Ep. 133: Foundational Skills for Language Development: Part 1

In this episode, Michelle kicks off a two-part series focusing on critical developmental skills that precede speech. While many parents and caregivers eagerly await a child’s first words, several foundational milestones must occur first to support successful communication.

Michelle breaks down these essential skills, offering practical advice for parents, caregivers, and speech-language pathologists on how to spot them and why they matter. Michelle explores the importance of early interactions, such as reacting to the environment and responding to people. She explains how simple activities like playing with crinkly toys, listening to music, or engaging in "peekaboo" help build the cognitive framework for language. The discussion also covers the significance of turn-taking, attention span, and joint attention—skills that serve as the building blocks for future conversational ability.

Timestamps:

00:00 – Introduction to Foundational Language Skills Series
01:53 – Reacting to Events in the Environment
03:40 – Responding to People and Developing Social Awareness
05:03 – The Importance of Turn-Taking in Early Communication
06:15 – Anticipating Events and Developing Object Permanence
07:35 – Developing Attention Span: Age-Appropriate Expectations
09:00 – Transitioning from Child-Led to Adult-Directed Play
10:21 – Shifting and Sharing Joint Attention
12:00 – The "Tell, Show, Help" Method for Caregivers
14:50 – The Impact of Screen Time on Early Development

About Michelle

Michelle Gage, MA CCC-SLP, embarked on her journey in speech-language pathology during her undergraduate studies at the University of Mississippi, where she also worked at North Mississippi Regional Center, gaining invaluable experience in various therapy approaches. Following her Master's Degree in Speech-Language Pathology from the University of Central Florida, she has dedicated 25 years to empowering children and families in improving language skills and overall development. Currently residing in Mississippi, Michelle extends her expertise through telehealth services. Additionally, she proudly serves as the host of the SLP Full Disclosure podcast.

Outside of her professional commitments, Michelle is the proud mother of Mia, an accomplished middle school math teacher and all-around amazing human. In her leisure time, she indulges in her love for travel and cherishes moments spent with family and friends.

Transcript:

00:00:00:05 - 00:00:26:15
Unknown
Hey y'all, it's Michelle with SLP Full Disclosure, welcome to the podcast today. Today I am going to be starting a two part series on skills that we need to be watching for and things that we can do as speech language pathologist, parents, caregivers, skills that we can start looking for and what those skills look like, why they're important, and what we can do to facilitate those skills.

00:00:26:16 - 00:00:41:21
Unknown
I know I've done podcast before about child development. This one's going to be a little bit different. It's going to be a little bit more focused on individual skills starting at birth. I know I've got lots of friends in my friend group who are now having their first babies, and we've got grandbabies in our group, and it's so exciting.

00:00:41:23 - 00:00:59:07
Unknown
And so they're always asking me, what can I do at birth? So that's what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to divide it up into two parts because goodness, you guys know I could sit and talk about child development all day long, every day. It is my absolute favorite thing in the world to do. So that's what we're going to be talking about today.

00:00:59:13 - 00:01:29:05
Unknown
Skills that we can start looking for at birth. What do they look like, why they're important, and what are some things that we can do with those babies and those toddlers to facilitate those skills? Let's get into the podcast for today. Skills that toddlers need to master before words emerge. Gosh, there are so many things that we have to think about when we're talking about developing language, developing expressive language, receptive language, and looking at the whole child.

00:01:29:05 - 00:01:56:14
Unknown
But today we're going to really be talking about just individual skills. The first thing I want to talk about is reacting to events in the environment. What does that mean? Does your child or does your infant consistently react to things that he or she sees, that he or she feels things that they hear? That's why we have all these toys, the little crinkly toys we have, the rattles that we can give the kids to hold.

00:01:56:16 - 00:02:20:14
Unknown
And it's important that we're teaching our children this foundational skill of reacting to the environment, because reacting to the environment is really the foundation for interacting and communicating with others. We got to help the child learn to use all of their senses, their their eyesight, their their hearing, their senses, the way they feel and the way they interact with the world.

