

        <cite>Erin</cite>
      <time>0:00</time>
      <p>
          Meanwhile, still go back to your word list, play detective figure out where your beautiful toddler is today, developmentally start there. He loves you and wants your support. Meanwhile, I have two additional options and I&#39;m so excited to share
      </p>

      <time>0:20</time>
      <p>
          them, with you. And you&#39;ll be the first to know. The first one.
      </p>

        <cite>Erin</cite>
      <time>0:27</time>
      <p>
          Hello, and welcome to Talking Toddlers, where I share more than just tips and tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler&#39;s vocabulary. We&#39;re going to cover all of that, but here, our goal is to develop clarity. Because in this modern world, it&#39;s truly overwhelming. This podcast is about empowering moms to know the difference between fact and fiction, to never give up, to tap into everyday activities so your child stays on track. He&#39;s not falling behind. He&#39;s thriving through your guidance. We know that true learning starts at home. So let&#39;s get started. Hello, and welcome back to talking toddlers. Last week, we started talking about some of the secrets behind helping your toddler move from single words into phrases. And that typically happens around their second birthday. The vast majority of kids will start around 18 months and then you&#39;ll see it progress more and more often. At 24, 26 up to 30 months. But here&#39;s a common scenario. And I want you to think about this. Your toddler is approaching their second birthday, but they only have a handful of words or perhaps he or she has 30 or 40 words he uses regularly. But he&#39;s not adding new words almost every single day. Nor are they combining the words to try to make phrases and stronger statements of communication? It was sounds something like more cracker. Or no nap, no nap. My Teddy, my Teddy. Oh, daddy, home, daddy home. Kitty sleep, kitty sleep. That&#39;s real communication where they&#39;re taking nouns and verbs and thinking about it and putting it together in real time on their own. And that&#39;s key. So starting around 18 months, as I said, that&#39;s what a typical growth pattern looks like. And yes, there is some wiggle room because everybody pushes back and say, oh, You know, every kid grows at their own pace. Well, Yes. And no. Some two year olds will have 50 words that they use on a regular basis. While many, many, many, many, two year olds will have up to 200 words. But in each scenario in this range from 50 to 200 words, your toddler needs to be putting words together on their own independently. And that&#39;s the important key that I really touched upon last week. One of my biggest pet peeves and I shared this before, is that. People that could be just average parents or your neighbors or your relatives as well as teachers and doctors, including pediatricians and some allied health professionals. They will say, oh, give them more time. They develop at their own pace. Most kids, all kids will catch up. And that&#39;s just simply not true. And I&#39;ve shared this before and we&#39;ve known this for decades. That 35 to 40% of those late talkers won&#39;t catch up on their own. And they, the hardest part. Is that we can&#39;t differentiate which child will and which child won&#39;t. We just simply don&#39;t have a test or an intuitive feel. But there are some critical pieces that I&#39;m covering in this list that will help you understand where is my child today? And what&#39;s the next step. In this whole progression of speech and language acquisition. Right? So keep in mind that yes, there are a whole bunch of other milestones, physical milestones, social, emotional milestones that are very, very important. But for this specific series, I&#39;m diving into speech and language. And what are those expectations? And those nuances that I look at, I&#39;m sharing with you. So then you can do it at home with your child. So last week I began walking through this list of 10 key steps that any parent can truly help their toddler move from single words into two word phrases. Uh, independently, that&#39;s the key, right? So, and you know that I love to dive deep into these podcast episodes because I think it&#39;s really important that you have that background knowledge. So when you&#39;re sitting down and you&#39;re playing with the blocks or with a farm set or dress up. You know what you&#39;re doing and why you&#39;re doing it. But because there&#39;s a lot of information. That I like to break these lists up. So then this new learning for you can be manageable, right? I don&#39;t want you to walk away and say, oh, well, that was pretty cool, Aaron, but. How do I implement that? How do I use it in real time? How do I become a better parent or a more informed parent? So I can truly make a difference, right. Build his vocabulary. Uh, use opportunities every day. To his benefit, right. So let&#39;s step back real quickly. Research tells us and that&#39;s decades and decades of research and thousands and thousands of children. That toddlers with typically developing speech and language skills will hold a pool of vocabulary. Right? That&#39;s your vocabulary list of about 35 to 50 words? That&#39;s the minimum. That they spontaneously use. On a regular basis before they start to combine two words for communication, right? As, uh, as a two word phrase. So. There are many things that you all can do. Mom, dad, grandparents. Primary caretaker, To build these prerequisite skills, to get them to two word phrases and beyond. Right. And so I want to support you with that, but the first thing. Is it, you have to know where your child stands. You have to know where are they in this developmental process. And that&#39;s what this list of 10 key secrets, right? Or steps. That I&#39;m revealing to you all. So if you haven&#39;t listened to last week&#39;s episode, I, I think it&#39;s number 69. Go back and take a listen. We&#39;re going to pick up here on number four. I&#39;ll give you a quick highlight, but it won&#39;t be that deep dive. And so you&#39;ll want that information right. So, let, let me give you the first three steps before you can begin working on two word. Combinations, right? Like more cookie or daddy home. Your child needs that pool of at least 35 words. That is