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Talking Toddlers
5 Well-Meaning Habits That Delay Speech - And the Simple Fix (Part 1) Ep 147
00:29:58
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They become passive members, passive learners. And quietly, without anyone intending it, they learn that their voice isn't actually necessary. And I've seen this hundreds of times. What I want parents to understand is that we can't force your child to talk. We can't demand it or pressure it into existence, but we can, absolutely.
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Hello and welcome to Talking Toddlers, where
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I share more than just tips and
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tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler's vocabulary. Our goal is to develop clarity, because in this modern world, it's truly overwhelming. This podcast is about empowering moms to know the difference between fact and fiction today, to never give up, to tap into everyday activities so your child stays on track. He's not falling behind. He's thriving. Through your guidance, we know that true learning starts at home. So let's get started.
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I want to tell you about a little boy I'll call Marcus. Marcus was about two and a half, say, 30 months of age. He was a happy kid, busy, bright. At home, he was completely in his element. He knew his routine, he knew his people. And honestly, life worked pretty well for him. He'd say one word here or there, whenever he felt like it, or if he really wanted something, he would speak up. But it was always on his terms, in his time, and nobody pushed. His family loved him. They figured out his rhythms. When he needed something, someone was there before he had to ask. Looking in from the outside, you might think to yourself, what a content little family. But if you watched closely, you would notice something quieter. They weren't really in it together. They were each in their own lane, loving each other, taking care of each other, but running parallel. Mom doing her thing, Marcus doing his. He even had an older sister who would go off to first grade and do her thing. The days moved forward, and everyone was getting by. It's more common than you think, actually, and it sneaks up on the best of families. Then one afternoon, his mom called me. She had been watching him at the playground. He walked up to a group of kids at the sandbox, stopped, and just stood there watching them play, wanting in. She could see that on his face. She nudged him forward, even handed him a shovel. He didn't move. She told me, he does this every time. At home, he seems just fine, but the minute we're somewhere new, he just shuts down. And I don't know what to do. I asked her if I could come watch. So I did. And what I saw wasn't a child with a problem, per se. It was actually a child who had never needed to reach out, because everything he needed had always come to him first. Not because his parents were doing anything wrong exactly, but because nobody had told them what Marcus actually needed from them, how to set the stage. And here's the truth I want to share with you today, the truth I wish somebody would hand to every parent I've ever worked with right from the start. Your child doesn't need more toys. They don't need more programs or more structured activities. Marcus, he needed to feel in his body, in his bones, that his voice can start something. Something that when he reaches toward you or someone else, something comes back. That when he walks up to that sandbox full of kids his own age, he knows how to begin. That's what we're going to talk about today. That's what we're building here on this podcast. And it starts, I promise you, in the smallest moments of your ordinary day. The 10 seconds before you hand over the cup, the pause before you jump in and answer him. The moment you get quiet and wait, just wait to see what he might say first. Those moments. And here's the thing about those moments. They don't happen from a distance. They don't happen through a screen. They don't happen when everything is handed over before he even has to ask. They happen in the small, ordinary, unremarkable minutes of daily life with the people who love him most. You. Today, I want to talk about five habits. Common, well meaning, completely understandable habits that quietly get in the way of exactly those moments. And more importantly, what you can do instead. If we haven't met yet, I'm Erin, a speech language pathologist with nearly 40 years of experience working with babies, toddlers and families who love them. And if there's one thing those decades have taught me, it's this. Language doesn't grow from pressure. It doesn't grow from flashcards or apps or the right toy. And it doesn't just appear on its own when he turns three. It grows from connection. From your child feeling deep in his bones that his voice matters. That when he reaches toward communication, something real reaches back. That's what makes us human. The five habits I'm going to walk through with you in this episode are not mistakes. They're not signs of bad parenting, either. Most of them come from good intentions, from wanting to help, wanting to keep the peace, and wanting life to run smoothly. But in our modern world, where life moves fast and distractions are everywhere, these habits have become more common. And they share something in common. Every single one of them in his own quiet way, removes your child's felt need to reach toward language. What I mean by this is simple. Developing speech and language skills requires work, all learning does. So your child needs to feel that that effort is worth it. They need to discover in real moments with real people that reach words gets them something meaningful back. Once you see that thread, you'll understand not just what to change, but why it matters. So habit number one, I refer to as the efficiency trap. And I'm going to start here because I think this surprises almost every family I've ever worked with. Being too helpful. I know you might be thinking, wait, being too helpful with a baby or toddler, that's bad. Let me explain by an example. I worked with a little boy, and I'm going to call him James. And he was about 2 years old, maybe just after his second birthday, is when we met. He was smart and observant and remarkably content. He had become an expert pointer. He could point to the refrigerator and milk appeared. Point at the counter and a snack materialized. Point at a toy shelf, and someone handed him exactly what he wanted. His parents were warm and loving and responsive. They were doing everything right. They read the right books, they listened to the right podcasts. But they missed one thing. James had no real