← Talking Toddlers
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Here's something most parents don't realize. Learning to read is not natural. There's nothing natural about it. However, speech and verbal communication, they're part of our biology. Babies are wired to cry at birth, to coo, to babble, to eventually talk. Right? Those first three, six, nine, 12 months, that infant is helpless. But the beautiful design that I believe God gave us was all on purpose. He wants us to connect. He wants us to be successful. He wants us to think through problems together. That's why I think we are driven as humans to listen and to talk and to want to share. But written language, not so much. That is man made. And it's relatively new in all of human history. Hello and welcome to Talking Toddlers, where I share more than just tips and tricks on how to reduce tantrums or build your toddler's vocabulary. We're going to cover all of that. But here, 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, 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. Whether you're holding a newborn in your arms, chasing after a curious toddler, or watching your preschooler's imagination explod code, this episode is for you. Because the truth is, what you do in these early years sets the stage for your child's reading and writing success later on. And here's the startling reality. Here in the United States, only 1/3 of 4th graders are proficient in reading proficiency means they hit that 60th percentile. That means two out of three children are are already behind. And those numbers have not improved in decades. You'll also see headlines now in 2025 about the new science of reading as if it's a brand new discovery. I assure you, it's not new. Decades ago, I had the privilege of studying under Paula Talal and the team of scientists at Scientific Learning Corporation. We understood back in the early 1990s and the research continues to today, how the brain learns to read and what has to be in place before a child, any child, can break the code. We brought all of this new science back in the 1990s to the public schools across the country. We demonstrated how brains change when kids get the right language and listening practice. And most schools, unfortunately, they weren't even interested. As a matter of fact, they were insulted that we were trying to help them. So here's my encouragement to you Keep your child home as long as possible. Yes, I know that's a bold statement and I've said it before, but I'm going to continue to say it and back it up. And honestly, at the state that we're in in 2025, in my perfect world, I would recommend homeschooling for all 12 years. At the very least, if you're intentional in these early years, then your child will at least step into any learning environment with a solid foundation and ready to take on whatever they give them. And if you caught my episode from last week, homeschooling Through Kindergarten, consider today's episode that practical blueprint I promised you and it will make that vision work, doable and in your daily life today. But before we dive into the 10 skills I want to highlight here, let me give you the big picture, the why, so the what. These 10 steps will then really click with you and you'll be able to understand what you're doing and why. It helps if literacy results are broken. Two out of three kids are failing by fourth grade and those numbers haven't changed in decades. Like I said, where or what should parents be doing differently? If the schools aren't changing and aren't getting any better, what can you do differently to help? And that's where I say the best place to start is really looking at all the pre literacy issues by looking at how reading actually develops. And in the brain, all of that science, that neuroscience and that cognitive science that we dove deep in the 1990s, long before kids ever enter kindergarten, long before you start to introduce phonics, and long before anybody wants to place a label on your child. Here's something most parents don't realize. Learning to read is not natural. There's nothing natural about it. However, speech and verbal communication, they're part of our biology. Babies are wired to cry at birth, to coo, to babble, to eventually talk, right? We share all of those strategies here on this podcast. And God wired us this way. Initially, I believe we to help with survival, right? Because survival depends on building a connection with an adult figure that will take care of me those first 3, 6, 9, 12 months. That infant is helpless. But the beautiful design that I believe God gave us was all on purpose. He wants us to connect. He. He wants us to be successful. He wants us to think through problems together. That's why I think we are driven as humans to listen and to talk and to want to share. But written language, not so much that is man made. And it's relatively new in all of human history. So yes, the Sumerians scratched cuneiforms around 13, 4, 3400 BC, and the Egyptians carved hieroglyphics around, I don't know, 3200 BC. But widespread literacy, reading and writing skills that you and I think of today, that didn't accelerate until a couple of centuries ago. A couple of hundred years ago. I'm talking 1800s at best. Before that, yes, there was reading and writing, but it was limited to the very small elite, not the average person. So when we treat reading like we're supposed to have it, that it comes natural, no? And then we begin to label innocent children as disordered. The moment they begin to struggle or the moment they're, it's not clicking for them when we do that, we're missing the main point of what literacy is. It's a beautiful skill that man created to help for lots of things, right? Record history, share, expand, learn the whole gamut. It originally started just to keep records, but reading and writing are actually superimposed on our verbal communication system. And that's the science that came out of the, the late 1980s and definitely in the early 1990s. They's reading and writing skills