not a lot. And down below, I will have a list of. 101st words that your child can easily acquire. Right. With proper language stimulation and play and sleep and eating and how all these pieces fit together. But 35 words is just enough that he can start using them in real life. Right in real time. that also means that he&#39;s not imitating you. He&#39;s saying this on a regular basis and that you notice it. Um, the, and that&#39;s his primary mode of communication now is verbal communication, So if he doesn&#39;t have at least 35 words and that&#39;s not very many. That&#39;s where you go. That&#39;s where you start to build. Right. And then number two that I covered last week. Was of that list of that pool of words. They need to have a variety of what we call grammatical categories, right? So we need nouns and verbs, adjectives, and pronouns, and we need requests and we, I go through all of them, but it&#39;s really important that if you want your child to sound sensible, right. That he&#39;s going to put different combinations. Right. And that could be some social words and requesting, like I said, but there&#39;s a whole list. And so make sure that you go back and listen, and then when you&#39;re up. And I did mean to say this last week, but. When you take his wordless, you can always update it. I talked about how you can do it at 12 months and 18 months and 20, but you can also do it, you know, every other week where you notice, because on average at this age, Between their second birthday and their third birthday, they learn about 10 new words a day. So it&#39;s important that you keep collecting this data right? And then the third one that I talked about last week is that your toddler needs to be able to sequence two syllables together. And typically around 12 months, 14, 16 months. They&#39;ll start by repeating the same syllable. So that&#39;s where mama r.dot comes from. Baba for bottle, right? Bye. Bye. Um, nine, nine, those duplicated or replicated syllables are really easy and early on. That&#39;s what you should start to be hearing. And if they don&#39;t have that, then that&#39;s where, you know, you need to start right then with some practice, a couple of months of that they&#39;ll begin switching those syllables to Bob bowl. Pop P right. That&#39;s those syllables PA P R ending with different vowels. So that&#39;s a different motor planning. That&#39;s harder than Papa, right? And so I gave you some ideas last week. Easiest tools to start with animal sounds. Make it fun. Practice, move, move. right. also readily available. All of those animals sounds are with toys or books, use the environment it&#39;s really key that they. Are able to do that with you and then on their own right. So in this episode, I&#39;m going to start with number four and we&#39;ll cover several of these key steps that you or secrets, right. That you can start to implement. So number four would be that your child needs to be able to say several different syllable structures. And you&#39;re like, oh, I learned categories last week. What the heck does syllable structures mean? And some of you might think this is a little tedious, Aaron, it&#39;s out of my kind of wheelhouse, but I assure you that it&#39;s fairly basic. structure of English language or actually any language, right. And that is really important that you begin to understand, because if you want to support your one, two and three year old at any level, These are the building blocks that every child needs to work through. And it&#39;s also the secret sauce to prepping them to prereading skills. I&#39;ve mentioned to you all before, how that&#39;s connected. And S you know, in one of these episodes, we&#39;ll dive deep. But here. If you really help your child understand how words are structured. With single syllables or two or three syllables, and then you string those words together and it becomes longer and longer, more complex. Then that is really helping him stand on solid ground. To breaking that code. In that magical reading arena. And I say that on purpose, it is magical. It is breaking the code because it&#39;s manmade. It&#39;s not natural, like talking. And I&#39;ve shared in previous episodes, how babies are born into this world. citizens across the world. And what that means to us, to us speech, language pathologists or linguists, is that a baby? Is ready to learn any spoken language. And it just so happens that, you know, in our country we speak English primarily. So that&#39;s what we&#39;re coding And so. I assure you that after my 35 years of working with kids from, you know, one years old to 16 years old, I can pretty much identify any three-year-old based on their speech to language skills and predict whether they will struggle in learning how to read, or it will be relatively easy. There are some very, very specific. Speech and language development that needs to be in place in order for them to master literacy. And what I&#39;m sharing with you through these 10. Steps as well as pretty much any other episode is leading them onto that path of success. So let me walk you through what. Syllable structures mean, hang in. It&#39;s not that complicated. It&#39;s just novel, right? Or maybe you remembered this, When you were in second grade when you were learning how to spell, but right now, It&#39;s really targeted for your toddler. Who&#39;s learning how to master verbal communication. So. We study what&#39;s typical, right? We study what most toddlers do in order to choir, speech and language expressive and receptive. Right? So toddlers with typically developing speech and language skills, usually learn to say words. Of various patterns or various syllable structures. And if you&#39;re watching this on the YouTube, I will highlight this. But if you&#39;re just listening to this, take out a pen and a pad. and write these words down and then I&#39;ll walk you through what they mean. Okay. It&#39;s not complicated. It&#39;s just a little nuanced and somewhat new for you. So write these words down, mama. Up. No. Sit. And open. So those syllables and yes, they&#39;re single words. Right. But they cover the five different kinds. Of consonant, vowel combinations that we use in English. so remember again, back when you&#39;re an elementary school, that the vowels, we have five hours, a E I O and U, but we mix and match those vowels