Hello all!
As I spoke about in the previous blog post, I plan on updating the blog with informative posts on speech, language, and communication development, tips and fun ways to support your child’s development, as well as an insight to the work I am doing with the children here at Albatross Daycare.
For my first post, I felt it was important to talk about what speech, language, and communication are and the importance of developing these skills.
Speech, language, and communication play a vital role in our lives. The ability to talk to and understand other people, makes it possible to do things like:
- Communicate with our families
- Buy things at the store
- Watch television
- Build relationships
- Socialize
- Learn
What skills do we need to use to communicate effectively?
- Listening
- Looking
- Turn-Taking
- Understanding
- Expression (speaking verbally, facial expression, gestures, etc.)
- Speech sounds
Language development can be thought of as a pyramid. Here we have all the different skills that we develop in order to communicate effectively.
Each area of the pyramid has its own order of development and so the skills which children have are dependent on their age. Each layer of the pyramid also supports the development of the layer above it.
Children start off developing their looking and listening skills. As they look and listen, they start to notice behaviors and sounds which they then begin to copy. As they are now able to look, listen, and imitate, they begin to understand more about their surroundings and the objects they encounter. As their understanding develops, they begin to use sounds and words to communicate.
Attention and listening, play, and understanding of language all need to be well developed before a child can be expected to use language to express themselves and pronounce words correctly. Children need support at these early levels.
I hope this brief introduction to speech, language, and communication skills offers you insight into your child’s development. In future posts, I will speak more on each of these skills and how we here at Albatross, and you at home, provide opportunities for the growth of these skills.
Marissa Perez
Linguistic Specialist