Babies are born ready to make contact through all their means of very early communication. So what do they need from us and from their learning environment to support their developing language skills?
SOUND AND VISION
Babies, toddlers and young children need to have involved adults close to them. Affectionate early communication uses sound, vision and touch. It has to be personal.
* Ensure that you are easily accessible to young children at their eye level - comfortable communication does not co-exist with a cricked neck from having to look up for much of the time.
* Be close enough for enjoyable two-way eye contact and for touch - from you to the young child and back again. Many toddlers have already learned that people 'listen with their eyes'. How many readers have experienced very young children cupping your face with their hands and turning you to face them?
RESTRICT DISTRACTIONS
Young children need to be able to hear and discriminate between the sounds that make up the language they are learning:
* Create an environment that has quiet times and areas - continuous background sounds of music or a radio will distract children.
* Very young children need personal, two-way communication between them and an attentive adult.
* Two-year-olds can manage waiting and turn-taking for a short time. But their social skills are over-stretched by extended turn taking and distractions of communication in groups.
* Avoid activities such as circle time with very young children, as even three- year-olds can find them difficult.
RICH ORAL COMMUNICATION
Adults need to feel comfortable about following the child's lead in communication that uses sounds, body language and actual words. This approach should start right from the beginning with babies. Practitioners and parents must never think that they are 'too busy' to chat with children or that other planned activities should take priority over talking and listening. Rich oral communication helps to build the basis for toddler thinking and, much later, for the move into written language.
* Supportive adult communication picks up on the child's interest and shares that interest through looking and words.
* Adult commentary needs to be closely linked to what a child is doing, or else young children do not know what you are talking about. They need a clear connection between what you say and what is in front of both of you right now.
* By the time a child is two years old they have developed a time perspective that means that they and you can sometimes make a link in words back to an event that you have shared.
* Questions can be part of an enjoyable conversation between you and a young child. But do not start cross- questioning to check whether a child knows something.
BUYER BEWARE
Very young children learn to express themselves through personal interaction with people. Practitioners and parents alike need to be wary of the claims on some toys' packaging. No electronic toy will ever 'teach your child to talk'. Nor does fixing the alphabet to the surface of all kinds of plastic toys marketed for under-threes 'teach your child their letters'.
Under-threes can build a strong basis for understanding written language, but only when adults tune into the real developmental steps of their learning.
FURTHER READING:
* You make the difference in helping your child to learn by Ayala Manolson, The Hanen Centre (distributed by Winslow, 0845 921 1777, 10)
* Literacy from home to school: reading with Alice by Robin Campbell (Trentham Books, 01782 745567, 12.99)