depend, are directly correlated with speech and language being strong, proficient, efficient and masterful. That's why me as a speech language pathologist, I can look at an innocent 3 year old and pretty much accurately surmise whether they will struggle with reading or it will be easy. It comes down to their ability to auditorily and verbally process sounds and make those sounds into words and make those words into sentences. The brain's ability to take in those sounds and break them down and then build them back up in meaningful words and meaningful sentences at lightning speed. It's all about processing speed. Every consonant and vowel syllable, such as ba or me or go is processed at about 25 to 35 milliseconds. That's 1/1000th of a second. That's faster than a blink. And it happens for every sound in every word and every word in every sentence your child hears. That's what we talk about as auditory processing. If auditory processing skills are solid, then reading has a foundation to be built upon. If auditory processing skills are weak, reading will always feel like an uphill climb. So my message to parents is this. Build speech and language and social skills from birth through 5, 6 years of age and build that foundation as strong as you can do that. And nearly every child is, is capable of becoming a competent Reader writing will follow. Yes, because reading and writing are two sides of the same coin. But you can't skip to printing without a strong verbal base. If literacy is man made and rests upon the strength of our spoken language system, what can you do in everyday life? And that's where these 10 language based skills come in. Think of them as your daily building blocks. Right? Habits, games, your family. Routines that literally wire your child's brain and sets him up for reading success. There are no worksheets, no pressure, and you can weave all 10 of these things into ordinary moments. Many of them you have heard, hopefully, many of them you're already doing. Now you'll know why. And you can always just upgrade accordingly. Right? So let's walk through them together. The first one is board games. And you're like, okay, so what? But board games are really pure gold. And I've used them hundreds if not thousands of times in my therapy practice. And parents would watch through that one way mirror, oftentimes in awe, realizing like, I never knew my child could do that. But the key with board games, any kind of board game, is scaffolding. And you can simplify and bring a task or a game down to your child's ability. So take the most basic game, Go Fish. I might start with just three pairs of cards. And the whole idea is getting them to look at whatever's in the hand and ask me a question, wait for an answer and get the idea that we're trying to match something and that we're going to share and take and give freely. Because that, in that context, that allows me to introduce the concept of same and different in a way that children can really grasp without getting all overloaded. Right. It's really in a playful banter and we will gradually add the complexity as it's tolerated. And even at home you could play in teams. Like if you have one child or two children and they're still not quite sure how this all works. You play in teams, me and Joey against Daddy and Susie. Right. And you narrate every step, especially at the beginning. Hey, Joey, Daddy just went, who's next? I went, Daddy went, whose turn is it to spin the arrow or roll the dice? And you gesture showing them that there's a sequence. Right. And you can even gesture showing them to move the peg. Oh, you rolled three. One stop. Two stop. Three stop. And you help them understand what the process is in a game like fashion. They pick up on it readily, I assure you. But help them understand, then they will stay more focused and they'll Feel successful because you're cheerleading every step along the way. And remember, modify, modify, modify. But setting the game up, taking a few turns, celebrating, and then always putting the game back in the box, putting it on the shelf and making sure it's an organized fashion. And so they understand the routine. There's a beginning and a middle and an end that's helping them wire and integrate their understanding of the world. It's a whole experience. And then I just wanted to throw out here one of my favorite little first gamers is called Pop the Pig. And you may have heard of it. It's been around for eons and eons, but it's, it's very concrete, it's very cute and visual and fun and it's a good way to introduce turn taking. But over time, these board games really can build a deeper understanding of turn taking. Counting the steps, like I said, visual tracking, color matching, object matching, one to one, correspondence. There's a whole litany, sequencing, listening, following directions, working memory. And the big thing is of course, self regulation because you don't always win or lose, right? And many of the early, early games, I always set it up that there really isn't a winner or a loser. We just are playing together and having fun. But all of this in this task, in this arena supports that auditory processing. And then of course, with a stronger language based auditory processing system, literacy is just right down the road, right? Number two in this list of 10 would be what I call purposeful solo play. And that really just means that your child is beginning to play by themselves with intention. And I talk a lot about being intentional, but we want to help our kids structure their play routine with purpose, right? Building block towers, running a pretend kitchen, lining up trains to make a special route, right? And where they're traveling. The whole idea is that you begin to see your child setting a plan and then following through with it. Quite often, this pretend, isolated play will mimic what he or she has experienced in real life. You know, put, feeding the baby and putting them to bed, washing the dishes, going to the grocery store, going to a restaurant. All of those things that