Must Haves to Get to First Words - (Part 1) Ep 2

He's not falling behind, he's thriving through your guidance. We know that true learning starts at home. And Talking Toddlers, this podcast helps you develop that with clarity, confidence, and clear communication. So let's get started. Hello and welcome back to Talking Toddlers. I'm Erin Heyer, your host.

I'm a speech language therapist with 35 years of practice, and I'm here to help moms with toddlers and dads, of course, but to really find clarity and direction in this kind of crazy world we're living in. So I'm looking for solid answers. I want to share because there's so much confusion out there in this world.

And if you're a mom with a one, two, three, or four-year-old, you're not quite sure who to listen to, or there's so much different conflicting information that perhaps you've decided just to take the wait and see approach. I'm here to say that is never a good approach. For anything, I think, yes, you need time to gather information so you can kind of tease it apart, but with that, you make a decision.

And because these last two years have been very challenging for probably every single human in the world, but I find that moms and dads have been coming to me asking, I'm not sure, I'm uncertain who to listen to. Does it matter? Will they all just kind of pick up the pieces and close the gaps on their own? Do I leave it to chance? I say no, don't leave it to chance. It doesn't mean that you have to run out and get an evaluation or be tested or get on a wait list.

It simply means that mom and dad, you can find some good solid direction and then try to implement on your own. And what that means is kind of tease apart where is your child now, whether they're one, two, three, four, and figure out what do you need to do to get them to the next step. And if there are some missing pieces, go back.

I said in my introduction all about basics, to find and rebuild that foundation because speech and language is the glue to learning, and laying this foundation in these first five, six, seven years is the foundation to a lifelong learning. And if you want your son or daughter to be competent and comfortable and communicative and to be able to embrace literacy and then have choices, you start now, right? You don't wait. So with that,

today I'm going to talk about the first five. There are ten altogether, but there are five very specific precursors to a child being developmentally ready to talk. You don't just expect your one-year-old to wake up and start talking, right? There's been a whole process building and building his whole neurological system, it has been growing and learning each and every moment for the first 12 months.

And the nine months in utero, of course, but it's all been wiring together, getting ready to be able to use single words on purpose with intention. And before they can do that physically and developmentally and emotionally, we have to lay the foundation. So there are 10 solid markers that we need to look for, most of which are nonverbal, most of which are about building connection and relationships. Today I'm going to talk about five. Next week I'm going to talk about the other five.

However, if you want to do a little learning in between, you can go to my website, higherlearning.com. That's Higher H Y E R, my last name. And you can sign up and get a PDF or a guide, actually, which will walk you through all 10 of these. So

the first one is that your little guy or gal needs to be able to react to events in the environment, right? So around the fourth month, that they really do startle to noise. Um, and it's not just a kind of a reflex, but they they're startled and they look. They begin to track people as they move across the room. They're becoming much more visually and auditorily. These two things are growing side by side, but they're they're connecting the environment beyond their own little being, right?

But this is kind of the first step, the first inkling that we have to cognition. And cognition is not intelligence or smarts. It's really how the baby is becoming more and more cognitively aware of the three-dimensional world and how he or she engages with it, how they're thinking. If they hear something, they turn and look and then they follow that person across the room. It also will begin to address how he or she relates and attends to something or someone beyond themselves.

And they're really, this is the first step around three or four months of age, where they're beginning to really engage with the environment. Number two,

your child begins to respond to others. And again, it's it's not vocally, although it can be, right? But it's not like with words, it's the nonverbal or the pre-verbal communication that would include smiles and looking with connection, looking in your eyes and responding to your facial expressions, or if you're doing peekaboo. They begin to really listen to the different sounds that you're saying. They're not understanding, but they're realizing, like, oh wow, that's different.

I've never heard that before. Maybe you're whistling a tune or singing a different sound or a different pitch, or maybe you're someone who looks familiar, you're an aunt, but you have a different tone to your voice. They're beginning to recognize that, the differences. But they're really focused on you as the person. And you, as the receiver or the the other communication partner, you you really feel it. There's a connection. Babies need to enjoy other human beings and a variety of people too.

Even though some babies tend to be a little bit more sensitive or a little bit more attached to mama, but they realize if in those first three or four months, starting to feel grounded in this world, right? They're they've only been around for three or four months outside of this perfect universe called the uterus.

So, but they're beginning to sense that their needs are being met, they're happy, they're dry, they're fed, they sleep, they're loved, all of these primal needs, then they can look outside beyond themselves, and really be interested in other human beings because that's what makes us human. We connect with other human beings. And it's at this stage where we're really beginning to build relationships through these connections.

So somewhere around this between the six and nine months, that's when they begin to respond to his or her name. Up until then, they're responding to different things in the environment, different tones or loud noises, or laughs, or sneezes, or that the visual, the peekaboo and and the raspberries and all of those. They're picking up on differences of what it looks like, what it sounds like.

