Tip #1: Face-to-Face Interactions and Eye Contact

• Building a strong social relationship between you and your child is so important, and it can’t begin too soon.
• Research indicates that your child’s early years of life are most important for helping to build a strong foundation for the development of social and learning skills.
• Looking your child in the eye is one simple way to help him experience affection, and helps to cue him to participate in communicating with you.
• It is important for your child to look directly at you when you communicate (and for you to look at him, too!). It helps the child to understand that you think it’s important for him to understand what you’re saying.
• This is a beginning of an important social skill called “perspective taking”.
• Perspective taking is when a person is able to understand that other people have points of view that might be different from their own. This helps them to learn to be sensitive and considerate of other people.
• Children need very specific directions when you want them to look at you. Simply saying, “Please look at me” is not specific enough. Instead, try saying, “Look at my eyes”, then your child will know just where to look!

Tip #1: The Bottom Line:
Make sure you and your child share good eye contact and when you are talking with each other. You can cue your child by saying, “Look at my eyes” when you want to make sure he understands.

• Mind-minded comments are ones that let your child hear words that describe his own thinking or feelings - or somebody else’s.
• For example:
  • “I wonder what you’re thinking?"
  • "You sure look like you feel happy today.”
  • “Do you remember this toy? You enjoyed playing with it yesterday.”
  • “I’m feeling tired. Are you feeling tired, too?”
  • “I have an idea! Let’s go outside for a walk!”
  • “I’m thinking.....Do I want milk? Or do I want juice? I’m trying to decide....”
• No matter the age of your child, getting into the habit of using these kinds of comments is a powerful strategy.
• Using comments like these ones often with your child can help him to develop a strong theory of mind.
• Theory of mind is the ability to understand his own and others’ points of view.

Tip #2: The Bottom Line:
Use words often to describe how you, your child, and other people are thinking and feeling.  Words like:  think, wonder, idea, decide, feel, wish, enjoy, and  remember are great ones to include in conversations with your child! They help your child understand that everyone has their own thoughts and feelings.

• Research shows that the stronger your child’s bond with you, and the richer and fuller her language ability, the better her chances for successful further learning.
• Children who do not hear well are at a disadvantage in not having easy access to the conversations, discussions, and even arguments that children with normal hearing can easily over-hear taking place in their homes.
• These overheard conversations provide many learning opportunities. Children learn vocabulary, grammar, and successful ways of negotiating through listening to the conversations of their families.
• Any time you are in earshot (or “eye-shot” if your child signs) of your child, you should be engaging in conversation that she can overhear (or oversee).
• P.S. Your child should wear her amplification equipment whenever she’s awake and isn’t in the water! This way she won’t miss any important new words or phrases that she might pick up from the conversations going on around her.

 

Tip #3: The Bottom Line:
Make sure to be talking (with voice, sign, or both) any time you are with your child, or any time your child is near enough to hear or see you.

• Self-Talk is an incredibly easy strategy in which you, any time you are in your child’s presence, simply talk about what you are doing, why you are doing it, what you might do next (and why), and what you’re thinking as you go about your normal routine
• By doing this, you are providing your child with the chance to overhear and/or over-see a wealth of vocabulary, to learn about connections between actions and reasons, and to consider other people’s points of view.
• Research shows that children who know a larger variety of words tend to do better with the social skills and thinking skills that will help them to succeed in school.
• It might feel unusual to be “talking to yourself,” like this – especially if nobody else is there to hear you, except for your child. Yet, it’s incredibly powerful – a terrific way for your child to learn new words and ideas.
• Here’s a sample:“Let’s have a snack. Are you hungry? It’s not time for dinner yet, but I feel hungry. I’m going to look in the refrigerator for something to eat. Boy, it’s cold in this refrigerator! Hmmm...what do we want? Do we want milk and apples? Or, maybe we’d like to have some carrots and celery? Let’s have milk and apples.”

Tip #4: The Bottom Line:
Consider this tip to be permission to talk to yourself!  It benefits your child and is easy to do.  It takes no extra time to “say what you do” than it takes to do it without saying it! The benefits will surprise you!