00:02:20:16 - 00:02:41:21
Unknown
We can do this by giving them a variety of toys to play with, even little things, making sure that we're crinkling things in the in the baby's ears, making sure that we're playing music different, different melodies, high pitched sounds, low pitch sounds. Is your child localizing to mom's voice? Is your child localizing to dad's voice? Do they stop when the music stops?

00:02:41:21 - 00:03:03:05
Unknown
Do they? Do they alert when the music comes on? All of those things let me know that that baby is reacting to their environment, and that is so important even at birth. A really good friend of mine just had her first baby. She's the third baby and it is a she. We did get a little girl finally, after three boys, we've got a little girl in our in our girl group and we're so excited.

00:03:03:11 - 00:03:24:07
Unknown
But these are things that I've been encouraging Lindley to do with little EJ, making sure that you're talking to your baby. I can't I can't emphasize this enough. We have to talk to our babies. But just playing different music, playing different sounds, giving your child the opportunity to hear different things, smell different things and feel different things.

00:03:24:07 - 00:03:42:17
Unknown
And these are things that we can do with little bitty infants and little bitty babies. So the next goal I want to talk about is responding to people when you talk to them. And that kind of goes along with responding to your environment. Do they enjoy listening to music? Do they enjoy listening to the sound of mom's voice and dad's voice?

00:03:42:17 - 00:04:05:03
Unknown
Did they enjoy being around different people? Do they know and realize that they're in an environment that's a little bit louder and a little bit noisier, versus an environment that's quieter and softer? Because communicating involves more than one person, you can't communicate with just yourself. Communication involves at least two people, and when kids are not responding, it can be one sided.

00:04:05:03 - 00:04:23:15
Unknown
And we feel like if they're not responding that maybe we shouldn't be talking, but when they're not responding, that's when we need to talk more. Let's see if we can give these kids opportunities to make eye contact. Track toys. Are they moving their eyes side to side? Are they looking to this to the side where the the music is coming from?

00:04:23:15 - 00:04:45:03
Unknown
Are they looking to the side where the voices are coming from? Make it fun giving them opportunities to play together with your with their moms, with their siblings, if they have older siblings, with family members, and just prioritizing and rewarding any interaction that you get with your child when they make that eye contact, when they start smiling, and when they start following you along the room.

00:04:45:07 - 00:05:06:16
Unknown
When you when you're holding them, are they looking around for different people? That is so very important. Taking turns during interaction. Oh turn taking. Gosh, parents ask me all the time, how do I teach turn taking? And I'll digress. Just a little bit with turn checking with older kids. We just have to kind of take the toy and parents always look at me like, what?

00:05:06:20 - 00:05:28:05
Unknown
Yes, you're going to just take the toy away from them now? Am I going to take the toy away from them and keep it forever? No, it's going to be a very quick interaction. But when we're talking about turn taking with with younger kids, with, you know, infants, toddlers, are they able to participate and extend that back and forth interaction for an extended period of time?

00:05:28:07 - 00:05:54:18
Unknown
Are they looking for you to start that music again? Are they looking to you to do that tickle game again? Are they looking for you to pull that blanket off your face, that peekaboo, all of those things? Because turn taking is excuse me. Oh goodness. Turn taking is how all of us become interactive and conversational. Because without turn taking, we don't have that understanding of I say something, you say something, you say something, I say something.

00:05:54:22 - 00:06:19:21
Unknown
And with little kids, what we're looking for in turn taking is are they anticipating that next reaction? Are they anticipating what's happening next? Because when we're when we're playing with our kids, we've got to make sure that these actions are purposeful toward those kids and that trading games, playing that back and forth, the peekaboo, all of those things, playing with toys and objects.

00:06:19:21 - 00:06:49:01
Unknown
Do they have that object permanence? If you're playing with a toy and you're holding it up in front of them and then you put it under a blanket, do they look for it? Do they realize that it's gone? We just have to continue to find opportunities to and engage these kids and engage any kid in turn taking. And it can be anything from singing songs to playing calls affect games, the little pop up toys, you know, when you're doing that little, little toy where you turn the knob and it plays the song and then the toy pops up?

00:06:49:06 - 00:07:07:22
Unknown
I've seen so many videos recently that are hysterical when it scares the kids, but it lets me know that they anticipate it. I remember when my daughter was little, there was a video that she watched, and there was one specific part of the video that she did not like, and it was a puppet that the person that was holding the puppet would open up and the puppet would stick its tongue out, and it terrified her.