reason to use words. None. His system was working perfectly. And here's the deeper truth underneath all of that. We as human beings, we are all efficiency machines, every one of us, children and adults alike. Our brains are wired to conserve energy, to take the path of least resistance. Keep using what works. That's not a flaw. It's part of our survival wiring. Toddlers are just very honest about it. Their life is simple and their needs are met. They're comfortable. So if pointing gets the milk, the brain has no reason to build the neural pathways for the actual word milk. Why would it? Speech is hard work. It's physical work. It's cognitive work. It requires coordinating the breath and voice and lips and tongue and jaw and timing all at once. The brain is not going to do all of that if a simpler route already exists. Now, your instinct to respond instantly to a new toddler comes from love. I get it. It comes from months and months of building a healthy attunement since birth. Again, this is what we're taught. This is what parents hear all the time. To build that connection, to get in sync with your little one. Our natural instinct as parents is to create an environment where your child is happy. We all want to feel like good parents. And there's a beautiful Rhythm that develops. I get it, your child needs something. You, the parent, provides it. Your child feels content and you feel like you're connecting. But what's missing in that rhythm is the child. They become passive members, passive learners. And quietly, without anyone intending it, they learn that their voice isn't actually necessary. And I've seen this hundreds of times. What I want parents to understand is that we can't force your child to talk. We can't demand it or pressure it into existence, but we can absolutely entice it. We can create an environment where your child begins to feel that they are an important part of the equation, that they are not just reaching for contentment, but that their voice, their attempt, their effort changes things, builds a better outcome. And the strategy is kind of simple. When your child points or gestures for something, pause just three to five seconds. Look at them with warm expectation. Not frustration, not pressure, just openness. And then model the word cup. Oh, you want your cup. If they attempt even a tiny sound, a tiny utterance, cuh or mmm or puh, any part of it, acknowledge it, smile, nodded, pull them in, then give them what they asked for. That attempt is the beginning of everything. Over time, something remarkable starts to shift. Your child begins to realize that their voice can get them more. Not just the cup, but a response, a smile, an acknowledgment, a moment of real connection. They begin to understand that being a verbal partner is worth it, is worth the effort. I've seen children begin to attempt new words and a lot of approximation, but they're finding their voice. And within two or three weeks, once that opportunity opens up, they're using that voice more readily every day. But I caution you, mom and dad and grandparents, we do have to be patient. We're shifting your expectation, we're shifting their role. You're shifting their buy in to this verbal exchange. Like I said, it takes effort. And if you're sitting with this right now, thinking, is this what's happening in my home? I want you to know that you don't have to figure this out alone. That's why I offer my free 20 minute discovery calls, just the two of us, where you tell me what you're seeing, what's confusing you, what's keeping you up at night. There's no agenda. I'm just trying to give you more clarity. And if it feels like it's the right time to work together more directly, we can talk about that too. The link is in the show notes down below. But you don't have to figure this out. By yourself. So the second habit of these five that I think can really interfere is something I call as the conversion gap. So you may have heard, you probably have heard of the term serve and return. It became somewhat of a rallying cry in their early childhood development arenas about 15 years ago. And I think all of the major organizations jumped on it and I think it was a good phrase and parents really resonated with it. The research is solid and the image I think of this serve and return is perfect. Just think tennis. Your baby coos, the caretaker responds. And there's this back and forth and back and forth, and it's beautiful. It's a great image. Think tennis. Neural connections forming with every little exchange. The foundation of communication is actually being laid in those ordinary moments of any ordinary day. And that's what happens in those first six months and eight months and 10 months. And like I said, parents really did absorb that message, really absorbed it. And I'm genuinely glad that they did. But here's what I've watched happen over the years since that, and I want to be really clear here with you about it, because I don't think anyone else shares this nuance. Around the time your toddler hits 200 words, say 20 months or 24 months, something frequently shifts in people's homes. You, the parent, exhale the anxiety that drove all that careful, intentional serve and return begins to lift. So now you have a 20 month old or 24 month old, and he's walking, he's mobile, he has 200 words and there's this quiet collective sigh of relief that says, oh, good, he's got this, he's arrived. And I totally understand that feeling completely. I do, honestly, I've seen it over and over again. 200 words is real progress. It deserves to be celebrated, trust me. But here's the truth that gets lost in that exhale. 200 words is not the finish line. It's not even a halfway point. It's the end of the first quarter if we want to go there. Language development across the first three to five years is a long, demanding arc. And what's required of you, the parent in the second half of that arc looks completely different from serve and return. But the sad thing for me, the frustrating thing for me actually is it gets almost no attention in the parenting conversation, especially online. I continually go back to what happens after he has a couple hundred words. What do you do with that data? What do you do with those skills? How do you continue to shape that once your child has words and is beginning to Combine them, your job shifts from quantity, right? You're taking that word list to true architecture. Now you're building conversational flow. You have the bricks we have to build it into something. And what I mean by this is the ability to hold a thread in conversation, right? To follow someone else's thinking and add to it, to stay on topic longer than two exchanges. That's why books are such a remarkable tool that we can use in a variety of ways. Part of the architecture is to ask a question and actually wait for the