At Toddler-Talk, we focus on the important milestones in the areas of Speech, Language, Communication and Social Emotional Development. There are broadly seven important building blocks within those areas. These building blocks are; attention, visual tracking expressive language, play skills, social skills, understanding of language and imitation.
These important building blocks interact and weave together to ensure overall optimal milestone development. However, for monitoring and tracking purposes we consider these building blocks as individual domains. Within each domain at seven specific milestone stages, we can identify the specific milestone skills we would expect to see at each stage in each domain.
So, for example at stage 3 (7-12 months), we can look at the Social Skills building block and we can identify if the following milestone skills are in place;
Takes Turns in play routines
Sometimes starts games such as peek a boo
Makes sounds and takes turns in making sounds
At stage 6 (25-30 months) we can look at the Expressive Language building block and we can identify if the following milestone skills are in place;
Uses 50 words or more
Names objects in pictures
Uses more words than gestures to communicate
Uses 2-3 word combinations for example “car go”, “eat it”, “me want” “baby is tired”
Says at least 2 new words per week
If you want to check these milestone skills in the building block domains, the myToddlerTalk passport can help you to develop a milestone profile for your child. By using the passport, you can keep track of and monitor all the milestone skills in those specific building blocks. The myToddlerTalk passport will also help you to identify which building blocks you need to focus on and what are the milestone skills to keep in mind when you are playing and interacting with your child.
So, if we note that certain skills are not in place, we can focus on specific play activities that will support their development. The passport will direct you to targeted activities that you can find in The Toddler Talk Activity Box. The Activity Box has detailed descriptions of activities to do to support development of these milestone skills in all seven building blocks at seven specific milestone stages for all children from 0-36 months.
At Toddler Talk we are very mindful that being a parent is a very busy profession indeed !!, so always remember that you can incorporate these playful activities into your day to day lives and routines. The overall objective is to equip you with specific and targeted advice and ideas to support you to enrich your child’s early milestone developmental journey.
3 Top Tips:
Three top tips to consider when engaging in playful activities with your child are:
1. Use sensory social routines:
Sensory Social routines are a great way to engage your child and have fun when supporting early milestone development. A sensory social routine is a joint activity between two people with a focus on sensory fun and playful social engagement.
2. Consider your Interaction Skills:
There are some important interaction skills to think about when playing with your child. Things to consider are:
Letting your child lead
Face to Face positioning
Comment regularly as opposed to questions
For example; doggie; big doggie; brick, blue brick, red brick
When we question too much; (for example, What’s that? What colour is that? What are you doing?) we are putting extra cognitive and language processing demands on our child. They may find it difficult to attend to you and the words that you are using.
3. Put down the Smartphone.
And finally, please remember to put the smartphone away and out of sight when playing with your child. When we orientate our attention away from our child, we will likely miss opportunities to observe new skills. We will also miss opportunities to affirm and reinforce our child’s development. What we model for our children is what they will do! Watching us become distracted and engaged with a small shiny, bright object, will inevitably become what they do too!
Remember; Your attention, praise and interactions are the magic ingredients to ensure optimal early milestone development.