to make 22 vowel sounds in English. And that&#39;s where breaking the code for literacy and early speech and language start to really overlap. So, if you can remember a little bit about the long vowels versus the short vowels, right? So when I write out these letters, a E I O U. We can pronounce them in the long form, like saying their own name. Right. A. Hey. Or E or I. Those are the long forms and then the short forms. If you remember, they would be at. Ah, ah, Ah, Right. So those are the short forms. And you&#39;re saying, what the heck does this all mean? Well, let&#39;s go back to our five basic syllables. Mama is a consonant vowel, consonant, vowel, right? M a M a and you now know that it&#39;s reduplicated right. Ma ma they&#39;re the same That&#39;s easy. And then we can say UP. So that starts with a vowel. Ah, and ends with a consonant. Right. Up. Now we can say NO, that starts with a constant. And ends with a vowel. Oh, that&#39;s a long, oh, right. Now we have the word SIT and that&#39;s what we call a CVC word. Consonant vowel consonant. So that is a syllable structure. And then the last example would be OPEN. And that&#39;s a vowel consonant, vowel consonant, but they&#39;re not the same. And it&#39;s a little bit different than mama mama starts with a constant. Right. But open starts with a vowel. Oh, Eh. Hm. Right. So many young children, babies, mostly 10, 12, 14 months old. They might start with OPEN and drop off that last constant OPA OPA OPA. That&#39;s very typical with the young children. They&#39;re trying to figure out what are the syllable structures; and what sounds go together and what sounds don&#39;t go together. What sounds start at the beginning of the word. And I was given the example, like the NG in SING. That&#39;s an English. It always ends a word. It does not. Or it&#39;s in the middle, right. Singing, but now you have two of them, but we never start a word with N G right? Not in English. now, when you&#39;re looking at his word list, whether they&#39;re 20 words or 50 words or a hundred words, We want to look at the grammatical categories right now is in verbs, et cetera, et cetera. And now we also want to look at the syllable structures because that&#39;s really important, because by the time they&#39;re two. Ish a little bit early, a little bit later, they should be covering all of those syllable structures. But if your child is only using one or two of those syllable types, syllable structures. Then he&#39;s not going to be able, or he&#39;s not ready to say a lot of different phrases, right. Because when we talk about phrases and you can start to look at your child&#39;s word list, you can start to analyze what kinds of syllables or words is he trying to say, What&#39;s the makeup, not the physical makeup. So even if he&#39;s tries to string, syllables or words, Together. It might sound pretty garbled to you and me because it&#39;s, discoordinated, he&#39;s not hitting his mark. For the consonants, even the early developing consonants. And we haven&#39;t really talked about what&#39;s an early consonant versus a late consonant. But, you know, you can imagine like a T H is one of the latest developing sounds, but the, the P or the B where the lips come together and they just pop. Those are easy. Uh, motor planning skills versus the. Right. And that&#39;s a whole different conversation. But it&#39;s important that you&#39;re looking at. What is he trying to say? And then what is he able to clearly produce? Right. Because a lot of this communication is physical, so we want him to auditorily map these sounds and say, Hey, That&#39;s a pattern that mama or dada says over and over again. That&#39;s important. I&#39;m going to hold on to that, So. Be open to analyze the kind of syllable structures that your child is saying, by listening carefully, make a recording of him. And then really hone in on what are the vowels and then what are the constants? And then what are the syllable structures, Is it just a bunch of vowels? And is he dropping off a lot of the consonants? Can he say a consonant, vowel pattern, right? Like, NO. But UP, he might just say, ah, ah, right, but we want him to stress that, or we want to stress up. You want up. Let&#39;s get up. And we&#39;re stressing where the boundaries are of that particular word that he&#39;s trying to hone in on. Right. And so at this point, I want to give you all a very loving word of caution here, because when we&#39;re talking about one year old or a two year old, or even someone who&#39;s pushing that third birthday, These new talkers or these talkers who are working through it, do not need to be corrected with their speech or articulation. And we talk a lot about rephrasing or expanding what they&#39;re trying, and we have this adult version and here&#39;s your child working through the process. And over time each week, each month each, you know, developmental phase, they&#39;re going to get closer and closer to our adult form. But it&#39;s really important that, that we, that I&#39;m not advocating that you start correcting his speech or, his pronunciation. it&#39;s really about you exercising how well you&#39;re hearing him and perceiving, and then analyzing what he&#39;s doing. And the big thing is for you all to practice being present, right? Being with him, looking at him eye to eye. Listening with intention. And then trying to shape. What he&#39;s practicing, you know, if he says OPA OPA or open, the box, if you guys are going to have a snack together and you say, oh, pen. Oh pin box. And you&#39;re really stretching it out and showing him both the motor planning, but how it sounds. And he&#39;s mapping this information. And then when you&#39;re there with them. Continue to take information. How much is he moving his mouth when he tries to talk? Is it just the jaw going up and down or is he moving the lips? What about the tongue? Is he having sounds in the back of his mouth or the front of his mouth? Right. And I always go back to this. Where&#39;s his mouth at rest, His mouth posture. are his lips closed and he&#39;s breathing through his nose. Or is his mouth still open because he&#39;s still dealing with a lot of congestion, right? How is his chewing. I&#39;ve talked a lot about this. How chewing developmental process of taking a bite, chewing and swallowing is very co-related to the speech