I love my niece, Sarah, but for a while, when she was very young and stayed with us, I nearly went wild with her chatter. My sister said she was vaccinated with a phonograph needle and that really described Sarah ... she talked all the time, to anyone or to herself.
It wasn’t the sort of conversation adults can sometimes just say “huh” and “ah” to and be thought to be attentive. She demanded answers to questions and made observations that required explanation. One result of this early language development is that her vocabulary and speaking ability now are far above average for her age and she is doing beautifully in honor classes in school. She has the ability to reason, to think, and to explain that reasoning so others understand.
Her early language development was no accident. Sarah was born into a family that valued children’s questions and conversations as ways for the adults to help them learn vocabulary, develop language skills, and explore their environment: they encouraged her in all the ways they could.
Sarah was born to a family that also understood language development: they would have known if she was not developing language skills at appropriate ages, and so would know to get help for her if she wasn’t.
The best was children learn to talk is from parents and other adults talking to them. There is just no two ways about it ... parents serve as the model for children to copy in every area. For most parents, in those early months of parenthood, it isn’t too difficult.
I once heard it said that we need to teach all children, all the time, the way we teach them to say “Mama”, and those other early words. That is, “forty thousand times, with a smile”. That is exactly what we do ... patiently, over and over, we smile and say, “Say, Mama.” We never give up and we never get angry, we never say, “Listen, you, I said, say mama, and i meant it.”
We pronounce the word the way we want the child to say it, and we don’t “baby talk” because children need to hear words correctly to reproduce them. We all have our favorite stories of words mispronounced by children that have become family favorites ... one of mine said “froggy’ when he meant “foggy” ... however, most words can be clearly spoken if clearly heard.
Children who are not spoken to clearly and who are not required to speak carefully develop not only lazy speech habits such as not putting the ending “ing” sound on “going” so it becomes “goin” and substituting “p” for “b” or “do” in words. They also do not develop the ability to distinguish letter sounds which makes learning to read by sounding out letters very difficult.
A good rule of thumb for speech development is the number of words a child says in a sentence should equal or exceed the child’s age. A 1-year-old says “car,” meaning “I want to in the car”; the 2-year-old says “go car”; 3’s say “go in car”; 4’s will say “I want to ride,” etc.
Another guideline is if your child can be understood outside his immediate family: if only you know what your 3-year-old means, you should ask about it. Don’t wait if you think your child needs help.
Early treatment of speech problems, like any others, will probably avoid lots of frustration later. And when your child, like Sarah, drives you up the wall with chatter, if you and others can understand him, count your blessings.
