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Helping your toddler to talk
- 0-1 Years
- 1-5 Years
- SEND
- Child development and growing up
- Speech, language and communication
Talking can be intimidating for babies and toddlers. It can take some toddlers a little longer to speak. Every child is different and may start speaking earlier or later than others.
Explore the topics on this page:
Using words to encourage your baby or toddler to talk
Copying
Copying is an important skill to learn as it involves working together. Games and activities that encourage copying are very helpful for babies. Do not force your baby to copy you.
You can help by:
- pulling silly faces like sticking out your tongue and puffing out your cheeks
- copying your baby’s babbling, you can take turns to babble like a conversation
- playing games like peek-a-boo
- encouraging them to wave bye-bye and shake their head for no
- making different noises like animal sounds or making sounds with objects
Using words to encourage your baby or toddler to talk
Talking can be intimidating for children. Do not put too much pressure on your child to talk all the time. Here are a couple of ideas to help them become more comfortable with talking.
Gone, all gone or bye-bye can be used in a variety of ways such as when:
- a person leaves a room such as “daddy gone”, “daddy bye-bye”
- tidying toys away such as “dolly gone” “bye-bye dolly”
- your baby or toddler has finished their food or drink such as “juice gone” “juice all gone”
Repeating these words and phrases whenever you can will encourage your baby or toddler to use them.
When your toddler wants more of something like food or drink ask them in a clear voice “more?”. Repeat this as much as you can until your toddler understands what more means. You can try the following activities to encourage them:
During meal time, give your child a smaller portion of food or drink so they need to ask for more. When they ask, give them more food or drink.
When playing with puzzles or building blocks, pass your child one piece at a time. Only let them have more pieces when they ask for more.
Choose a game that your child really enjoys like being tickled or blowing bubbles. Every so often stop the activity and encourage your toddler to ask for more before continuing.
When your toddler is regularly asking for more, you can then move onto using 2 words at a time like “more drink” or “more swing”.
Helping your child form sentences
Once a child has learned enough words, they will start to say short sentences or phrases using 2 words. If your child only speaks to you with 1 word when they could have used 2, try to encourage them to say more words.
Dummies and pacifiers
Dummies or pacifiers are excellent for helping babies settle down to sleep or sooth them. It can also help establish good sucking patterns up to 6 months old. However, dummies can affect speech. It can lessen the opportunities to ‘talk’ or babble and can potentially cause poor speech.
If you still want to use a dummy with your child, it is recommended that you only use dummies at night-time. Dummies won’t affect your child long-term as the speech issues tend to clear up as children grow older.
Last reviewed: 1 November, 2024