• Sharing an interest in the same object is a wonderful way to bond with your child, as well as to help her to begin to form a strong theory of mind.
• Theory of mind refers to a person’s understanding that he has feelings and beliefs that cause him to behave in certain ways, and that other people do, too. Building a strong theory of mind is important to developing appropriate social skills.
• Sharing attention with your child, no matter what age, can help to establish a secure bond with you – an important part of building an understanding of people’s emotions.
• It’s good to pay attention to the things that interest your child and take advantage of what educators call “the teachable moment”.
• If your child is fascinated by dinosaurs, then read a dinosaur story, draw dinosaur pictures, or play with toy dinosaurs together for a while before or after dinner. Make sure to talk, talk, talk about what the dinosaurs are doing, why they’re doing it, and what your child thinks/feels about it all!
• Here’s a sample:“Oh, I see you have your dinosaurs out – may I play, too? Wow, this tall dinosaur looks fierce! His teeth are very sharp – I bet he eats meat. Uh-oh, watch out! He’s chasing the smaller dinosaur into the swamp!”(Lots of great vocabulary in that interaction: fierce, sharp, chasing, swamp)

Tip #5: The Bottom Line:
Take at least a few minutes every day to do something that interests your child. Let him choose an activity to do together or a story to read together.

• Any opportunity for your child to take turns with you (and others) is a wonderful thing!
• Turn-taking can be as simple as taking turns in a signed or spoken conversation.
• It’s important for your child to realize that she needs to listen (or watch) until the other person is finished with their turn at speaking (signing), so that she can understand everything that person had to say. This really does take specific practice. You can even make it very explicit for your child by saying, “My turn to talk now, please listen”. Then, say what you’d like to say. Finally, you can say, “Okay, thank you for listening to my turn. It’s your turn to talk now.”
• It can also be as easy as passing an interesting object back and forth to look at and discuss.
• Turn-taking prepares your child to be skilled at the reciprocity (a fancy word for taking turns!) needed for successful communication and of social interactions.
• Board games and physical games (hopscotch, relay races) are other good ways to practice taking turns.

Tip #6: The Bottom Line:
Make sure to practice taking turns when talking or playing with your child. Use the words: “my turn”, “your turn”, “his turn”, & “her turn” to emphasis this skill.  

• Working within your child’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is a powerful strategy for helping his language skills to get stronger.
• The Zone of Proximal Development refers to the fact that there are some things your child can do with your support that he cannot yet do on his own.
• This is where a great deal of crucial learning can take place – in helping your child to reach just a little further beyond what he can do all by himself.
• As formal as it sounds, working in your child’s ZPD is very easy to do!
• One of the first steps to working successfully in your child’s ZPD for language development lies in having a good idea of where you child is now working, language-wise.
• For example, if your child is now able to label things with single words, then your task is to imitate his spoken/ signed words back to him while adding one more word!
• If your child is using two-word combinations, then imitate those and add one more word to make it a brand new three-word combination! Etc.
• In this way, you are building vocabulary and grammar skills with your child, while following his lead, enriching his social bonding with you, and encouraging him to communicate!
• Sample: Child: “I see a truck!” Mom: “Yes! It’s a noisy, red truck!” Child: “Noisy, red truck!”

Tip #7: The Bottom Line:
Add a little bit more detail or length to the words/sentences your child says, repeat them back to him. Have him say the new, longer version back to you.

• Acoustic highlighting is a terrific strategy to use while also building your child’s language up by imitating his words and adding just a little more.
• Acoustic highlighting just means putting a bit more emphasis on the new word you’re adding for your child, by saying it a little more loudly, a little more slowly, a little more sing-song, or a little more expressively than the rest of the phrase you’re saying.
• Just like highlighting with a yellow marker does for words on a page,acoustic highlighting adds a bit of emphasis and draws the child’s attention to what you want him to focus on.
• Acoustic highlighting refers to spoken words, of course, but this strategy is easily adapted to signing – just add a bit more facial expression, size, range, or time to the new words you want to emphasize!
• Here’s an example, if your child tells you his book bag is “broken”, you can emphasize the new word, “torn”, but saying it more slowly, and with a little more stress on the word:
  • Child: “My bag is broken.”
    Mom/Dad:  “Your book bag is torn. It has a hole in the bottom. It’s torn."
    Child “My book bag is torn.”