00:07:08:03 - 00:07:36:21
Unknown
And I remember the moment that I realized that she had learned to anticipate that that was coming, and she would start to cry, she would start to look away. And as she got older, she would start to cover her face because she was anticipating what was coming next. And that's something that we cannot underestimate. Do they anticipate things that are happening in their in their environment, with toys, with games, and when we're speaking to them, another skill that we want to look for is developing a longer attention span.

00:07:37:01 - 00:07:56:08
Unknown
I may get some slack for this, but I've always told my families that I work with, especially an early intervention that we can anticipate a child can attend for about one minute for every year. They are old, and that does not seem like a very long time. When you're working with a 12 month old, we can expect them to be able to sit and attend to something for one minute.

00:07:56:10 - 00:08:19:23
Unknown
But we want to try to increase that ability to attend longer during play, by giving them activities that are engaging. Attention is really the gatekeeper for learning anything new. If you can't edit their child can't attend in focus and sit with something for, you know, 45 seconds to a minute, it's really hard for us to show them how those things work.

00:08:20:00 - 00:08:49:00
Unknown
A great idea that I always give my parents is movement. Get your child's, get your child's body moving. There's a great video that I've been, incorporating into my therapy sessions. That's just child yoga. And it's really just them standing up and stretching their arms over their head, leaning from side to side, turning in a circle because all of that movement and getting their body ready to learn can then be transferred over into that kind of sit down, one on one activity.

00:08:49:01 - 00:09:12:15
Unknown
A lot of times in the early child development stages, we're following the child's lead, whatever the child is playing with, then we go and we include ourselves in that, and we bring that language forth. We talk about you're stacking the blocks, you're moving the car. They're doing all of these things. But as they get a little bit older, it's important for kids to be able to participate in adult directed activities as well.

00:09:12:20 - 00:09:31:12
Unknown
So maybe they're playing with the blocks, maybe they're playing with a puzzle, and then you come over and you sit down with them and you try to bring them into your world and play with a car, play with a baby doll, something like that. It's during this time that we're starting to really develop that increased attention to task that we want to start talking about.

00:09:31:12 - 00:10:01:18
Unknown
One more, let's do it one more time, because that again, teaches that it's just really reinforcing that turn, taking in that play. And it's so very helpful for kids to understand that. And because that is a specific question on the developmental profile, does your child understand the concept of 1 or 1 more? And it's something that we can start doing really, really early on when we're playing with those calls, effect toys, when we're playing with music and when we're singing songs, when we're doing anything fun that the child likes.

00:10:01:19 - 00:10:23:12
Unknown
But get your child moving before you ask them to come and sit down. I have found that that is very, very, very helpful. Another skill that we want to start looking for is shifting and sharing joint attention with others. Can they shift their attention between you and an object that they're playing with? Are they able to play with something and then bring you into their world?

00:10:23:12 - 00:10:41:08
Unknown
Are they stacking the blocks or are they playing with the puzzle? Are they pushing buttons or are they turning knobs? Are they able to do that? And then look at you get that joint attention and bring you into their world. They learn to understand words by us talking to them and then by listening to those things that we're talking about.

00:10:41:08 - 00:11:01:11
Unknown
I tell parents all the time as a caretaker, as a parent, as a therapist, we're really there to narrate what the child is doing. We're talking about what they're doing. Are they moving the car fast? Did it go under the table? Oh my goodness. The the blocks crashed down. And we're using all of those exclamatory words because that's how they learn language.

00:11:01:11 - 00:11:20:11
Unknown
And they learn to pair those words and that language with the activity that they're doing. We've got to be able to put ourselves kind of on the the same wavelength that the kid is on. What are they, what are they seeing, what are they doing. And we're teaching them how to hold the toys. We're teaching them how to play with the toys.

00:11:20:15 - 00:11:43:01
Unknown
We're teaching them what activities go with daily routines. We're teaching them games, and we're teaching them things to look for. And they're also teaching them to look for us for guidance. Pointing, gesturing, using that language that goes with everyday activities so that they understand when mom says, let's get our cup, let's get a diaper, we're going outside.