they've already experienced that they can now begin to act out. The key here is that you want your toddler to not just wander from toy to toy. It's an organized play. And why this matters and how it relates to reading is because internal imagination will drive comprehension, literacy, comprehension. Later on, when we read quietly, and I remember telling hundreds and hundreds of parents over the year, when we read quietly in our head, we paint a picture and not just for novels. It's true for technical books, too. Math and science and how to kinds of things we have to conceptualize and get things organized in our heads, which then ultimately helps our understanding. And then recall that information later on tomorrow, next week, and build upon that. So purposeful solo play is rehearsal for all of this mental movie making, right? It's making that plan and focusing and sustaining that idea. Holding on to different ideas as you're doing something else, expanding upon them. We're literally in this play, building and acting them out. And so then when we go to literacy, when we're 6, 7, 8 years old and beyond, then we can create those imaginations in our own mind and improve our comprehension. Now, I want to always throw out a red flag here because we have to keep screens out of this period. Screens are passive, purposeful play is active. It's engaging it. It pushes and prompts, thinking and, and moving beyond themselves. Right? Because that's what we want them to do ultimately. All right, so now number, let me scroll here. Number three is enjoying books together. Now, we honestly could do a whole episode on book sharing. But if you only remember one thing from this whole episode, remember this. If we track the print in the book with your finger as we read out loud, then we're giving them a huge boost. So when we're reading, even if it's a simple text, you know, the cat is hungry, that our finger tracking really maps our spoken words with these black, squiggly lines in the book, you and I know them as letters, but your child doesn't. They're just black, squiggly lines. But your child then begins to see that these printed marks carry meaning and that they're in sync with whatever we're saying. And there's a lot of research that supports that. If we use this simple practice, it alone will boost reading readiness and reading comprehension. So here's just a little personal story that I think I've shared in bits and pieces before. But my daughter literally broke the code at three and a half years of age. And the truth is, we never ever sat down and taught her letter sound correspondence or sounding out words or even said that this says, you know, go, spot, go. We simply lived through these 10 habits that I'm sharing with you today. Now, you also, if you've been around for a while, you also know that we didn't really have television. We aren't television people. Yes, we had an occasional Friday night movie, but we treated books almost as if a daily nutrient. They were, you know, sprinkled throughout her house and she had full access. But the one thing that I always did was tracked the words. And I remember teaching our nanny how to do this and why. But one day our daughter just pulled it all together on her own. Yes, she broke the code with a basic classic book. Dick and Jane and I know that they're old fashioned but the beauty of them is that they're, they're concrete, they're repetitive and the patterns in them are very, very obvious. And she really, a light bulb went on and she, she realized what was happening. So we also, and this is important, we also gave her a lot of rich language stories like Little House on the Prairie and then we also gave a lot of those rich rhyming books. Dr. Seuss is a classic. We had every single one that you could possibly have have wanted. And, and I still highly, highly recommend them. So you need all different levels, right? You need the simple, the rep repetitive that shows patterns that allow the kids to crack the code with the finger tracking. But you also need those richer language based stories to expand their imagination and to experience them thinking. Because at that time then you really ask a lot of questions. So the bottom line was that our daughter's speech and language processing skills were incredibly strong. And even though she was a fairly reserved child and she didn't go to preschool until 4 years of age and she only went part time in the morning, she was able to put all of the pieces together, build great social skills. But literacy was just so obviously the next step because oral communication was so strong and she was auditorily wired for that. Now it is important that we also focus on how to use these books, right? And I said the finger tracking. But you, you talk about the pictures, you talk about the stories, you make predictions, you try to guess what's going to happen on the next page. Then let's check to see if that happens. You ask a lot of WH questions and, and comprehension questions because if you walk them through that process, then that's what they'll do when they sit down to read the novel with themselves. Oh gee, I wonder what you know, the main character is going to do. I wonder if she'll solve this problem. I wonder if, you know, the bad guy is going to be arrested. Whatever the storyline is, the key is that you're helping them learn this process by actively doing it with them. And so shared book reading is really one of the things that any family can do. You can go get books at the library, which I highly, highly recommend. You can read the Books hundreds and hundreds of times. But it builds vocabulary, it builds memory, it builds their understanding of narrative structure, and then it gives them that print awareness, all while we're building auditory processing. And I've shared with a lot of parents, moms and dads both, that books are great because it gives you the script. You don't have to think of your own wh questions. You don't have to do small talk, especially on days that you're tired or overwhelmed. You just read