and articulation, it&#39;s all related. Right. So when you start to look at his word list and hopefully every week, his word list is growing right. But you want to look and say, Hmm, are most of these words, the same syllable pattern? Like I said, are they all consonant, vowel or vowel consonant? Is he putting trying to put a two syllable word together, right? And so with late talkers, especially those that have motor planning issues. And I&#39;ve talked a lot about that here. This is a common issue that they simplify their language to really, a consonant vowel or a vowel consonant. And for whatever reason, we can talk about that later, but it&#39;s really important that you begin to understand. Where is my daughter. and how can I help build those skills? It might be motor planning. It might be related to eating. It might be because he has a lot of congestion. And we can take a look at those underlying cause, but it&#39;s important that we help the strength and the coordination, so he can begin to string these sounds together. So I want you to, Look at it this way. and I&#39;ve used this before. You can go to the weights room and, lift 10 pounds and 15 pounds and 20, and you keep building the weight and that&#39;s what happens with speech, but it&#39;s also coordination kind of thing. I think of keyboards and how fluently you are on the piano. Right. But you go from PI. Two apple pie. And then apple pie piece. Or cut. Apple pie piece. Or cut. Another apple pie piece. You know, and so you&#39;re building it up. So when you go start with PI and that can represent a lot of things like I&#39;m done with this pie, I want some more pie where the heck is the pie. All the way to cut another apple pie piece for the family. That&#39;s a big, long utterance, but we started with PI right. And so it&#39;s important that you see your one-year-old your one and half year old or two and two and a half years building these motor planning, motor sequencing skills. As well as the language as well as how well is he understanding how well is he following along? And we&#39;re building this dyad So I think it was just about a year ago back last December, it was episodes 29 and 30 that I talk about late talkers. Kinda describe what a late talker is and what a late talker is not. And then I also walked through, I think, five real life cases that they have interesting or different backgrounds. And I identify whether they are a true late talker or. If they have other issues going on. So. Take a look that if most of your son or daughter&#39;s words, if they&#39;re the same pattern. Then you want to start to introduce different structures and yes, this requires some thought and planning on your part. But even if you&#39;re feeling like, oh gosh, Aaron, this is too much. I, this is way beyond my scope of, imagination or under my wheel house. but I, I want you to think about it. Bit by bit. And I give this analogy that. I became a better baker once I used a scale and I could really measure and differentiate, you know, how much I can&#39;t roughly estimate flour or sugar or salt. I have two. Really measure and fine tune it. And I got better and better the more I became nuanced between, you know, measurements and how do you, you know, do certain tasks. And that&#39;s what I want you to do here. You know, last week I walked you through those first three steps. Look at his list. now, you can start to look at. The syllable structures. And where is he putting the vowels and the consonants? is he dropping off those first consonant sounds are dropping off the last consonant or is he simplifying everything to one syllable, he&#39;s trying to say elephant and that&#39;s Ella Fent and he says, ah, it&#39;s just vowels. he&#39;s getting some of the melody, right. Or the tone in the pitch, but he can&#39;t coarticulate. Right. So I sure you, it&#39;s not that challenging. It&#39;s just new. Give yourself some time to practice listening and listen, some recording. Of him. And, and then really analyze. And, and even if you end up and I say this to a lot of people, even if you end up calling a speech pathologist and wanting, you know, somebody to support you. And wanting to navigate this road with, with a professional. I get that, that that&#39;s great. But also remember that the real progress, no matter what wonderful therapist you end up with. Is between those therapy sessions. It&#39;s what you do, Between Monday and Monday, because most therapies once a week, maybe twice a week. And I&#39;ve shared with you the pros and cons to all of this. We don&#39;t have a magic wand that I can, use in our therapy sessions for 30 minutes or 45 minutes with a little, a little one our sessions are only about 45 minutes. And. What happens the days between that, I&#39;m trying to give you tools to make the biggest impact, and you can take all of this information and share it with your therapist. If you end up going that route. But you&#39;re going to be in a much better position. When you first walk into her office. And I say her a lot, because most of us are female, but there&#39;s a few males out there and, you know, pardon me, but. But you&#39;re going to be much more knowledgeable of where your, your son or daughter rests at and this developmental process you&#39;ll have more specific questions. And then you&#39;ll know what to expect and if he or she. Doesn&#39;t really open up to you, meaning if they&#39;re not really communicative with you and asking you to be part of the process. Then you might want to reconsider and, you know, I&#39;m kind of holding my colleagues feet to the fire because I think we failed you. For the last few decades, especially now, because there are so many layers to this and our modern world is complicated. We have to work together. And I think it&#39;s really important that mom and dad and grandparents. Anybody who is a primary caretaker? Be open to do. Most of the heavy lifting. At home with some guidance, whether you use my guidance, some of my tools that I&#39;m sharing with you and other things that I&#39;m going to unfold over the next six months or so in 2024, or you seek, in-person support. She or he is still your coach and your guide in what you all do day in and day out. Really matters. And your child is counting on you and you can do this is just. It&#39;s a mind shift that, okay, let me break it down. And