this, this, that, this, this, that. Saying this, he points to a toy. "Do you want your toy car?" Here is your toy car, shall we play with the toy car together? or “Do you want your talking doll? The talking doll is here. You can say, "Let's play house together." One of the important behaviors that improve vocabulary is to expand the child's speech with new words. When your child says home, “This is our home. Our house is our home” or when he says milk, “Here is a glass of milk. You can say, “This milk will help you grow.”

Read or tell as many fairy tales and stories as possible to your child. Read fairy tales or story books with lots of pictures with your child. Encourage your child to comment on the pictures, to establish relationships between the pictures and the text, and to make predictions about the flow of the story or tale by looking at the pictures. There is a close relationship between children's imagination and their vocabulary. Support your child in dreaming. Create imaginary fairy tales and stories where you can use different words with him. Read the same books to your child over and over again, and tell the same fairy tales or stories over and over again. Do not forget that your child will experience new acquisition and learning processes for words and concepts with each reading and telling.

Make your child talk as much as possible. Listening first develops children's receptive language, while speaking develops their giving language. Children love to chat about topics they are interested in. Discover your child's interests and have detailed conversations with him. Support your child in asking questions, commenting on events, and telling what he knows and experiences. Have your child memorize nursery rhymes, poems and songs. Have him sing the poems and songs he has memorized over and over again, and have him tell the fairy tales and stories he has learned and the events he has experienced over and over again. Be careful to listen to your child's explanations with exaggerated facial expressions, curiosity and excitement. Do not interrupt your child while he is speaking or help him construct or complete sentences.

Do not mock, imitate or force. There will be pronunciation errors during your child's language learning process. Deal with it naturally Take it easy. Do not make fun of pronunciation mistakes, do not insist on correcting them, and never punish them. One of the common mistakes parents make is speaking in the child's language. To support your child's development, treat him/her like an adult, do not imitate him/her and never speak in your child's language.

Protect your child from the harmful effects of technological devices. Children are more interested in visual stimuli than sound. For this reason, they focus on images rather than sound in television, computer, tablet and phone programs. Advertisements, music videos, television and game programs designed for adults have a negative effect on language development. Even if they are prepared for children, all programs have the same harmful effects when watched for a long time and uncontrolled. This negative effect is most evident in early childhood. Especially after the age of three, you can benefit from short-term educational programs prepared for your child's age group, where the speech is simple and understandable, the movements are slow, and the image change time is long. Watch programs together so that your child is positively affected and benefits from the program he watches. Chat with your child by making mutual comments about what you watched during and after the program.

Enrich the warnings your child receives. For children, every new environment they enter, every new person they meet, every new object they see means a new stimulus that will support their language development. To support your child's language development and enrich his vocabulary, ensure that he comes into contact with as many people and objects as possible and is in as many physical and social environments as possible.

Be a good role model for your child. Children are good imitators. Educate and improve yourself to be a good model for your child. Try to learn new words to enrich your vocabulary. In your daily life, be careful to speak as many words as possible by paying attention to the structure and sound characteristics of the language and paying attention to pronunciation.