Episode 9: My Opinion about How to Read to Your Child to Grow Their Language

This blogpost includes a demonstration of how I read to my children to grow their language skills. 

Part of the work of a speech therapist is to help children improve their literacy outcomes

Here is a quick snippet of the tips that I use and that you can use when reading to your own child/children to enhance or improve their language skills. 

And if you have a nanny that is reading to your child/children, you can demonstrate these tips to them or you can show them this video.

Keep your voice animated

Please remember to keep your voice animated, exciting while adding a bit of suspense each time you are reading to your child. Adding this kind of fun and amusement creates a love for reading, being read to and a love for stories and language.

Try and not keep it monotone

Involve your child/children

Let them turn the pages of the book. Children love turning pages.

Also, since you may have been reading a particular book to your child, their is a likelihood that they may have grasped some of the words. Therefore make sure that you leave a gap while reading so that if your child wants to join in they can join in. 

Pick a book that has a lot of repetitive & rhyming words

Reading a book that has a lot of repetitive words will increase the likelihood of your child joining in. Repetition enables your child to grasp different words which is important to grow language

Rhyme awareness in children’s language development starts quite early. So books with rhyming words enables them to get tuned in to sounds which is very useful for when they start to learn how to read. Examples of books with rhyming words include “Hairy Maclary and Lama Lama”. You can purchase these books and many other others as many children’s books have rhyming words.

Final word

I hope these tips are useful on how to read a book to your toddler or a child in order to grow their language as well as their attention skills.

I have another blog post and video where I talk about 3 ways you can build your toddler’s attention skills. Look out for it. You can also check out our blog post related to reading- What to do if your child is struggling with reading.

Another resource that is helpful for parents in growing their child’s language is this FREE 3-part video series where I pin-point some of the things that parents may be doing or may be neglecting to do when it comes to growing their child’s language. 

This FREE 3-part video series is an introduction to the Late-Talker’s Bootcamp course, a paid online course which is the equivalent of online speech therapy.