the book. You just track with your finger. You ask simple questions, and they will be engaged. All right, so now let's skip to number four, which is rhyming. And rhyming, to me is truly a telltale early marker. And what I mean is that most young kids won't be able to explain to you how two words rhymes. And truly, that's okay. They don't have to understand cognitively. They just have to be able to recognize it because you've given them a wealth of different reading material, hopefully Dr. Seuss. And there are, you know, tons of books nowadays that really have that natural rhyming built into it. And nursery rhymes, too, of course. But what we want is that recognition. We want to be able to say to them that cat hat rhyme and that they're able to identify. Cat can. Nope, they don't rhyme. Again, they don't have to explain to you why or how. And in the beginning, you can give them a word or give them two words. Do they rhyme? Yes or no? And then you can give them a word, and they can come up with their own word to rhyme with it. And what I always teach is it doesn't even have to be a real word. It just has to rhyme. It can be a nonsense word, right? And in the beginning, you'll make easier contrasts. So, for example, I would say, does cat table. Do they rhyme? Now, those are those words if you listen to them. Cat table. They're strikingly different, right? There's nothing even common about them but cat can they both start with the same sound? And so that's going to be trickier for them. So you want to be very careful in the beginning. You want really, really different opposite words. And then they. And then you, you know, pan man, they're getting the sink. Oh, yeah, they rhyme, right? And even if they don't get it, you tell them the right answer, you're wiring their listening skills, and. And they're going to pick up on it, especially if you, again, give them those rhyming books. But I want you all to Be open and to play with it and be curious yourself of how to play with these, these rhyming, you know, strategies. Now, what you're doing is literally exercising the auditory cortex, right? That auditory awareness. And you're building their listening skills. And then when we sprinkle rhymes into our daily life, and you can do this, and we did this, trust me, in the car, that's a perfect place to do it. In the bathtub. Ideal, right? They're sitting still there, and you can look around the room if you're not sure. Water, Potter. Do they rhyme? As long as the. The root of the word is a rhyming section, right? They don't have to be real words, but, you know, as you're cleaning up, you can identify, you know, truck block. Now, that's tricky because the K at the end of the word is the same. And if they're not sure, they look at you. Say truck block, you know, and really help them listen with intention, right? So you can build in these rhyming games any place. When you're waiting for, at a restaurant, waiting in line in the grocery store, you know, doing the dishes, anything. And, and you should, mama, daddy, grandparents, all of you should weave this in and just make it part of your day. It's a playful way to really train the ear. Also, you're building language, you're building early literacy skills. You're spending fun time with them. You're not looking at screens. You're not just on your phone yourself. All of these. It's a great opportunity. And you know, my daughter, I wanted to see on purpose. Poor daughter of mine. But, you know, how early could you teach rhyming? And she was two years, two months. We had a long car trip, and I knew that it was going to take three days. And that's what we did most of the time in the car. It was fun and she enjoyed was just a whole successful trip, all in all. Okay, number five, social communication. And this is where I think family life becomes a true education environment. Right? To me, dinner time is gold mine. And this is where you tell stories. Keep it simple, of course, but help them take turns. Recap your day. Right? Oh, tell me two things you did at the park today. Ask your, your child, did anything exciting happen? You know, what happened on the swing set? They'll then be able to say to you things like, oh, well, Tommy climbed to the top of the slide but got scared, so mommy had to then climb up and help him down. That was a whole story. It was a narration. He was able to tell you in a sequential fashion. First we do this, this happened, then this happened, and there was a conclusion, right? You're teaching them the structure of what they're going to then read about later. And you continue that throughout your day as well. First we're going to brush our teeth, then we put on our pajamas. And last, what do we do last? And you know, maybe you have a visual chart here and, and you're cueing him, but you're helping him with first then. And last. Oh, we get in bed and read a book. Ta da. Right. And all of these, this family communication is really building their social communication. At the same time that they're building vocabulary, sequencing, narration, they're also building, you know, perspective taking. You know, Tommy was afraid on the slide, mom helped him get down. They're listening, they're turn taking. All of these skills are critical for reading. And I know that a lot of grownups, whether you're parents or an uncle there, but even professionals there in the school system, they look at reading as such a finite skill, but there's really deep, rich language processing and, and all of these things that I'm talking about in these social games, these social activities really build, build the reading comprehension overall. But it's also building the foundation of listening, paying attention, discrimination, memory, organization. And I think family meals can really naturally create that environment. And you all know how I love building that. We, you know, make dinner together, we eat together, we talk together, we clean up together and really make it part of your natural rhythm of your day, right? But also during this conversation, and I just