Parents have the biggest impact on how a child develops. If our aim is to support a child to reach their full potential, we cannot achieve this without working together with parents.
If you can support parents and families with the three areas below, you’ll be providing them with the tools to help their child develop…
Help parents to understand the importance of Speech, Language and Communication (SLC) and know what to expect as their child develops.
Useful websites:
- Tiny Happy People
- Best Start in Life health advice - NHS
- Help for families - Speech and Language UK: Changing young lives
Useful resources:
- Ages and stages - Speech and Language UK: Changing young lives
- What to expect, when? A parent's guide
How often do you talk about talking?
If we want to raise the profile of Speech, Language and Communication (SLC) development, we need to talk about it – and not just when we have a concern. Development of SLC should be a frequent topic of conversation with families from their first involvement with your setting or service. Parents need to see that SLC is important to you as a professional – how do you show this?
Do you provide access to information for parents to help them understand their child’s next steps for SLC? Consider how you do this – is it accessible for all parents? Consider different ways of communicating the information – displayed in your setting, using social media, talking in person?
There are lots of great resources out there which you can signpost families to, including our information on our speech, language and communication development page.
You could also use information and ideas from here: Tiny Happy People - Tips and advice for children's speech and language
One fantastic way to support families is to encourage them to Chat, Play and Read with their children. This is important at any age, but there are some ideas about how you could use this in early years below.
Give parents ideas of specific activities they can try at home to focus on Speech, Language and Communication.
The idea of ‘Chat, Play, Read’ is still useful here, you can use it to focus on activities a child has shown interest in and help a parent understand how they can use it to develop their child’s SLC skills.
There are also some great ideas here at Resources (ican.org.uk), as well as on all the links provided above.
Can we help our children become confident communicators? We can if we...
Chat - Having regular conversations with babies and young children helps them to develop good talking and listening right from the start – it’s the key for learning!
Play - Playing together with adults and other children opens up a whole new world of experiences to talk and learn about.
Read - Looking at books and sharing stories together with young children is a great way to help them become good talkers and readers.
We LOVE using the ‘Chat, Play, Read’ approach to support families – it’s simple but so effective.
Good communication needs lots of different skills - it's not just about talking. Children need to develop in all these areas to build strong communication that will help them to learn.
Chatting, playing and reading with children will help them in all of these areas.
Speech sounds:
- Chat about the sounds you can hear. Draw their attention to words that rhyme or start with the same sound. Try not to correct your child’s speech but just say the words correctly for them to hear.
- Play with sounds! Use lots of sounds when you play, like animal noises or ‘weeee’ down the slide! As they get a little older you could play games like I spy, and talk about the sounds you hear.
- Read - books often have lovely rhyming words or words with the same first sound. Talk about them as you read, notice the sounds as you listen.
Interaction and talking:
- Chat together - take time to have conversations. Take turns back and forth with talking. Even young babies can chat too—respond to their sounds and giggles as though they are telling you something!
- Play together - and take turns. Let your child show you how to play. Try not to ask too many questions, but comment on their play instead and give them time to reply.
- Read - when looking at books, leave pauses as you talk and give your child time to show or tell you something about what they see or to try out new words they have learnt.
Understanding:
- Chat and use the words for the things your child is interested in at that time so they learn to make the connections. As they get older add new words or more words to their sentences.
- Play helps your child to understand what things do and what they are for. Tell them the words for new things, and use lots of actions and gestures where you can.
- Read stories together, using the pictures to help your child understand any new words. Use the new words again later when you’re chatting too.
Play:
- Chat while you play; comment on what you and your child are doing. Use new words to help them learn.
- Play together - get involved! Children love it when grown ups join in. Just remember not to take charge and let them lead the way.
- Read - why not re-enact some of your favourite stories or pretend to ‘read’ to their toys? Can you find books with pictures or stories about some of their favourite toys or games?
Attention and listening:
- Chat about the things your child is focused on. Make sure to get their attention first, use their name and get face to face.
- Play together focusing on the same toy/activity. As your child gets older, try to build up the time they can spend focusing on playing together.
- Read together. If your child can’t yet focus on a whole story, that’s fine! Look at the pictures together and talk about the parts they are interested in.
Examples:
You can support parents by giving simple ideas for things they can chat about, ways they can play, and ideas for sharing stories, based on their children’s interests – take a look at a few of these examples…
"I went shopping with Grandma"
- Chat about where they went, what else do they do with grandma? What things do you both like to buy? Do you like the same things? I wonder what we could buy next time?
- Let's play shops! Who is going to do what? What things can you find to 'sell' in your shop? Oh no, we've run out of X, what can we do?
- Can you find any books at home or in the library to read about shopping? Why not make up a story together? You could tell it to grandma!
Baby has been enjoying noise making
- Use words that go with the sounds 'bang', 'crash'! If baby makes any sounds themselves, copy it back and have a 'chat'.
- Find some things baby can safely bang/make noise with at home. Cardboard boxes, pots and pans! Join in with the fun and enjoy playing and taking turns banging together.
- Share a story and use lots of noises as you read. Animal noises, Brrrm for cars etc. Baby loves listening to sounds!
Use our 'Chat, Play, Read' in your childcare setting.
Download and print our 'Chat, Play, Read' template to fill in and use in your own childcare setting here.
(Note: this PDF file may not be in an accessible format).
Useful links:
There are some fantastic websites you could signpost parents to or share on your social media. These are great for giving practical ideas for everyday talking.
Take a look at this video for more information and ideas to help you engage with families around speech, language and communication.
