Talk Less to Get Your Child to Talk More

Full transcript

Hi, I'm Nicole Kolenda, speech-language pathologist, professor, and founder of Creating Voice for Possibility. I'm here today to talk about why, as parents, reducing your utterance length, or your sentence length, will ultimately encourage your child to talk more. I know that seems like a bit of a misnomer.

But what I've been seeing, especially during the pandemic, which we are still in the middle of right now (I'm recording this at the end of July 2020), is that the speech therapy children have been getting over the past couple of months has relied heavily on parental input, if not all on the parents. One of the things I've been coaching my clients and their parents through is that the best way to encourage your child to talk more is actually for you to talk less.

You are the model

One of the things I tell my parents is to remember that ultimately you are the model for their language production. If you want them to repeat after you, they will only be able to repeat in the sentence length they are capable of producing. For instance, if your child can only produce two- to three-word sentences, such as "I want a cookie" or "It's my turn," that is all they're going to be able to say.

So when you say something like, "Honey, why don't you go to Daddy and give him a big hug and tell him how much you love him and that you just had a wonderful time playing that game with him," your child is going to go blank. They're not going to be able to say anything. Or if you say, "Can you say, 'Mommy, can you get the cookie please?'" again, they're not going to be able to say anything, because they're going to be stalled at what you're asking them to do. It's too hard for them.

Instead, you want to decrease your utterance length so that they're able to say something back. Maybe you could say, "Honey, can you tell Mommy, 'Get cookie please,'" or "I want cookie," and then wait. This way, you're modeling the utterance length that they are capable of. I see this a lot.

Give them time to start

The other thing to think about is that when you stop talking, it gives your child time to initiate on their own, which is what we are looking for them to learn how to do. If you stop talking for them, it gives them the opportunity to generate the language spontaneously. Sometimes we tend to fill in the gaps, or not give them enough response time or even process time. We ask the question and then almost don't give them enough time to answer. Sometimes we start answering for them.

What I've found myself recommending to some of the parents I work with is to ask the question and, in your head, count to five. So you ask, "Do you want to go to the pool today?" and then wait, and then let them respond. Or maybe you want to ask the question differently. Either way, we want to give them enough process time to be able to generate a response. Ultimately, this is us talking less, or actually not talking at all, in an effort to encourage our child to actually talk more.

Meeting them where they are

With toning down our utterance length, sometimes parents get upset about this. It's not that your child doesn't understand what you're saying. Sometimes kids with speech development challenges have a hard time getting those longer utterances out, but they are still thinking in sentences of that length. So we're not at all dumbing down. We're meeting them at the level where they are, and we're providing them with examples of how they could say what they want to say clearly. If their sentence is not clear, even if Mom and Dad understand it, and nobody else does, what's the point? We want them to have clarity in their output so that others can understand them.

I do want to say that this is where they are now. Their utterance length will increase, and it will increase quickly. But if where they are now is a three-word utterance, we don't want to have the expectation that they're going to say longer than a three- or four-word utterance. I promise you they will eventually get there. They will start speaking more, and they will feel more confident. It just takes time.

Quick tips

A couple of quick tips from today. First, speak less, so you can give your child the opportunity to initiate more. Second, give some process time after you ask a question, so your child has the opportunity to process the question and then organize their speech and language for the output they're looking for. They might need time for that.

Lastly, reduce your own utterance length when you are expecting them to repeat after you, to a sentence length that is possible for them. For some of you out there, that might be just two-word utterances: "ball in," instead of "Honey, can you tell Mommy to put the ball in the basket?" Really, "Honey, can you say 'put in' or 'ball in'?" Ultimately, you will keep scaffolding that language to be one step ahead of where they are, and modeling for them what that output could be. But you want to meet them where they're at, and then they will attempt to imitate. If it's too hard, they will shut down and they won't even try.

I hope this has been helpful. Please continue to reach out to me at [email protected], or on my Facebook business page, where you can find me as Nicole Kolenda, SLP, or at voiceforpossibility.com. I love to hear from you. I love your comments, and I always try to address your questions. Thank you again. Take care.