thought of this, that it really does help kids in this, in this loving family community of how to really show how the conversation pieces work, right? That a child can hold their thought, they can kind of wait their turn and then they could ask their clarifying question or perhaps they could have their thought in their head that that could be added to something that daddy said. Oh, daddy could, you know, we go to the lake on Saturday or. But it's really in real time helping them with working memory and those social elements of communication which, I'm sorry, you just simply don't get in a preschool setting or a kindergarten setting or even in elementary school because they just don't have the time or the bandwidth to teach these, these human communication skills in an organized fashion or purposeful. Yes, there are plenty of kids that do okay and do just fine. But my point here last week and this week and from this day forth is really, because our system is struggling so much, so many kids are being, you know, disserviced and it's harming their, their actual academic skills, of course, but their social, emotional health and well being as well. So number six, let me jump here, is imaginative and pretend play. And this really helps develop a child's inner voice. And what I mean by this is that there's a lot that has to go on quietly in our own head, right? The ability to create a dialogue or like I said, take perspective of other people and hold a story or a plan in your mind. That's exactly what reading comprehension requires. As, as you're reading the story, you're holding bits and pieces. You're also having a conversation perhaps with the author, like, do I agree with you? Or with the character? Was that a good choice? And so when a toddler, a 2, 3, 4, 5 year old is starting to emerge and hone their ability for imaginative play. And in the early years, as you know, a two and a three year old is just beginning to expand their pretend play. And in the beginning it'll be one step, it'll be simple, right? You know, feeding the baby or pushing the truck up the hill. But you can help them expand those skills by doing stuff with them, like putting on a puppet show or maybe you could even play roles and then switch those roles. Like one day you're a doctor and your child is a patient, or maybe you're a store clerk and you're going to the store to buy things or you're at a restaurant or you're at the campsite, all of these again, he's going to look at things that he's experienced in his whole, in his real life and try to model that, right? So these are building mini little plots, right? I keep going back to. It's important that there's a beginning and a middle and an end and to help them understand organization and making things in a priority. And the truth is these aren't just cute little games, although they're nice to watch your child pretend to play over there and have fun. But they're really literacy rehearsals because we're building that mental imagery, we're building flexibility in their thinking process. And then they're also creating emotional insight, right? Oh, the baby's crying or the truck driver cracks or the giraffe can't find water, whatever the imagination is. And they could be empathetic, they could be excited, they could be brave, they could be scared, they could act all of these things out. And that really then builds into the narrative cohesion, right? When you're reading a Story. Is this, is this making sense? Am I explaining myself enough to understand what the storyline is? All of this. But it really, believe me, guys, I've done this for so long. It really starts at these simple child base language rich play environments. Okay, number seven, we'll get through these 10 and be so excited. On the other side is correcting others. And you're like, what? That's not an activity. Yes, it is. I, you know, would often call them verbal absurdities, but other people call them silly mistakes. But we do it on purpose and we start very young, even a 12, 14, 18 month old. If you hold up something and you can say, you know, is this a shoe? I'm holding up a pencil. If you're listening and not watching on YouTube, but is this a shoe? And they look at you like, no, no. Or you hold up a sock, is this a banana? Can I eat it? And they look at you like, what are you talking about, lady? Or you know, you do pick up a shoe, put it on your head. Does it, does the shoe go here? And they're looking at you, but the whole idea, because it's silly, because you're being charming, because you're being playful, they listen and then they think and then they discriminate and then they correct you, right? Because it's drawing your child to listen with intention. I say that all the time, right? And then spotting the incongruency and correcting them. And believe it or not, that's laying the foundation that when your child then begins to sound out a word in the middle of a sentence and it's the wrong word and it doesn't fit, they're able to say, no, let me go back and fix that. You and I do that when we're reading. We do it automatically without even thinking it. But we need to practice paying attention and finding incongruencies and then correcting them. You know, there's a little radar that's going up that. I mean, we often say, at least in my field, that there's no healthy form of multitasking. But the brain does do a lot of things simultaneously. When we, when we're trying to get work done and the work could be reading a book, it could be cooking in the kitchen, driving a car. All of those single tasks require multi levels of processing. And that's what we're doing here. When we introduce these playful activities with them, that we're helping them build those networks, those wiring systems so then it can generalize into other life skills and things for fun, right? Reading a book Cooking, driving a car, skateboarding, whatever. The thing is, the idea is when you. When you play any of these activities to make it playful, to be present and be in it. It doesn't have to be long, it doesn't have to be