Five Everyday Routines to Help Your Child’s Communication Skills

Are you looking for ways that you can help support your child’s speech and language skills during everyday activities and routines? You don’t always have to set aside a separate time to work on speech and language skills. Everyday routines provide opportunities to support your child’s communication development and they are usually the most meaningful to your child.

Here are five everyday routines to help support your child’s speech and language skills:

1. Reading books. If you read with your child, or if they are now reading on their own, books provide a great way to practice speech and language skills. For younger learners, you can give the child a book or let them pick one out and wait. See what your child points to or talks about. Then, comment on what they talked about. For example, your child may say “bird” to comment on the bird in the book, and you can say, “The bird is flying!” This indirect way of waiting for your child to initiate and reducing direct questions to your child (ex. What’s that?) helps take the pressure off, which can encourage more communication. If your child is working on a specific speech sound, find books that have your child’s sound in them, such as a book about lions for the L sound or a book about Snakes for the S sound. As they follow along with you, they can practice their speech sound by filling in the word, like “lion” or “the snake.” For older learners who are reading on their own, reading aloud from favorite books is a great way to practice speech sounds and learn new vocabulary. Check out this list of books by diverse authors if you’re looking for some new ones!

2. Riding in the car. Taking a trip in the car involves so much vocabulary. You can talk about actions such as “open the door, buckle the seatbelt, turn on the engine, drive the car, stop, go.” You can play ISpy out the window and see if you can find different things as you drive. If your child is working on a specific speech sound, think about a phrase you can use to help them practice. For example, if they are working on the F sound, you can say “I found,” and then fill in the blank, when you spot something. Or if your child is working on R, you can model saying “I see a ___ right there!” 

3. Brushing teeth. Self care routines like this are full of language. Sequencing is a language skill that helps children follow along with everyday events, retell past events in chronological order and understand stories they hear and read. To help your child with sequencing, you can put language to the steps of brushing your teeth as you do the actions. For example, you can say “First, we open the toothpaste, then squeeze it onto the toothbrush, and then brush our teeth! Last, we rinse out our mouth.” Talking about the order of events using transition words like first, next, and last can help children develop sequencing skills. Being in front of the mirror during teeth brushing is also a good time to point out different parts of the body that we use to make speech sounds. We can look at our tongue, our teeth, and our jaw and see how those come together to make sounds. If your child is practicing a set of words, it can be a great idea to tape the words to the mirror in the bathroom and have your child practice those words before brushing their teeth. They will get a great visual cue by looking in the mirror as they practice. 

4. Play. Often, the best motivator to work on speech and language is talking about whatever your child is most interested in. Maybe that’s going places, cars, Minecraft or unicorns. Figure out a way to incorporate your child’s interests in play and let your child lead. See what your child is interested in and talk about that. Your child’s interest will probably have opportunities for you to incorporate more language. If your child likes trains, you can think of all of the words that go along with trains (ex. track, car, conductor, stop, go, fast, slow, red, blue). You can use these words to describe what’s happening as your child plays with the trains, or follow your child’s lead and imitate them when they make a sound, or use another method of communication such as gestures, using an AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) device, or saying a sound. Responding to your child’s communication by acknowledging that you heard them try to say something goes a long way. If your child is working on a specific speech sound, you can see what characters or items within a child’s interest may have that sound. If they like unicorns and are working on the “K” sound, you can practice saying the word “unicorn” with the “K” sound in the middle of the word.

5. Mealtime. During mealtime or snack time, you can help your child’s communication by interpreting your child’s nonverbal communication such as going to get food out of the pantry, or pointing to food. Talk about what your child is doing, such as, “I see you going to the pantry, maybe you’re hungry.” If your child uses an AAC device, such as an app on a tablet, you can model on the device, “hungry” to indicate that you are interpreting your child’s actions as the child being hungry to check in and see if you right. By talking about what your child is doing and what that might mean, you are helping your child understand what their actions and gestures might mean to you. If your child is working on saying a speech sound in conversation, you can pick mealtime as a time to talk with your child if this works for your family. If not, you can do this at any time during the day. Put a visual reminder on the table or next to the child, like a picture of a cartoon snake for the S sound, so your child can remember to practice their sound when they are talking in conversation.  

These are only a few of the many daily routines and activities that many children participate in where you can support communication skills. You don’t have to be a speech therapist or set aside time for “speech therapy” time to work on speech and language skills. Think about the routines your child does each day, and which words you can highlight during those interactions. Or, if your child is working on saying a new sound, think about what words have your child’s sound within those everyday routines and interests.

Does your child or teen need support with communication? Contact me for a free consultation.