answer to tell a story from the beginning and the middle and the end. This is the conversational architecture that determines how your child will navigate friendships, classrooms, relationships on the playing field at church or the park and birthday parties, family events, and eventually the workplace. But it doesn't build itself. It gets built in the back and forth of daily family life. In the question left open at the dinner table, in the stories told and retold in the patient, unhurried adult who says, hmm, I wonder why? And then actually waits to see what your child thinks. Now, I need to say something here that, that I've been saying to anyone who will listen for years. If your toddler is in daycare, and I know many of them are, and I know parents don't always have a choice, and I totally respect that. But I want you to understand about what that environment can and cannot provide the serve and return that you worked so hard to build in that first year. In a room with one adult and six or eight or maybe even 10 toddlers, it's virtually impossible to sustain. Not because the caregivers don't care, many of them do, and they care deeply. I met them. But the ratio makes genuine conversational exchange, the kind that builds language processing. It makes it nearly impossible. Just imagine you are trying to care for deeply 4 or 5 or 61 year olds all at the same time. Could you do it? And then there's something I encountered firsthand that I still think about and bemoan honestly years later. Many of you know that I worked in a few different states, in a number of different daycare settings, preschool settings, as an outside consultant. I would train the teachers, I would train the whole county, right? And then I would also be brought in by parents to try to understand what's going in the classroom. And in more than one of those settings, I was told by well meaning, safety conscious staff that they purposefully discouraged conversation at the snack table because children might choke. That's what they said. And they looked at me with these big eyes like Isn't that obvious? But I want you to sit with that for a moment. They were taught these teachers were taught to discourage conversation at the snack table. One of the most naturally language rich moments of your toddler's day. Sitting together, sharing food, looking at each other with something to talk about right in front of each and every one of them. Silenced for safety reasons. Now trust me, I tried to educate many of them. I advocated over and over. I showed them how natural it is to have small talk conversation exchanges there around the snack table. But I ran into walls. And honestly, I rarely, rarely got through. Now remember, daycare and preschool classrooms are mostly designed for behavior management. Keep them safe, keep them content and somewhat engaged, expose them to a variety of activities, but mostly manage their behavior and keep them safe. And I get it. That's what we have to expect in institutions like that. I'm not telling you this to frighten you or to make you feel guilty if your child is in daycare. I'm telling you because parents deserve to know the full picture so then you can make intentional choices about what happens in the hours you have with your child. Because here's what I have watched happen over and over across decades of clinical practice. When this conversational developmental piece, this give and take, this enrichment when it gets dropped between ages 2 and 5, your child may arrive at kindergarten with a decent vocabulary, maybe even an impressive one, and then the teacher asks them to tell the class about their weekend or explain why the character in the story made that choice. Or please describe what happened on the playground and your child goes quiet. Not because they're shy, not because they don't know, but because nobody ever built the conversational architecture that would allow them to do that successfully, comfortably. We see it in elementary school as a child who answers every question with one word and stares at you when you ask for more. We see it in middle school as the kid who genuinely cannot narrate their own day. And we definitely see it in teenagers whose entire social communication has migrated to screens because real conversation has always felt like more work than it should. I have watched the shift happen across a generation, and I'm watching it accelerate. But I want to assure you it starts here in this window, with this habit. In real time in your life, you can pivot. So what do you actually do? You stop filling in the blanks when your child reaches for a word and almost gets there. Wait when they start a story and lose the thread. Stay with them, don't finish it for them. Encourage them to continue when they ask why Resist the urge to answer immediately. Say, what do you think? And then mean it. Try wondering out loud with them instead of informing them. I wonder why the sky looks like that tonight. Hmm, no stars. What do you think is going to happen when we get there? As you're driving in the car, going to Grandma's house or to the park or to the grocery store? Or you could say, hmm, we have a problem. When you look down on the floor and the cat food has been spilled or your shoes are all muddy, we have a problem. What should we do now? Listen, these questions aren't designed to test what they know. They're invitations into real thinking, real verbal exchanges, real conversation. The kind that has to be practiced before it can be performed naturally in real life out there. And do it at the lunch table. For the love of everything, please do it at your lunch or breakfast or dinner table. This is how I walked into any therapeutic session and gave the child space to think and practice. Serve and return begins in infancy. But the game doesn't end at 200 words. It just gets richer and deeper and more consequential. So please don't put the ball down now at this point. That's the first two habits. And honestly, if you sit with just two this week, you'll already start seeing your days differently. Next week I'm bringing you habits three, four and five, and I'll warn you, they're the ones that tend to surprise people the most. Habit number three in particular involves some neuroscience that completely changed how I explained language development to families. I think it's going to reframe everything for you. If you don't want to wait until next week to listen to the second part of this, I'll be sending part two to my email list in a few days. The link is down in the show notes, so join my email list. It takes 30 seconds to join up and and you'll get part two just in a couple of days. I'll see you back here soon, one way or the other. And in the meantime, try to pause. Just pause and see what happens. God bless. Thanks as always. I'll see you in the next talking toddlers.