extensive. But then you're helping them be present too, and you're modeling for them, how do we do this together? And that even if we're getting dressed or taking a bath, we can have fun doing this. Right? And it. It's building their attention, building their comprehension, and being able to focus fluently, process language at the same time we do stuff. Right? And so that. That's the whole key here, besides the literacy component. But number eight, then, would be following directions without gestures. And that's a big one, because a lot of children appear to follow directions as long as you are pointing or cueing or giving them some kind of body language prompt, right? We want your kids to process verbal instructions all on their own, Right? Pure auditory directions. That's what how we say in our field. But you can look at it and play games. And I think I shared recently with you all that, you know, I taught a family how to play really, really concrete. Simon says, right? And it's not about catching. When I do or don't say, Simon says, it's really just getting their attention. Simon says, touch your nose. Right. Simon says, you know, raise your hand. But the idea is that you. You progress through this. So the first one would be, say you have just a couple. You have a truck, a cow, and a fork on the table, and you say, give me the cow. You know, you don't give them any other cues. You don't look at them. You don't point. You just say, oh, give me the cow. And you want them to listen, right? And then the novel one, which means give them a directive, that's a little out of context, right? Please get me the broom in the hallway. Don't look at the hallway. Don't point. You can say it twice. You can slow down. Please get me the broom in the hallway. Right Again. You want kids to listen with their ears and. And not be cute, right? And then a more complex one would be, after you take off your boots, give daddy the blue box. Right? And so here is, these are two unrelated directives. They're not related in any form, and they're both complex after, right? You take off your boots, then give daddy the blue box, right? So it's not like, give Daddy your boot, right? After you take off your boot, give daddy it. It's. It's much more complex. So as a speech language, but the, as a speech language pathologist, I'm always looking at the load, the auditory load. And so you want to play with that and see where your child is. This auditory processing and working memory work hand in hand, right? They have to hold the words into their head, they have to interpret it, and then they have to make a plan of action to complete the sequence, right? And so they have to listen. What do you mean? You know, there's a truck, there's a fork, oh, she wants the cow, right? So there's so much auditory training going on in everyday life, in everyday skills, right? And then the idea here is that the same skills transfer to multi step directions in the classroom, whether you put them in a public school or not, or a private school. But then it also generalizes into understanding multi clause sentences and following the storyline, or if you have a math problem or if you're doing a science project or whatever the reading material is. But it helps because a lot of us, and you may be this type of reader or you've, you've heard people say, oh, I can read, you know, the whole three paragraphs and then I get to the end, I don't even remember what I read. That's a reading comprehension issue. There are different reasons for it, but it could be that you don't have good auditory attention. It could be that you've never really worked out or practiced that visualization in your head. It could be the text or the material is too complex for you to understand. I mean, I often open up directions to something. I'm like, what the heck are they saying? So I have to slow it down and do it step by step. So there's, there's a lot of complexities in this, but it starts early, it starts now with your one and your two and your three year old. All right, so now let's jump to number nine, which would be identifying line drawings. And you're like, what's that? This is something that is pretty much directed into literacy. But if you remember in the beginning I said early reading is really only 20% visual recognition. The rest leans heavily on auditory processing. So 80% is sound based, not visual. And a lot of people get this mixed up. Schools, reading specialists, therapists, the whole gamut. But one of the things that is just a fun thing to do when they're little is to help them. Not with, necessarily with picture recognition, but with lines or shapes that represent real things. And you can use a simple line drawing like, you know, just A black squiggly line that looks like a cat or looks like a hat or even a zipper. Right. It's not. It's not a real picture, but you want to help them understand that lines and shapes can represent real things. Because we're going to look at black squiggly lines, and that's what I've always referred them to as letters. And then those letters are going to represent, in a certain order, a word. And that word will represent a real thing. But children need to understand that connection. And you do that through a lot of play skills. And one of the best ways is to those books connect the dots, right? You connect 1 and 2 and 3. And this is for older, slightly older toddlers. You know, a child that can hold a pencil or a marker, but they make really, really easy ones that they don't have to know the numbers. You can say, oh, there's one. Now draw a line to two. Draw a line to three. Oh, look, you made a circle. Right? Oh, look, you made a chair. Oh, look, you made a car. It could be very, very basic, but that's a good task on many levels. But. But the identifying of line drawings really helps their BR process less and still get to the end result. Right. This is what. What in my field, the conceptual bridge between pictures and symbols to print. And. And that's the whole idea. So that's why these pictures over the years, or these