Research has shown that children learn how to communicate best when engaging in enjoyable and longer interactions with their caregivers. In childhood, learning goes hand-in-hand with play.
Children are more likely to learn vocabulary that relates to their interests and curiosities. Having fun with your child has the potential to significantly improve your child’s interactions and communication skills.
After you discover what excites your child, here is how you can incorporate these interests into your interactions:
- Let your child lead and be responsive to their initiations. Be sure to respond quickly and positively. For example: “Wow, that’s a really fast car!”.
- Your positive and quick responses can support your child in continuing with the interaction, allowing more communicative exchanges and vocabulary building!
- Researchers suggest avoiding toys, games, and electronic books with flashing lights, loud noises, or long pre-recorded songs, as they can make interactions more challenging.Instead, encourage imaginative play, such as dress-ups, outdoor play, and building activities like Lego, to support vocabulary development.
- Your child may have sensory preferences that make certain activities better choices for encouraging communication than others. By following your child’s interests and preferences, you are providing a space for your child to develop language through what is fun for them. Some ideas could include playing with sand, slime, foam or play-dough.
- Fun encourages an interaction to have more ‘turns’, or back-and-forth exchanges, which creates more opportunities for vocabulary learning. When you tune into your child’s interest sand curiosities, research shows that language learning will flourish.
References
Ackermann, L., Hepach, R., & Nivedita, M. (2019). Children learn words easier when they are interested in the category to which the word belongs. Developmental Science, 23(3), 1-12.https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12915Begus, K., Gliga, T., & Southgate, V. (2014). Infants learn what they want to learn: Responding to infant pointing leads to superior learning. PloS ONE, 9(10), e108817.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0108817Jokihaka, S., Laasonen, M., Lahti-Nuuttila, P., Smolander, S., Kunnari, S., Arkkila, E., Pesonen, A.-K., & Heinonen, K. (2022). Cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between quality of parent–child interaction and language ability in preschool-age children with developmental language disorder. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 65(6), 2258–2271.https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_jslhr-21-00479Leung, C., Tsang, S., & Li, B. (2017). Efficacy of fun to learn for the young program: randomized controlled trial. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 26(10), 2865–2878.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0790-9Mani, N., & Ackermann, L. (2018). Why do children learn the words they do? *Child Development Perspectives*, 12(4), 253–257. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12295Ratner, N., & Bruner, J. (1978). Games, social exchange and the acquisition of language. Journal of Child Language, 5(3), 391–401. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0305000900002063Stahl, A. E. & Feigenson, L. (2017). Expectancy violations promote learning in young children. Cognition, 163, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2017.02.008Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Kuchirko, Y., & Song, L. (2014). Why is infant language learning facilitated by parental responsiveness? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(2), 121–126.https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414522813Weitzman, E. (2017). It Takes Two to Talk: A practical guide for parents of children with language delays (5th edition). The Hanen Centre.FUN: A VITAL INGREDIENT FOR BUILDING YOUR CHILD’S VOCABULARY SPEECH BOX © SPS 2025
Speech Pathology for Schools