then put it into my day to day conversational flow when I&#39;m playing with my kids, when I&#39;m giving them a bath, when I&#39;m sharing a meal, when we&#39;re playing at the park, right. So. Even if, tomorrow you say, oh, I&#39;m looking at this word list. I&#39;m looking at their syllable structures. This doesn&#39;t look good. I&#39;m getting scared. If you pick up the phone is still going to be weeks. If not months before you get an appointment, because the demand is too high and that&#39;s one of the reasons or another of the reasons why I&#39;m trying to reach a larger audience to help you guys get ahead of it. And at the same time, use stuff at home, no matter what the outside services can or can&#39;t do for you. Right? So all of these steps can be implemented bit by bit in the interim. No matter whether you have an appointment on the other side, or you just want to get ahead of it. All right. So today you can just say, all right, honey. When we play together, I&#39;m going to record it. And I&#39;m going to be present. I&#39;m going to look at you in the eye. I&#39;m going to be there. I&#39;m going to respond to you in real time. I&#39;m going to watch you. And to see what you&#39;re doing with your mouth and your sounds and your gestures. How are you really trying to communicate with me? Is it just pitch and I&#39;ve just gotten used to it. You know, or do you try to imitate me? Whether it&#39;s gestures or actions or some of my speech sounds right. It&#39;s all a process and the more you are aware. Then the more you can show up. So now I want to help you think back, And I want you to think of when your little one was a 8, 10, 12 months. Did they babble a lot or did they use jargon? And so even if they started using first words around 10, 12, 13 months, And they used jargon interspersed with these real words and keep in mind jargon for us speech people. It means that babies will use short syllable strings with a very specific inflection. That sounds very much like adult speech communication, right? But they&#39;re not real words there. It&#39;s just jargon. It&#39;s just nonsense. And I&#39;ve shared this before. There&#39;s this remarkable YouTube that went viral. About, I guess it was four years ago and I think it has over 15, 16 million hits and I&#39;ll I&#39;ll, um, put the link below, but. It was so spot on that I actually followed this young man. His name was DJ prior, and I believe his little boy was Kingston at the time. And. He was only about, I&#39;d say 14 months old, but they were sitting on the couch. I think they were even watching a basketball game and the mom was videotaping it. But it was so spot on and of this conversational give and take this flow. And the little guy Kingston had this perfect jargon. It was spot on. And this beautiful family. He actually got so much attention that he was asked to be a spokesperson for early child development, and he would go out and talk to young parents, right. Moms and dads, dads, especially. But. Um, we in my industry, early child development, speech and language. T refer to this as serve and return. And maybe your pediatrician has talked to you about it, but it&#39;s, it&#39;s when one person serves like in tennis, right. They offer up a smile or a sound or word, or even a gesture. Right. And they wink. Right. And then the other person returns with some kind of communication response. And so say for example, your baby looks at you and you smile. And then your baby looks at you and waves to you because you got, he got a smile from you, and then you say, Hey, hi baby. Hi baby. From across the room or something, maybe he&#39;s eating with dad or, or, or whatever. And then the baby starts. You know, waving back and making guttural sounds jargon because there&#39;s this serve and return this dyad, this flow, right. Which is very, very important to speech and language, but it also gives us a snapshot into the attachment and attention and engagement. All of those precursors. Before they&#39;re ready for that first word. So. Think back. When your child was coming up right at 8, 10, 12 months. Did they make a lot of noise. And I talk a lot about this, that your babies need to be noisy, right? Is it important for us to reflect and say, okay, did he have a lot of oral motor practice with babbling and jargon? And did they experience, or did you both experience that volley back and forth? Right. Collect that information and say, Hmm. No, he was pretty quiet. Or yeah, he was, really noisy now. He&#39;s not so noisy. I wonder if the ear infections are impacting him. again, there, these are questions that I want you guys to start peeling back. The layers is really important. And you can do it. You just have to. Be open. To take on that responsibility, right? And so let&#39;s step back to what step four was isolating syllable structures, right? And, you can go back to, late talkers, like I said, episodes 29 and 30 at another time. But. Right now with the list in front of you, I want you to, Feel like how important this is. Right. And here&#39;s the truth. I&#39;ve heard some therapists I&#39;ve never really met one, but I&#39;ve heard, you know, in chat groups and whatnot, how they actually teach. Older toddlers, how to Babel and jargon. I don&#39;t know where they got that from, honestly. I&#39;ve never subscribed to that method. I have always said, as I mentioned earlier, in this episode, here&#39;s the adult form. Here&#39;s your baby&#39;s form. And they&#39;re taking steps toward what we want or how we want them to speak and articulate, but also, you know, language flow. So I think it&#39;s always important to have good speech modeling going on. So that&#39;s where I think one of my favorite things, which is singing and nursery rhymes. And I talk on here a lot about the importance of that. And the truth is nearly every culture has lullabies or nursery rhymes, playground, champs. Um, street rhymes and the list goes on and on almost every culture because we, as humans have developed this form of communication through our evolutionary process. through a lot of singing and chanting and telling stories, And so it was really important that we understand because language has a rhythm. our brain has a timing machine, right? It&#39;s all about synchronicity and putting it together. And so singing is the best way I know to practice