Verbal Skills

Remember that communicating is not only about using words to speak. It includes your child’s desire to connect with others by exchanging ideas and feelings, both verbally and non-verbally.

During the first years of life, children’s brains are developing rapidly and laying the foundation for learning. The interactions that children have with adults influence how children develop and learn. As a result, early childhood educators play a key role in providing children with interactions that can support their growth and development, particularly their language and communication skills.

Although the first year is really important for language development in children, major learning continues throughout a child’s early years onwards, as learning language is a lifelong process.

As your child grows, he will gradually build a repertoire of words and directions that he hears around him and try to use them to express his needs and feelings. Although your child might not be saying much in his early years, he can still understand a lot of what is going on around him.
Remember that communicating is not only about using words to speak. It includes your child’s desire to connect with others by exchanging ideas and feelings, both verbally and non-verbally.

At this age, your 1 year old is building a foundation for language. He is absorbing what others are saying around him and is steadily building his vocabulary. He can now understand common phrases and simple directions used in routine situations. Although understanding a lot of what is happening, he will still have difficulty with pronunciation. During this year, you will notice his communication skills typically progress from making sounds and pointing to speaking single words and experimenting with simple word combinations.

Activities that can help in your 1 year old’s Verbal skill development:

• Go out for a walk and talk to your child about everything that you see around you. Listen to what he has to say as well.
• Encourage your baby to make vowel-like and consonant-vowel sounds such as “ma,” “da,” and “ba.”
• Teach your baby to imitate your actions, including clapping your hands, blowing kisses, and playing finger games such as itsy-bitsy-spider.
• Introduce animal sounds to associate a sound with a specific meaning: “The dog says woof-woof.”
• Read to your child. Choose books that are sturdy and have large colorful pictures that are not too detailed. Ask your child, “What’s this?” and encourage naming and pointing to familiar objects in the book.