books connect the dots, have been so beneficial and popular. You know, they've been around since whatever, I think the 60s or before even, I. I'm not sure. But how children can accept that abstract marks, these letters, these black squiggly lines reliably represent language. And language is broken all the way down to those individual sounds. Right? So a letter like a P, P, P equals that sound. Right? So that P. And then the shape. If we say pan. Right, pan. The shape of that word represents that, that vocabulary. But in the beginning, we're gonna decode it and go sound by sound. And that's why many people, like I said, parents, teachers, therapists, educators, really get this wrong, that there are very, very few sight words. Yes. We ultimately become a sight like reader, if that makes sense. You know, once you become a fluent reader, you don't sound out each and every word. You do that in the beginning when you're breaking the code, quote unquote. But teachers still teach that there's 300 sight words. There isn't. I think there ends up to be like maybe 10 or 12. I'd have to look Back at my paperwork. But that's a long, convoluted story and I would love to share it some days because it's still very, very poorly understood by our educational system that, you know, 90. I think it ends up to be like 92% of the words are, are decodable or sound audible. And so trust me for now that it really does sound. Start with the sounds. And the sounds are in our language every time you talk to them, every time you help them shape their expressive. That it's not wawa, it's water. That it's not, you know, ba bi. It's, you know, bottle. Right. Yes, you can have nicknames, but we want good articulation, good auditory processing that's building that foundation. All right, we will move on to number 10 of our 10. So emerging use of writing tools. And this is really. Reading and writing are two sides of the same coin. I think I mentioned that. And writing starts with motor skills. Again, this isn't rocket science. It's basic information. But if we, we have to let our toddlers have a lot of practice. And I think a lot of tools are not necessarily given to kids in early, early ages. Tools meaning, you know, chunky crayons. Break the crayons in half. It's easier for kids to hold on a short, fat, stumpy crayon than a long, skinny pencil. Right. And so chunky crayons, a marker, again, it's a little fatter, so they can get more used to that, that pincer or that tripod grip, paint brushes, all of those kinds of big, chunky. You start there. Yes. They're going to hold it with their, their fist, first of all. But they will over time. I've seen plenty of three year olds really hold a pencil nicely. And the forking, you know, all of those are tools that they exercise this fine motor skills. But as you move into coloring and writing things out, you can use a slant board sometimes that helps kids. Or even an easel. Right. If they stand up. But the whole idea is, is that we need to focus on the body control. Right. So we stabilize our torso and then we can move our arm. We stabilize our arm, we can move our hand. And if you're here on YouTube, you can see me do this. We stabilize our hand and then we can move our fingers. And the same way with speech. And I've shared this before. Right. Stabilize our body and we move our head. Stabilize our head and we can move our jaw. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stabilize our jaw. We can move our lips. Stabilize our lips and we can move our tongue. That's how development works from the outside in, from gross or bigger motor planning to fine motor planning. But it all takes practice, right? And we have to give them opportunities to practice. And so I rarely recommend programs, especially with our younger kids. But there's one exception that I love, love, love, and it's called Handwriting Without Tears. And I've actually used it in my clinical practice for well over 25 years, long before there was an online version, because it's simple, effective, parent friendly, highly, highly successful. But I equate learning how to write similar to swimming in the sense that you need explicit instruction and it needs to be well sequenced and they need to practice to the point that they become efficient. And when we have explicit teaching and explicit learning, then that leads to mastery and less frustration and truly less failure. Right. And so I equate learning how to handwrite and learning how to swim along the same lines. There's a lot of danger if you don't learn how to swim, but you can, you can just be a functional swimmer and not drown, or you can become proficient and swim across the pool or swim across the lake or swim for pleasure, or you could be, you know, a collegiate athlete swimmer. But the whole idea is it takes explicit teaching in the beginning, and that's where handwriting Without Tears is absolutely divine and I think the best thing on the market. So let me share a story that still moves me. Last year, a former client reached out to me and her daughter was just finishing up her junior year in college, and she told her that she was so grateful that, quote, erin Heyer taught me cursive writing through the Handwriting Without Tears program. Because she said that taking notes and getting into the writing flow and even her overall confidence in expressing herself all stemmed from those early handwriting lessons and working with me. And that was nearly 15 years ago. And my heart just really was full when I heard that. Because it matters later, right? The power of teaching these skills. Well, now, when they're little, when they're young, they don't just prepare your child for kindergarten or for the next test, Right? They prepare them for life. And I think reading, writing, some math skills is the foundation to any academic program, whether it's at home or it's a hybrid or this or that. And so with that understanding, you might be considering all of this and still have a few questions. And one of them might be, what about phonics? Right? You mentioned the