Tip #8: The Bottom Line:
Emphasize new words or ideas by saying them (signing them) a little more slowly, carefully, loudly (largely) so your child will pay more attention to them.

• “Linguistic mapping” sounds terribly complicated and hard to do! But, it’s really very easy!
• Linguistic mapping simply means that when your child communicates or shows an interest in something that she might not have the vocabulary to explain, you give her the words to describe it.
• For example, if your child sees something interesting while you are shopping at the grocery store, you can tell her what it is:“Oh, those are oranges. Oranges are a fruit that we eat. Oranges are sweet and round.”(Don’t forget to use your “acoustic highlighting strategy for this new word – say it a little more slowly, a little more loudly (or emphasized) so your child can pick up on it.)
• This is a powerful strategy because it provides the vocabulary to communicate something that your child has already shown an interest in – a very big aid to learning.
• Being good at linguistic mapping just means that you value your role as your child’s first and most important teacher, and are always on the lookout for things the she doesn’t know yet, but would like to know (or should know)! Give her the words!
• “Novel mapping” is similar: If your child sees three items she knows the names of – and one that she doesn’t – and you ask her to hand you the flibbertigibbet (or other word she hasn’t yet encountered), she will know that the unknown word should go with the novel (new) object!

Tip #9: The Bottom Line:
Help your child out by providing new words to name things and to explain ideas.

• Self-determination is a quality that can help your child to become a stronger, more self-assured and successful person. It involves making choices for himself (where appropriate).
• Getting dressed in the morning is an especially good activity for this, as it offers terrific opportunities for your child to make choices for himself.
• So...rather you than choosing what clothes your child will wear each day, you could begin allowing him to make his own choices.
• (If time is tight in the mornings at your house, you might try limiting the number of choices: The evening before, lay out only two or three outfits and sets of shoes for him to choose from.)
• Now, you have to opportunity to discuss choices and reasons. Ask your child to describe the clothes/shoes that he chooses to wear and why he likes them better.
• Try to find lots of opportunities for your child to make choices throughout the day, then make sure he says (signs) what it is that he’d like to choose (and why, if he’s able).
• Try teaching your child to say, “May I have ________”, rather than “I want ______”. Your child’s manners will be much more admired out in the wider world!

Tip #10: The Bottom Line:
Give your child many opportunities to make, describe, and explain choices!

• Communication is a two-way street, and you want your child to learn to not just understand other people, but to be able to communicate, too!
• This means that you will want your child to be talking/signing with you (and others) just as much as you are with her!
• It’s important that you make it clear to your child that you have a high expectation for her to talk/sign to communicate.
• One way to convey that expectation is by prompting your child to reply, by:
  • Pausing (Simply waiting patiently until you receive a reply can be a powerful thing! The longer you can wait, the more likely your child will be to “reach down” and come up with some words!)
  • Giving your child an expectant look (Raise your eyebrows, tilt your head.)
  • Tapping your finger to the corner of your lower lip (A cue for her to say something.)
  • Saying to your child: “Tell me.”, “Use your words”, “I don’t understand, please say it again.”

Tip #11: The Bottom Line:
Make sure your child knows that you have a high expectation for her to use words to communicate!

• Putting things into categories is a terrific foundation for later thinking skills.
• Categorizing everyday objects (such as clothes) is good practice for learning how to organize concepts, ideas, and thoughts.
• For example, while getting dressed, you can call your child’s attention to the groups that each item belongs to:
  “Here are your blue shirt and your red shirt. These are both shirts.”
  “Here are some shoes. Which shoes today? Black shoes? White shoes?” “I see lots of pants: black pants, brown pants, blue pants.”
  “All of these – pants, shoes, shirts – are CLOTHING.”
• A super way to extend categorizing skills at this stage is to have treasure hunts!
• Try searching with your child for all of the toys that you can find together!
• You can do this for any category you can think of! (Ideas: clothing, things to write with, books, jewelry, dishes, pots and pans, towels, foods, fruits, vegetables, plants, pictures, tools) It’s both fun and educational!
• Make sure that when you are naming the items with your child, you also talk about the word for the entire category. These “category words” are ones that children with hearing loss often don’t learn unless they are specifically taught.
  • For example, “We found forks, knives, and spoons for dinner. All of these are called utensils” (or “silverware”).