00:11:43:01 - 00:12:01:23
Unknown
We've got to get the keys, we've got to get this, we've got to get our shoes. We're getting in the car seat. Do they understand what those words mean? And if they're not, we're using what I love to call the tell show help. We're telling them. We're showing them and we're helping him. We're telling them, hey, if you want that toy to come on, you have to push this button.

00:12:02:00 - 00:12:18:18
Unknown
We tell them, and then we. Then we show them, hey, look, if we want it to turn on, we're going to push the button and we show them where that button is. And then we don't just turn it on, we take their finger and we show them and we help them how to do it, following through with that tell show help.

00:12:18:23 - 00:12:36:11
Unknown
And that's something that is where I have found that that's very easy for families and for parents. And caregivers to remember. I'm going to tell them, I'm going to show them, and I'm going to help them, because that's going to help them with that joint attention. It's going to help to develop the longer attention span. It's going to help with turn taking.

00:12:36:15 - 00:12:55:17
Unknown
It's helping with them learning to respond to to others when you're talking to them, and it's helping them with that receptive language. All of the skills that we've talked about earlier today are skills that we can start working on at birth. And I think that sometimes parents get overwhelmed, and I know that it is very overwhelming to have a newborn in your home.

00:12:55:17 - 00:13:19:04
Unknown
It is very overwhelming. You're tired. You're just really focused on trying to keep that baby alive. But it's never underestimate talking to your child, playing music with that baby, giving them things to hold, helping them hold them, making sure that they're following your voice. Making sure that they're tracking and that they're listening and that they're aware of their environment.

00:13:19:09 - 00:13:36:14
Unknown
And you will start to see very early on the response from your baby. You're going to start to see that eye contact, that tracking, that smiling. And then before you know it, you're going to start to hear the laughs and the cooing and the sounds that go along with all of the things that they enjoy in their environment.

00:13:36:16 - 00:14:14:09
Unknown
So this is the first part of our podcast today. I think that all of these skills that we've talked about today are things that speech with past speech pathologist, we are all aware of, but when we start to really break them down individually like we have today and talk about the importance of those skills, what they look like, and what are some things that we can do, I think that that can be just a very good, gentle reminder for all of us as we are embarking on all of the families that we are serving each and every day, whether it be, you know, infant to birth to three, whether it's working with your own children.

00:14:14:09 - 00:14:31:01
Unknown
I know I've got so many friends that are speech pathologist that have had babies of their own, and a friend of mine in Birmingham said, you know, I'm a speech pathologist, but my little boy was a light talker. And she said, I it was almost as if I lost all of my training and I lost all of my knowledge when it came to my own child.

00:14:31:06 - 00:14:59:01
Unknown
So let this podcast be a reminder to you that there are skills that we can start looking for, things that we can start doing from birth, that are going to help our children grow and develop that language, because these are skills early on that we've talked about today that are primary prerequisite for language to occur. So many times I see it, my families get to, you know, 18 months to two years and they don't have a lot of expressive language.

00:14:59:06 - 00:15:26:04
Unknown
And then we start working with them, and we realize we have really skipped over a lot of those early developing skills that are necessary, like those responding to, responding to people, taking turns, just responding with a longer attention span, shifting that joint attention, all of those things, those skills sometimes get overlooked. And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that sometimes that can be because of screen time.

00:15:26:06 - 00:15:50:18
Unknown
And I have talked about Screen Time on the podcast before. And, you know, my stance on that, there's really no place for screen time in my opinion, in children who are under the age of three, because the only way that children can learn language is by having those interactions with people, with their parents, with their siblings, and with their caregivers.

00:15:50:20 - 00:16:10:22
Unknown
So thank you guys for listening to the podcast today. Join us next time as we take on some more skills that are prerequisites for language development, and I hope you guys have a great day. Thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in to SLP full disclosure you can learn more about this episode and our show on our website at AMN.

00:16:10:22 - 00:16:29:03
Unknown
Health care.com. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend and subscribe to our show on your favorite podcast platform. You can also find show updates and SLP opportunities on our Instagram at AMN ally. Special thanks to AMN healthcare for making this show possible. See y'all next time!