sequencing. So if we&#39;re going to move your child, From single syllables to multi syllables, i.e phrases. Then we have to help them sequence through this whole. Oral motor and sound process. And that takes on a melodic quality, right? The melody of songs. And, and you can turn anything into songs, right? So we&#39;re going to stretch it out by elongating those vowels and show them in a very fun non-threatening. Kind of animated. Way of how to change the sounds that come out of our mouth based on oral motor movements. And I encourage you all to use that sing song voice, especially with, you know, your babies. Of course, we all use that parent EAs, but. We kind of drop off that. And then it&#39;s important though that we, continue that flow, especially if you see that they&#39;re not acquiring those nine or 10 words every day, or they&#39;re not moving from 10 words to 50 words, or they&#39;re not building two word utterances that we need to go back there and use a lot of that natural. Stimulation right. And so movement through dancing or bouncing, like I&#39;ve, I&#39;ve shared before in other episodes. And sometimes I just hum along. Hmm. Hmm. I don&#39;t know how that&#39;s going to sound. Auditorily, but, um, you know, this is the way we brush our teeth and I just hum right. Or you can use one syllable that they do say that&#39;s easy, right? Dad, dad, dad. right to get them going. And then maybe they&#39;ll sing along with that one syllable. What we want them to do is string these syllables together for. For heavier and heavier loads, it might be repetitive. And then we&#39;re going to change it up over time. Right. So that was number four. That we really need to analyze, study and build their syllable structure. And I walked you through those five different structures of Constance and vowel patterns. And if you didn&#39;t get a chance to write them down, you can go back and listen. Or I will have a link where I can itemize it all for you. Okay, so now let&#39;s move on to number five and this special step or secret is that your child needs to hear a variety of two word phrases before he&#39;s able to imitate them. And you might say, well, of course they hear a lot of speech and language. I mean, I&#39;m talking to them all day and we&#39;re doing all kinds of things together. but I want you now to begin to listen to yourself. And figure out. Hmm. What kind of model am I? Am I using. Short, two word phrases. Specifically, right with intention. And so you can then go back to number two and look at the categories, right? The nouns, the verbs, the prepositions, and start to assess your own language, your model, right? Cause they&#39;re going to learn through you. And say, huh? Well, maybe I only use now and in verbs because that&#39;s the easiest, which it is, right. Mommy sees. Or mommy eats. Or blocks fall. Or puppy sleeps. Right. So noun and verb. Can I vary it up? Can I expand my model? Right. So maybe you can switch, switch it and say, eat puppy. Instead of puppy eats, eat puppy, use the verb first, or you could say read book. Right. Or eat cookie. Sit down. Right? We do say that one quite a bit, but why. What I&#39;m trying to get here is. We as their guide as their model, as their first teacher need to make sure that our two word models. Our varied as well. So we need to vary the grammatical categories. As well as the syllable. Marcation right. So pronoun than verb, I run, I run. Or pronoun and noun my shoe. Your turn. Right. Your turn. Right. Uh, pronoun your and turn is a noun, right? Or adjective you say, Ooh, Smell the milk. Ooh, yucky milk, bad. Yucky milk. So you make sure that you have a colorful language, but that is pretty specific to, for a two year old, right? You pick up there? They&#39;re bare, right? Oh, fuzzy bear. Fuzzy bear. But if we rattle too much, oh, the bear is pretty fuzzy. Oh, look, he&#39;s dusty. Let me dust them off. That&#39;s a lot of language. Right. That&#39;s all. And they stop listening, right. Because it&#39;s too, it&#39;s an overload for them. You can also say things like noun and preposition. I&#39;m singing the hokey pokey. And I think that was in another episode, right. I put my arm in arm out. You can break it down. It doesn&#39;t always have to be a thousand percent accurate or showman. Like you break it down to wherever they are developmentally. And then you can also expand. And we&#39;ve talked about this a little bit, expand on his single word. So if he does have a list of 50 good words and they seem to be varied, Then help him. When he is still kind of stuck. At using just single words. Cause all his needs are being met. You know, he looks at it and says, oh, Teddy. Felt like there&#39;s my Teddy. I want it. Please get it for me. Right. And you say, oh, I want Teddy. Oh, Hi, Teddy. Want Teddy. And your entire seen him to put two words together for that whole expression, Or if he sees the Teddy and you know, it&#39;s on the other side of the room, there&#39;s Teddy, there&#39;s Teddy. Or if he&#39;s playing with his Teddy, right. I&#39;m just using, Teddy&#39;s an example. He&#39;s playing well. Jump Teddy. Jump jump, jump Teddy. Right. You&#39;re putting them together or say he has a whole bunch of stuffed animals. Right? And you take one, maybe his favorite little Teddy teasingly. Right. And you say, Ooh, My Teddy. But he looks and he&#39;s like, no, no, my Teddy, right. But you&#39;re doing it playfully and he knows that he gets your vibe. Right, but keep in mind. I said there was a lot of nuances in this material for the new talkers you should be using mostly single words and short 2 word phrases when you&#39;re talking directly with them during play or your daily routines. They will hear a lot of sophisticated, rich language beyond that throughout their day, naturally. Say if they have a big family meal or they go out to the store or they go to the park. Or with an older sibling or the grandparents come, a lot of that rich whole language will be presented and used by your, your little one. But when you are with him, that one-to-one changing him, giving him a bath, playing with him. Having a meal with him. That&#39;s when you use the single words and the two word phrases, very specifically, very strategically. Okay. So just keep that in mind because that can really make or break. his day and really begin to move that needle and