Talking with Toddlers: Using daily routines to teach speech & language skills to your toddler

Chances are, you talk to your toddler. Like a lot, I’m sorry: A LOT! Every.single.day.

Let’s capitalize on that with some helpful tips for talking with your toddler! This will be a series of blog posts, so stay tuned for more, but we will begin with discussing how to use daily routines to facilitate new speech & language skills in your little tot.

Here’s the best part about using daily routines: daily routines already exist in your life! No purchase required, no social media worthy lesson plan, just living in the moment with your little one on a day to day basis. Babies and toddlers learn best from their very first teachers in the world, read: YOU -their loving parents! You’re reading this because you’re interested in helping your child learn and you would like to know how to best help them along the way. Daily routines encourage speech and language within the contexts of familiar encounters for your child, helping to set up a comfortable learning environment from the start.

When I mention daily routines, I mean any ordinary task that regularly occurs! It doesn’t have to be a special occasion. It might be walking the dog, doing the laundry, cooking a meal or nightly bath time. These situations lend themselves to teachable moments in terms of budding speech and language skills.

I shall digress for just a moment. Let’s give a super brief explanation of why I refer to speech and language as two separate skillsets. Well, it’s because they are two separate skillsets but let’s lay out an easy to understand definition. Speech refers to actual sound production (can you SAY the M sound or the P sound…) and speech requires systems like breath support, tongue motility, jaw strength and vocal cords to be functioning in tip-top shape, among other things. Language refers to both understanding and utilizing a communication system: typically spoken words, but sometimes sign language or alternative/augmentative communication. Comprehension of spoken language (knowing what words mean, following directions, answering questions, etc.) is what is called receptive language and the use of spoken language (forming words/sentences, asking questions, directing attention, etc.) is called expressive language. A child may or may not have two very different levels of functioning in each of those areas. This area might turn into its own blog post! Hey, I’m an SLP so that sounds like a fun read to me!

Back to today’s focus: how to use daily routines to teach your toddler new speech and language skills. Or, teaching your toddler how to talk and how to understand the language they’re hearing within the context of everyday situations! Have you chosen some of your top daily routines yet? Take a moment to think about those instances that might be familiar situations for your toddler, that happen on a regular basis, and pick some of those as a starting point! I’m going to give some more in depth examples below of how this might look. I will choose doing the laundry and bath time as two routines to discuss further - I’m pretty sure those apply to all of you!

For the first example, let’s discuss laundry! Well, laundry itself is not very fun… if your toddler is like mine, then the folded clothes leave their stacks and end up back in the basket or thrown on the floor so that you get to fold them a second time. But my toddler also helps to throw away the dryer sheet for me each time we finish folding and likes to help put the basket away, so you lose some, you win some when it comes to toddlers.

Photo Credit: Dan Gold, Unsplash

Okay, so you might decide to pick several words to highlight (or I’ll call ‘target’) when you do the laundry… there are nouns like: socks, jacket, pants, pajamas and there are verbs like wash, dry, fold, shake or adjectives such as soft, smooth, big, small. Tons of vocabulary options! You also put the clothes IN the basket, IN the washing machine, IN the dryer and IN the drawers… you take the clothes OUT of the washing machine, OUT of the dryer, OUT of the hamper, I think you get it. Those words can be highlighting lots and lots of times if you say it with emphasis as you move through your regular laundry routine you’re providing a lot of exposure to the words you’ve chosen to highlight for your child. Providing your child with a language model really helps them acquire new speech and language skills! To provide a great language model for specific vocabulary words you’ll want to say the target words frequently, make it within context and hands-on if you can, say them with emphasis and be animated/excited about it, provide regular opportunities to practice the words or to hear you use the words and don’t pressure the child to be able to produce these words right away on their own. You might find it helpful talk out loud as you go through the motions, explaining as you go or simply narrating what it is that you’re doing. Now that daily laundry routine has turned into an opportunity to expand upon your child’s speech and language skills!

Second example to discuss is the bath routine! I try to make it a point to have a bath be a part of my toddler’s nighttime routine each day. He really enjoys it which helps a lot and I feel that it provides a strong clue that bedtime is approaching. Some nights, the bath is short because maybe our day is running behind schedule and bedtime is fast approaching and other nights I can let him play a bit longer, add some extra bubbles and just sit for a few more minutes. Do you choose to have bath time as a part of your night routine?

Photo Credit: Thomas Despeyroux, Unsplash

This time, let’s say that we really don’t want to pick several words but we want to hone in on a few selected words instead. Maybe you really want your child to be able to say a couple of new words soon that you can incorporate into the bath time routine, such as the words “water” and “go”. You know that you can highlight them during this routine and you’d like for these to be new spoken words soon so you’d like to get in some extra practice. There are obviously tons of vocabulary words that you can highlight during bath time, just like in the laundry example, however it is okay to choose to not highlight all of your options in order to focus on the words most important to you. So, you’ll want to purposely choose some bath toys or objects that can help you emphasize these two words often. Let’s say we have two cups and two ducks for the bath. You can scoop the WATER, pour the WATER and splash the WATER as you play with the cups. Plus you had to turn on the WATER and wash up in the WATER…. lots of highlighting! Now, with those ducks they can GO fast, they can GO slow, they can GO underwater, they can GO on your head…. lots of ways to highlight that word too! You can see how you’re still providing a language model to your child so you’ll follow the above ideas of providing emphasis of the words you’re targeting, being fun and excited while doing it, providing hands on and interactive practice to show what the words mean and using them in context, right in the moment. All of this is a great way to teach your child new skills in those existing daily routines!

I hope you’ve noticed that I mentioned choosing to highlight vocabulary words that relate to your chosen daily routines. I think it’s so important to focus on specific, functional words when teaching your toddler new speech and language skills. I know that many toddlers learn words like “more” and “please” and certainly those are helpful. Consider how helpful it would be to use specific words that are functional within your daily activities…. saying “bubbles” for more bubbles in the bath or “on” for turning on their favorite music toy or “apple” for eating a snack! This will become its own blog post, but if you have questions on how to best choose specific, functional words to each your toddler versus more general terms don’t hesitate to submit your question to me from the homepage.

Leave a comment to let me know which daily routines you’re going to try out & don’t forget to let me know your toddler’s responses!

I’d love to hear from you!

Kaitlyn Steele, MS, CCC-SLP