letter sound correspondence. And at this point, I just want to say, yes, phonics absolutely matters. Trust me, I have a long history with that too. But before phonics, there's something even more important, and it's referred to as phonological awareness. And phonological just means sound. And it means that you're becoming aware of the sounds within our word structure, that your child begins to have the ability to hear and play with those sounds. Like I shared with earlier about rhyming, right? Or syllables, looking at how many parts are in a syllable. When I say elephant, can you clap the parts? Elephant or blending, what does the word say? Right? And you can do all of that long before you introduce letters or phonics. I promise you that I will dedicate a full episode to phonological awareness because that's really, really, really important. And again, preschools, kindergarten, first grades, they miss it. They miss it over and over again. And I've been in the field for over 35 years. But today I want you to see how the ladder works. And I've looked at it as a ladder for a long, long time. That daily language play, right? These play activities, these 10 that I just outlined for you, build strong auditory language processing. And then that builds into phonological awareness, that sound awareness, then that builds into phonics. And then if you have all of these parts, then reading fluency and reading comprehension are at the top of your ladder. If we skip the early rungs on this ladder, it's wobbly, it's unreliable, it's inconsistent. So let's step back for a moment and I just want to highlight the main points here. Reading is man made and is layered on top of our natural human speech and language system. All of literacy is no matter what's your primary native language, the brain learns reading best. When that foundation, that speech and language is strong. When children, your child have a rich language lifestyle, right? And I talk a lot about that, that they have a lot of play opportunities, they have stories that are spoken and read. And they have everyday opportunities to listen, to think, to process, to be quiet, to create on their own and to engage with others. And I think what the beautiful part to all of this, you don't need a classroom to give your child this gift. None of you do. You need presence, purpose and a little playfulness. Those are my three Ps. I keep coming back to them, especially in these first three to five to seven years since we're talking about literacy. But let's start small. I don't. You might have an infant, you might have a toddler, you might have a preschooler or one of each, but let's think about some small things that you can start to implement today. One board game tonight and scaffold and narrate what the steps are. Roll the dice. Oh, look, you have three. Move three spaces, right? One silly rhyme in the car or in the bathtub. Start playing with the rhyming words. Retell a story or something that happened to you at dinner. Okay, I'm going to tell you something that happened that was funny. I went to the coffee shop and bought my coffee and I put it on my car and got inside and drove away and it flew off the back. That really happened to me when my daughter was a toddler and she told people that story for like the next 10 years. She thought it was hilarious. But again, simple, concrete, easy, not emotional. And there's a beginning, a middle, and an end. Also, track the print whenever you read to your child. Now, it might be tricky at bedtime because you're sleepy, but you can still do it, especially if you have the right lighting, remember. Then pull out crayons and let those little hands get one. Get working. If they're still at the stage of they're doing a lot of finger food, I understand, but give them a fat, chubby little fork that they can start poking their food with. We want those fine motor skills to start developing. These really are tiny choices that compound over time, and I talk a lot about that here. A little bit each day. Sprinkle throughout your day really will yield dividends next week, next month, next year, five years from now. All of these things that I highlighted here create a brain that is ready to learn how to read, ready to really break the code and thrive in the world of literacy. So regardless of how broken the system out there might seem to all of us and how uncertain you are of them, you can prepare your child at home with some simple, fun activities. You are your child's most important teacher. Always has been, always will be. Not the preschool, certainly not an app. And not any flashcards. Right? You, when you build speech and language and social connection from the beginning, from infancy, you're not just preparing them for school, you're preparing them for life. I know you know this in your heart. We talk a lot about that here. But it's important to know how critical these three, five, seven years are and how you can make it it explode under your leadership. Right? So grab the 10 skills. I put them into a checklist. It's down in the show notes, in the episode descriptions. Make a copy, stick it on your fridge, refer to it, and at the end of the day prevention. And this is one of my big messages here. Prevention beats remediation every time period. The best time to start was yesterday. The second best time is today. Mama, I know you've got this. And your child will thank you for it, not only when they crack the code to reading and writing and literacy, but when they grow into confident learners and capable and really sure of themselves. No matter where the journey takes them and no matter what your educational, academic career will look like. You have built strong oral and written language skills that will be part of their natural landscape because of you. So thank you again for spending your precious time with me today, for being open to really learning what's possible, and for showing up each and every day for your little ones. You've got this. So God bless, and I'll see you in the next episode of Talking Toddlers.