build his repertoire and then build his automaticity with all of this. So. go back and listen to that if you&#39;re not quite sure what I mean. By splitting up. The quality of your one-to-one time with him because that&#39;s what a speech language therapist does. And then this open-ended rich language background, right? So now let&#39;s look at number six of this list of 10. And I will walk you through that. Your child should be able to imitate two word phrases before they consistently produce them on their own. And here&#39;s another little disclaimer, um, because there&#39;s always these little parts that we have to be mindful of. Some kids with significant motor planning problems, will often not be able to imitate, Because that&#39;s part of their weakness is that they have motor deficit. I kind of gave you an example last time about, learning new dance moves. It&#39;s easier if I just kind of go out there and do my thing versus watching you and trying to imitate that. And. I&#39;m too discoordinated at this time, but. typically you&#39;ll see that they have difficulty imitating almost anything. Right. dance moves or, or tying his shoe or putting his clothes on as well as speech. But, but that&#39;s a side note. Typical average kids will be able to imitate your two word model before they begin to really put it together themselves. And you might want to think, oh gosh. My little one used to do a lot of sign language. You can also bring that back out, whether they&#39;re home language or home signs or gestures. Again, it goes back to the idea that. Gross motor and fine motor coordination works together. So I, and a couple other little side notes that you might want to use as you&#39;re experimenting, right? If he can&#39;t put these words together imitatively sometimes a whisper helps and it&#39;s kind of drawing his attention and it&#39;s, it&#39;s more. Playful and lighthearted, and then he&#39;ll be able to whisper it back. So that&#39;s always kind of a fun experiment. As well as. Wanting to do what with you. And so if you see that your child is saying it with you, Again, that&#39;s where singing or nursery rhymes can really help build his, his strength And Dr. Ham. Uh, to build the duration of his speech utterance, right. And one note along with this is that. There is a mistake that some people, parents, teachers, and therapists. When we&#39;re practicing phrases that they will break it up. And so they&#39;ll say more. More. Milk milk. But now you&#39;re splitting it to two single words. He can say more and he can say milk the ideas that we want him to automatically build it together. So that kind of defeats the purpose. So. Just be mindful of that. I&#39;ve seen a lot of preschool teachers do that as well as, um, other speech therapists, honestly. So if your child is also repeating the first or the second word in your two word phrase, Then there is kind of a sequential problem. So just keep on practicing. And that would be like, if you want him to say bounce ball or ball bounce, and he just says ball ball, and you say bounce. Ball. Right. And you&#39;re giving him that sing song. You&#39;re pulling out. Th the structure and giving him a lot of auditory and visual cues and you just keep practicing. He he&#39;s showing you based on his skills at that time that he just needs more practice. And that&#39;s what you do. So if you know that he has a list of 50 words and they&#39;re varied and he&#39;s building his syllables, then you just keep practicing with him in that one-to-one time. Right. And as you do this, also keep in mind that the more you use that sing song. or nursery rhymes or. You know, lullabies, he&#39;s not going to be stuck there forever. Right. It really is honing his auditory, his physical, and then his language components together. And you&#39;re really going to help nurture him through this developmental phase sooner. I can almost guarantee that, right. You&#39;re building his repertoire. and so you want. To give him a lot of that. That support. So then it becomes natural more and more and more. also keep in mind that I always put these probes or these practice elements in context. So. I don&#39;t, especially with little ones where the one or two or a three-year-old I would never encourage a therapist, let alone a parent to sit down. If you&#39;re having a little snack with him and your. pull out the flashcards, right. And get him to imitate. I really discourage anybody from doing that with a little toddlers. So put it in context. And so if you&#39;re having a snack or a meal with him and you want to use language, because that&#39;s part of that socialization. you know, having a meal together. Then make it real, right. Say eat cheese. Um, more cheese, Or eat chicken. Or move them. Bite carrot or a yummy food. So you&#39;re putting real language in context, and I think that&#39;s really, really important, especially with kids under three. So we&#39;ve covered six. The first one from last week&#39;s episode is to make a word list and they need 35 words on their own in order to start putting words together. Number two. Look and break down the seven grammatical categories that I gave you. There&#39;s more than just nouns and verbs, right? We want to make sure that in his list of words has 35 50, a hundred words, whatever the list is. That we want to cover all seven of those grammatical categories. Number three. That he needs to use two syllable words before he can use phrases. So it could be, is he at. Repeating the same syllable like mama or dada or Papa. Or is he really expanding that sane bubble or monkey? It might not be perfectly articulated cookie. So the vowels are changing, but he needs two syllable words before you can move on. to two word phrases, right? Number four that we covered today was five syllable structure. So now I want you to analyze last week you analyze the grammatical categories. Now analyze the syllable structures. For example, that CVC word, right? Sit hot. Cup But is he using other syllable structures too? Number five. He needs to hear from you, right? Your, his speech model, a variety of two word phrases, go back and look at the categories. Go back and look at the syllable structures. Are you giving him that model? He needs a guidepost, right? And then number six. That we talked about today was that he needs to imitate two word phrases