11 Techniques to Strengthen Children's Communication Skills
Imagine that a small child, a couple of years old, has tremendous pain in a tooth, for example. They try to let you know, but since they haven’t developed their speaking abilities yet, they don’t succeed. This is why it’s important to know some techniques to strengthen children’s communication skills.
If children don’t go through each stage of development with minimal language capabilities, they’ll suffer more difficulties when communicating with their elders and with their peers. Therefore, when they have a problem, such as the pain that we mentioned before, not only will there be pain present, but also frustration in not being able to properly express the problem.
Nonetheless, we must remember that children have their own rhythms. For example, we can’t expect a one-year-old to have an extensive vocabulary. However, it’s a good idea to provide support with techniques and strategies that allow them to manage the acquisition of skills such as language – keeping in mind that we must respect each child’s natural development.
How to strengthen children’s communication skills
Lara Beltrán is a speech therapist with a degree in Red Cenit. For many years, she’s been focusing on adequate development with children that have language problems and limited communication skills.
Remember that the stages of child development are key to developing correct listening skills and a minimum level of attention.
Thus, it’s necessary to help children with language stimulation. These stimulation techniques will be especially important when dealing with any child’s neurodevelopmental disorder.
With that in mind, we consider the following techniques to be effective in this matter.
Toys and objects
It’s advisable to use toys and various objects, some of which are very common. For example, a story, a book with photographs, or drawings… Any of them will be useful to enhance children’s language development.
Reinforcing children’s efforts
We must reward and reinforce children every time they make an effort to be understood. Rather than ridicule (something you should never do), we’ll respond when they make their vocalizing attempts and let them know that we take pride in their work.
Being a role model helps strengthen children’s communication skills
Children need a model of linguistic correction and language articulation. We can be that model. Hence, we should speak slowly and clearly to them so that they know what is correct and what isn’t.
Promoting the need for language
We should also encourage the use of language in children. For this, we’ll let them express themselves and ask for what they want without anticipating their needs.
Reading
It’s important for children to read a little bit every day. For instance, fairytales with pictures, stories, and oral tradition help to stimulate children’s linguistic improvement.
Using expressions and gestures
This is another simple aspect that we don’t always take into account and is very effective. To help children improve their linguistic and communicative skills, it’s constructive to use gestures and be very expressive.
Simple linguistics to strengthen children’s communication skills
Likewise, it’s good to communicate with children through simple, colloquial language, and that we structure short sentences that they can understand well. With the right tone and short speech, we’ll get them to participate and also imitate us. Thus, it’s necessary to simplify as much as possible.
Use of descriptions
It’s good to describe with words things that children do that entertain them, like drawing or playing with a puzzle. We can even take photos that we can use later so that the children can identify various activities and improve their self-knowledge, level of understanding, and ability to describe routines.
Opportunity and time
When children are trying to respond, no matter how much trouble they’re having, we must give them time to do it. It’s important that they make the effort to express themselves, even if it’s very hard.
Using familiar sounds
You can use familiar and routine sounds like a door opening, a dog barking, or a doorbell ringing. All this will catch their attention and help you to work on their communication skills on a basic level.
Using music to strengthen children’s communication skills
Encourage a taste for music and melodies in your children. Using simple nursery rhymes helps them pick up a conversational rhythm and develop communicative fluency.
In short, these 11 techniques to strengthen children’s communication skills that we offer you are just a small portion of everything you can use. The important thing is that you apply them correctly, with love, empathy, and patience. Little by little you’ll see excellent results.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Sánchez, E., Escudé, N. (2020). Expresión y comunicación (CFGS EDUCACIÓN INFANTIL). Alicante: Editorial Altamar.