Tip #12: The Bottom Line:
Talk about categories of items that belong together.  Name the items, and name the categories!

• Books and stories can be wonderful ways for your child to be exposed to new vocabulary words and new ideas.
• Reading is such an important skill when your child goes to school, that it’s a great idea to establish a love of reading early on in your child’s life.
• Read TO your child often – at least once a day for at least 20 minutes.
• Choose stories that are bright and colorful, have high-interest photos or pictures, and interesting stories.
• Simple non-fiction books can be especially useful as your child is beginning to learn about the world around him
• There are many fabulous children’s books about animals, food, people, places, and things that can help your child to learn about his world.
• As you read to your child, talk about what you think the characters are feeling, why they do the things they do, and what might happen next.
• Also, it’s terrific if you can make a connection between the story and something your child has experienced for herself.
• For example, if you read a book about farm animals and your child has seen farm animals at a Fair, then make sure to talk about how the story reminds you of the time that your child saw the same kinds of animals.

Tip #13: The Bottom Line:
Read to your child often, and talk about the stories. Link what you read in stories to things your child has seen or done

• It’s important for your child to hear many different kinds of words, so don’t limit yourself to just simple words – go ahead and share more sophisticated words with your child, too! It can help him to build a stronger vocabulary and become a better communicator.
• For example, once your child has learned that the animal in the story you are reading is not really a “turtle”, but a “tortoise”, make sure to add the word “tortoise” to his vocabulary by using that word in conversation from time to time.
• Don’t be afraid to expose your child to more sophisticated words like:
  • “perhaps” in addition to “maybe”,
  • “comforter” in addition to “blanket”,
  • “kitten” in place of “baby cat”,
  • “frustrated” in place of “sad” or “mad”,
  • “Jeep”, “van”, “pickup truck”, “taxi”, and “SUV”, in addition to “car”.
• The more language your child is exposed to, the better.

Tip #14: The Bottom Line:
Don’t limit yourself to using only simple words when you talk with your child. Use a variety of words!

• Talking with each other while playing together offers wonderful opportunities for learning, and for building strong bonds of love and caring between you and your child.
• One terrific strategy that really works well during play time is called linguistic sabotage.
• Linguistic sabotage is a way to prompt your child use expressive language – by setting up simple situations in which she has to say something!
• An example of linguistic sabotage:
  • Ask your child to open a box of blocks. You know the box is sealed too tightly for her to open it herself, but you want her to use language to ask you to open it before you help her with it. Pretend you don’t realize that the box is too tightly sealed. Model the language for her to ask you to open it: “The lid is too tight. Please open it”!
  • You can use this strategy in even more daily situations to effectively encourage language. (Don’t use this strategy too often, though – the intent is not to tease the child, but to occasionally set up a situation in which she needs to convey a need through language!)
    • Ask your child to open the door (even though it’s locked. She’ll have to ask for the key)
    • Ask your child to cut out a picture (but she doesn’t have any scissors.)
    • Give your child a drink (but forget to put the juice in the cup.)
    • Ask your child to put on her shoes and socks (but only give her one sock/shoe.) 

Tip #15: The Bottom Line: 
Set up situations in which your child will have to use language to accomplish a task! 

• Using rich descriptions is a way for your child to build vocabulary and to learn that more than one word can apply to a single object or event.
• Instead of saying: “Here’s a block for you.”(Here, your child might learn the word “block”)
• Try something like this: “Here’s another red block for you. This block is so heavy, be careful. And, look, it has three sides – 1, 2, 3.  It’s a triangle. Where will you put the heavy, red triangle?” (Here, your child might learn the words “block, red, heavy, careful, three, sides, triangle”, as well as learning that you can combine describing words into phrases like “heavy, red triangle”!)
• Another example: Rather than saying, “Please help me move this box”, you might try, “Please help me move this empty, plastic box. ”Just adding those two words (“empty” and “plastic”) exposes your child to two new concepts.
• Describe actions as completely as possible, too. Rather than saying, “Let’s cut these tomatoes”, try “Let’s use a sharp knife to slice these tomatoes really thin. Then we can dice them into small pieces for the soup.” (Lots of new ideas in there! “sharp”, “slice”, “dice”).
• The more language your child is exposed to, the better.