before he can speak them on his own. the caveat is with kids who have pretty significant motor sequencing problems. Imitation can quite often be more challenging for them. So we have to keep that in mind. Where is your child today and w where are we moving him toward? So. We will finish off this list. So you have a full plan of action where is my child? Is he at 10 words or 50 words. And how do I get him to the next phase? Because the big fork in the road. Is those two word utterances are two word phrases and building his language because kids move from that 50 words to 3000 words between their second and third birthday. So all of this is really, really important. I want you to have the tools and the knowledge and the confidence to really help him. And again, if you find yourself, oh, I better really talk to somebody directly. Then by all means call a speech therapist, call your pediatrician, ask friends or family for a referral. But do keep in mind, call the particular office. And ask your questions first, as I always share, not all speech therapists are equal. You know, this, this is true for any profession or any skill trade, right? still go back to your word list, play detective figure out where your beautiful toddler is today. Developmentally start there. Meanwhile, I have two additional options and I&#39;m so excited to share
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      <time>59:04</time>
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          them, with you. And you&#39;ll be the first to know. The first one. I am starting a free private Facebook group for parents of children three and under. Officially, it begins January 7th, but if you join early, if you sign up today or this week, you will have some extra bonuses. I&#39;m so excited to share these. I am currently keeping this private Facebook group under a hundred subscribers. Because the truth is I don&#39;t like those big, large groups where there&#39;s so many folks you feel like you&#39;re just lost in the shuffle. You throw a question out and nobody responds to you I want to create a community where parents really support other parents, as well as having access to professionals like myself. And really exciting guests. I want your questions answered directly. I want a place where we can brainstorm ideas together. Keep the community small and intimate and have like-minded people, parents, professionals really coming together to keep our kids on track and to help navigate this modern world at the same time, when things get a little shaky, what can we do to maintain movement forward. I&#39;m calling this, PARENTS OF TODDLERS TAKE CHARGE because that&#39;s the parent that I&#39;m looking for, someone who really wants to step up and say, okay, let&#39;s get to it. I will be offering semi monthly, Q and A&#39;s on the first and third Wednesdays of each month. There will be a link to sign up down below And right now I&#39;m only letting 50 people, the first 50 subscribers to opt in. Because again, I want to keep it small. I want to get the feel of what this community is going to want and need. And then we&#39;ll build up from there. That&#39;s option number one. The second option I&#39;m really excited about is I will be opening small parent coaching groups. Starting mid January. And this is with six to eight families per group. They will be divided up by the age of your toddler. So from birth to the first birthday, 12 months to 24 months and then 24 to 36 months, as you all know, developmental skills are strikingly different when you move from a one to a two to a three-year-old. So these groups will be paid and they&#39;ll run for six weeks. We&#39;ll have weekly agendas and very, very specific weekly goals with that being said, I&#39;m asking parents to be really honest and forthcoming. These groups are not designed if you already have a diagnosis; meaning that your child has already been evaluated, That there are significant delays. I assure you I will have different groups in the very near future for you as well, but for now the first set of coaching groups are for parents who are motivated to get out in front and to stay out there. Perhaps, you&#39;re wondering where your child is today and, and you&#39;re just eager to get some more information. You&#39;re excited to implement some of the steps that I&#39;ve been sharing, but you want to have a guide to Walk you down this path, right. And, and to tease it all apart, you&#39;re the perfect candidate for these first parent groups; these small paid for six to eight families. Now I will share that part of my small groups will include an online questionnaire. That I will personally analyze and give you personal feedback into one-to-one session. So we can just have a good benchmark. It is only, and I stress this. It is only a screening. It is not an evaluation or a diagnosis opportunity. It just gives us both information to really analyze where your son or daughter sits today. And then how do we make an appropriate plan? More details will be coming around the corner, Keep in mind, I&#39;m going to launch it in January. If you&#39;re interested, there&#39;s a link down below to get your name on the wait list because there&#39;s small groups. There&#39;s only six to eight families per group. They will. Fill up fast. Meanwhile, all of you can join my free Facebook group and ask your questions right away. And even though it doesn&#39;t officially open, like I said, until January 7th, I am going to be on line there and we can start the conversations rolling. So if you&#39;re motivated and you really, really want to take action, there&#39;s no time like the present. Let&#39;s all start off this year, right on the right foot with the right plan. Put your detective hat on roll up your sleeve. Make 2024 the best ever. It&#39;s time to play ball guys. These years fly by fast. Trust me. I know, you know this cognitively, but emotionally before you know it, they&#39;ll be ready and signed up for kindergarten. So. Thanks again for spending your time with me. I truly, truly appreciate it. And don&#39;t forget to subscribe because there are bonus sessions right around the corner there already. Scheduled and you want to be the first to know. So take care and look for the links down below, God bless and see you all next week
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