A lot of you know that I am a speech-language pathologist (SLP for short). But not everyone knows that I worked in early intervention! Yes, I said “worked” in the past tense. I actually quit my job about a month ago due to difficulties finding childcare and wanting to spend more time with the baby. I don’t know how long I’ll continue to be a stay at home mom, but so far I’m enjoying it. However, I’m definitely missing being out in the field, which brings me to today’s blog post. It turns out, unless you work in early intervention, pretty much nobody knows what an early intervention speech therapist does.
So what is early intervention speech therapy?
Early intervention speech therapy is for children aged 0-3 with speech, language, or feeding delays. This could mean working with children with neurological differences or other medical complications with known speech and language difficulties, such as autism spectrum disorder, cleft palate, cerebral palsy, down syndrome, etc.
But very often, my job entailed working with children who were just a little behind on learning to speak. A child should have one word by 12 months of age and at least 50 by 2 years. For these children, I would work with their parents on how to use toys and activities they already enjoy to boost their language skills. One really good activity for language is reading books.
Why Read Books to an Infant?
Even though your baby may not be able to understand everything you’re saying or pay attention to the pictures for very long, reading books with your baby is great for their future language/reading development in several ways. Here are just a few!
- Babies will gain print awareness, becoming familiar with the idea of books and written language.
- It encourages babies to see reading as a fun activity.
- Reading helps them increase their language comprehension as they hear words that match the pictures they see.
- It gives parents and children a fun, bonding activity to do.
It turns out that reading books to wiggly infants/toddlers is not always that intuitive. I had so many many parents ask me for tips on how to read books with their children to facilitate language-learning. So, I decided to share three tips for reading with an infant. This is basically how I read with my own daughter now. At 10 months, it’s rare that Jemma actually wants to sit and finish an entire story, cover to cover. Here’s what we do instead!
3 Ways to Read With Your Infant (or Toddler)
1. Say What You See
Have you guys seen Christopher Robin? In the movie, Pooh plays a game called Say What You See, where he… says… what he sees. That’s how you can read books to your baby! You don’t need to read the story word for word. Just name the pictures that your baby is looking at. You don’t even need to use full sentences. Hearing the word associated with the right picture will help your baby build his/her vocabulary.
2. Just Practice Turning Pages
You don’t even need to READ to read. Allow your child to hold the pages and practice turning them. Showing them how to hold the book right side up and how to flip the pages through the story is great for teaching them conventions of reading, even though typical reading won’t come into play for several years. Of course, this is why board books are great for this age… less destructible.
3. Be Interactive
Again, don’t feel bound by the words on the page. Point to the pictures as you describe them. Then, guide your baby’s hand to point or touch the pictures as you name them. Feel free to ask questions occasionally, like “Where is the caterpillar?” Take your baby’s hand to point to/touch the answer. Don’t go overboard with the questions, though. Nobody wants to feel like they’re being quizzed.
And that’s it! Even though these tips are directed toward parents of infants, these strategies can certainly be used while reading with toddlers as well. What do you guys think? I hope this was helpful! Let me know if you have more SLP-related questions or want to see more blog posts about language learning! And for more parenting posts, check out my mom life page. Happy reading!