This week, I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the importance of talking. We've already shared a lot about how conversation with your child is such a key component of learning. When your child actively listens and communicates through words, their brain is firing in all sorts of places. Our brains are so intrinsically wired for communication.
Even newborn babies have their brains pre-wired for verbal communication and all that comes with it. The eye contact that we make when we talk to someone, when we listen to a human voice. Our children are already pre-wired to be communicative and to enjoy that interaction, learning so much from it. And you can harness that to not only create a really close learning relationship with your child, but also to just feed into them so much of what they need as far as vocabulary and understanding and laying that academic foundation for later learning.
Much of that foundation is built around verbal communication, including talking and listening. So let's dive a little bit further into that today.
How do you provide a language-rich environment in the early years?
In our free preschool homeschool curriculum, we highlight the language and cognitive objectives each week. Instead of assigning you specific tasks, I discuss with you what we need to cover, what we should focus on, and provide you with some activity ideas to integrate into your life. And the reason that we do that is that so many of them are not one-and-done activities. Most of them, especially the language ones, but also the cognitive ones, involve a great deal of just communication with your child over the long term.
It's not something that can really be accomplished in a week. It needs to be done over time through a great deal of talking and listening to your child. Let their brains work on problems that they encounter, help them find solutions and different ways of problem-solving, and give them the vocabulary that they need in order to communicate themselves.
How can you help a preschooler expand their vocabulary?
It is our job to model that language and give them that vocabulary. They can only work with what they've been given. And a huge part of teaching your child is to provide them with a very language-rich environment. This means stretching and growing those language skills a little bit, too.
Let's discuss a few things that parents can do to provide a language-rich environment.
So much of it comes from just paying attention to what we're doing ourselves:
- Modeling the correct pronunciation of words, where possible
- Using complex sentence structure and proper grammar when we can.
Nobody's perfect and does this all the time. In fact, it would be exhausting to constantly self-monitor and ensure that every little thing we say is absolutely correct.
I'm not suggesting that.
But I am suggesting some self-awareness because I think that, as parents, we often have a tendency to simplify things for our children when we talk. Either out of convenience or just getting a question answered quickly, so that we can move on. Or maybe the child has interrupted us to ask a question or share something, and we're trying to skip that and get back to what we were doing.
It requires a great deal of intention and self-awareness. I know that I have a tendency to simplify things when I speak to my children, and I have to consciously stop myself and say, “No, it's okay. You can use that big word.” If you use that word and they don't understand what it means, they'll ask, and then that's an opportunity for you to tell them what it means, to look up the definitions.
A lot of the time, when my children put me on the spot, like, well, what does that word mean? Sometimes it's something so abstract. We know how to use these words because we've heard them used so many times in context, but we're not exactly sure how to define them ourselves. I need to look up words on my phone and think of other examples to explain them to my kids.
And that is really what I mean by a rich language environment.
One where you will take those chances to stretch not only your child's vocabulary skills but your own.
Avoid baby talk
Another thing we should try to be self-aware of is not using baby talk when possible, or modeling our children's pronunciation of words. As cute as it is (and I'm so guilty of this), we have words in our family to this day that, as adults, we say incorrectly because we've modeled how our children said them when they were very young.
I think everyone does that to some extent, but we do have to be careful. A great way to do it if your child says something and pronounces it incorrectly, as adorable as it is, is to simply repeat the sentence back to them or rephrase it using the word and model the correct pronunciation for them.
We don't want to make this something where we're constantly correcting what they say or making them feel like they've done something wrong, but at the same time, we want to provide that example to them of how we speak and that this is the correct pronunciation.
Again, don't be afraid to use complex sentence structures. All of this is fantastic modeling for them. Children can understand, or they're capable of constantly understanding, so far beyond what they can either read when they begin to read or even their own verbal skills, they can understand much more than their vocabulary can express.
When your child speaks, their vocabulary is rather small, but what they can actually understand when you talk is way larger than that. So don't be afraid to feed that machine of words, and slowly, their spoken vocabulary will grow as well.
How to develop listening skills in preschoolers
Another important part of modeling language for them is to model the opposite side of this, which involves demonstrating good listening skills. And this is, I think, maybe the most challenging as a parent. Whether you've been interrupted from an important task or you are being treated to a 10-minute discussion of their favorite cartoon character, or whatever the case may be, sometimes it's very hard to keep our attention on what our little children are saying to us.
But it's critically important.
Your child is choosing to come and share these things with you because this topic is important to them, and you are important to them. In honor of that, we need to really try to focus our attention on that moment and model good listening skills in the same way that we would want our children to pay attention when we're trying to tell them something important.
- Put down whatever it is that you're in the middle of
- Focus your attention on them
- Make eye contact, nod your head, and be a good active listener
- Ask curious questions about what it is that they're saying to you
- Paraphrase what they say so that they know that you've heard them and that you're listening to them
Or if you can't, at that second, if you're on an important phone call and they come up and they start talking to you, do not dismiss them or act like you're listening when you're not, but do say:
“Just a moment, I know that what you want to say to me is very important, and so I want to make sure that I can listen. Let me finish my phone call, and then we'll come back to this”.
And so, just as you would treat another adult in conversation or the behavior that you would expect from them when they're listening to you, that's what you want to try to model for them, and that gives them the opportunity to be the speaker.
Understanding your child
Of course, they're only really going to engage in extended communication on topics that are of interest to them. This is a fantastic opportunity for you to learn more about your child. It is extremely helpful, not just in building a close relationship with your child, but you'll also be able to use that information to your advantage as you progress in helping them learn, whether you're homeschooling them or just assisting them with their homework when they come home from school.
If you understand your child, the inner workings of their mind, their learning styles, what engages them, what topics they are interested in, and what they are passionate about.
If you really understand what makes them tick, you'll be able to harness that information and use it to help them learn later. And, really, the only way to get to know them on that level is to listen to them when they talk.
How to promote social development in preschoolers
Listening to your child gives them a lot of social-emotional experience, too. One of the things we've been learning in the curriculum is how to express our emotions and recognize the emotions of others. We do that verbally and non-verbally. Much of this conversation and listening is also a social-emotional practice, which will benefit them not just as they transition to kindergarten and interact with teachers and other children, but for the rest of their lives.
You're the one setting the stage for how they relate to other people. Being able to talk freely, talk about how they feel, and have their emotions validated. Being able to listen to another person talk about their feelings and share empathy with them. Or asking them sensitive questions about what they're experiencing. That's also a huge chunk of social-emotional learning.
They learn other social conventions and rules, such as not interrupting, taking turns when talking, staying on topic, and asking appropriate follow-up questions in a conversation. You're helping them practice those skills, so when they go out into the world and interact with other people, they have confidence and experience doing those types of things.
I hope that you've gotten some renewed enthusiasm for engaging in deep conversations with your kids, and maybe it helps to have a little bit more patience in those trying times when we want to just hurry up and answer their questions and move on to take a moment and take a little bit of extra time, 30 more seconds to have a little bit more deep and involved conversation with your child and what both sides are really going to gain from that experience.