Tip #16: The Bottom Line:
Be as descriptive as you can when talking with your child about the things you say and do!

• Once your child is beginning to use longer phrases and sentences and language that is a bit more complex, he should be ready to understand that pictures (and written words) represent things that exist in the real world.
• Using pictures is a wonderful way to begin to show children that things and ideas can be represented on paper.  (A good start for learning that sounds can be represented with letters and words; and that quantities can be represented by numbers!).
•  Try something like this: During one of your “category” treasure hunts, you have a terrific opportunity to introduce your child to the power of pictures.  You can either use a camera to take pictures of the tools (or other items) you find, or sit down at a table together and draw and label pictures, using crayons and paper.
• Use these pictures you’ve created to discuss the category and the names of the items that belong to that category again.  Save them for a later day, or keep them in a book to come back to again and again!  This way, you can review lots of vocabulary and concept names without having to go back each time to locate all of the items.

Tip #17: The Bottom Line:
Use pictures and words as ways to learn more words and categories!

• Diagrams are effective ways to use pictures to help your child organize his thinking and store words he knows so that he can find them more easily when he needs them.
• One type of diagram that you can easily use with your child hunt is called a Concept Map,
• A concept map is a collection of drawings that are all related in some way.
• You can make concept maps based on categories (tools, plants, foods, etc.) or by characteristics (things that are red, things that are fast, things that are heavy, etc.)
• When you draw pictures of a category of items, TOOLS, for instance, you can add the pictures to a concept map that might look something like this:

Tip #18: The Bottom Line:
Diagrams (concept maps are one kind) can help your child organize ideas

• One of the most important things your child can learn to do is to make connections between what she already knows, and new ideas and words that she encounters.
• Making connections helps a child to “conceptualize, organize, store, and recall words and concepts in ways that are meaningful and effective.
• Reading together offers some really fun ways to begin to make connections. One of those ways is by having your child get up and move! (Kinesthetic means “to move”!)
• There are many terrific children’s books with lots of characters moving around! Have your child pretend to creep like a crocodile, climb like a monkey, ride like a cowboy, flutter like a butterfly, or sting like a bee!
• Whatever the characters are doing – your child can make the story more meaningful by joining in the action!
• Some great stories for movement are:
  • From Head to Toe, by Eric Carle
  • Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, by Eileen Christelow
  • Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak
  • Movement Stories for Children Ages 3 – 6, by Helen Landalf and Pamela Gerke
  • Stories on the Move, by Arlene Cohen

Tip #19: The Bottom Line:
Let your child understand ideas and actions by actually moving and doing them!

• Strong readers develop better language skills and better language skills help kids to become better readers.
• Reading together is a win-win situation for you and your child!
• While you are reading together, it’s easy to begin to introduce your child to some of the concepts of print. These are skills she’ll need when she begins to read on her own, so allowing her to see how books “work” from an early age can only help her later!
• Before you begin to read, discuss the parts of the book with your child and name each one: “This is the back of our book, this is the front of the book. Here’s the spine of the book. Here’s the title –that’s the name of the story. And here are the names of the author, who wrote the words, and the illustrator, who drew the pictures.”
• When you’re reading, use your finger to follow beneath the words you’re reading.(This allows your child to see that words run from the top of the page to the bottom, and from left to right).
• From time to time, point out specific words that are interesting or that go with a picture. Say and/or sign the word together and look at how it looks on the page.
• You can even talk about what letter a word starts or ends with, to help begin to make your child aware that sounds and letters are related.

Tip #20: The Bottom Line:
Read together often!!!!!!Talk about the story andtalk about the parts of the book, itself!