But at this stage is really, really important that parents begin to recognize that babies want to be with us. We're human beings and we want to be with other human beings. So kids who tend to be a little bit more self-isolated or they seem a little disconnected may need to be building this connection more purposefully.

So those first three, four, five months, babies who are kind of healthy and developing these steps into their everyday life are ready to really expand and build relationships beyond their immediate caretakers. But kids who seem more disconnected, you might want to stop and take a closer look. Again, I'm not saying run out and get an evaluation.

I am saying, mom and dad, you have it in you to say, okay, let's see if I can build this connection with him or her, your daughter or son, and really have them present with me. And we can talk about specifics, um, like you know, building social routines and how do you play early, early primal games with your child to build that connection. But this is kind of this guide to looking at these top 10 things or precursors that must be in place before speech kicks in.

Number three, babies begin to take turns.

And it's not they're not sharing yet, they're not, you know, one for you, one for me, but they're they have begun to understand on a subconscious level that this dyad, this communication relationship between mom and baby or caretaker and baby, he or she has to do his part, and that that we're in it together, whether you're playing raspberries or you're fake coughing or sneezing or just making, you know, lots of good vocalizations, humming, even giving little baby um high fives, banging on the

table, you know, wiggling your toes, you're starting to entice them to engage with you and take turns. And it's all about connecting with them. And that's why I'm always so adamant about no screen times with babies or toddlers or preschoolers, but we'll get on that. But especially in these first two or three years, holy cow! It's they need, want, and deserve our attention.

And if we're building these neural pathways so they can become a competent communicator, both verbally and written, it's laying this foundation and building connection with the people in their world, their little tiny world. So the first step in this kind of initial turn taking is that they really begin to understand that communication is a two-way street. I give a little, you give a little, I do something, you do something.

And it's it's really this you as their communication partner is this sensory connection that you feel that babies are connected, other people as a form of relationships. They don't really understand communication yet in kind of the cerebral way, but they're looking and checking you out.

And I do this all the time in grocery stores or in restaurants, and I see a a baby, could be 12 months, could be 16 months in the cart, and I'm, you know, I'm winking, I'm blowing kisses, I'm waving, I'm I'm, you know, playing peekaboo, and I want to see them engage with me. Even if they frown, you know, some of the slightly older ones, the 16, 18 months, would frown a little bit, like, who is this freaky lady playing googly eyes with me?

Some of them, most of them will smile back, or if mom gives a little reinforcement, then they'll smile back again. Some will, you know, if they have a toy or something in their hand, they'll reach it out and hand it to me. Again, showing me that they want to connect communicatively through gestures or smiles, or even a frown, like, go away, I don't know you. That is appropriate and necessary before verbal speech.

But they really begin to understand on this very sub-primal level that connection or communication is there, there's a reciprocity to it and that we're in it to share. Number

four, babies need to build a longer attention span, an appropriate attention span. And I think this is where there's a lot of confusion out there. And some parents or some pediatricians, some teachers will just say either they have unrealistic expectations and expect a two-year-old to sit for 30 minutes, or they have no expectations and let the two-year-old just, you know, wander around or graze or do whatever he wants, whenever he wants.

And they might say things like, oh, you know, you know, he's just really active or he's not really interested yet. He'll get there, he'll get there. And then the other side is like, why can't this kid sit still? You know? And so I think that we have to really be mindful of what's appropriate, what's developmentally appropriate.

And someone, a good friend of mine, an occupational therapist here in Vermont, shared with me that kind of the baseline would be you take their chronological age and you add one minute, right?

So for toddlers, the range should be three to six minutes that they can attend with an activity, not just sit there and be still and quiet, but that they can with an activity like peekaboo or blocks or songs or bubbles or trains or dollies or whatever, that they can sustain that activity with me for three to six minutes. And so the average one or two-year-old, you know, is about five minutes long.

And if you, the adult, the mom, the dad, the caretaker, or me, in my case, the therapist, like some parents, a lot of parents these days, will watch me through my I have a one-way mirror. So I know that I can get kids to do a lot of things if the parent isn't in the room. And then I can demonstrate to the parents, this is what your child can do given the opportunity.

But I always preface it with I'm in this little treatment room, this little therapy room that's fairly clean and uncluttered, only has a handful of toys, right? I have three or four toy bins that are specifically selected for him or her. And I'm in it with them. I I can get, you know, a two-year-old, a 16-month-old to play with me for 45 minutes. We move from one activity to another as purposeful, it's not chaotic.

But I want to demonstrate to the parents that if you're in it, if you, the grown-up, are present, the kids are going to engage with you. And that's what we want to build communication. And it starts long before the first words. It starts with playing with blocks when they're six months old. It starts, you know, reading stories when they're one month old. It starts singing songs and rocking with them when they're two weeks old.

So it's a process, but I want, you know, as they're moving toward their first birthday, that they really are building longer attention spans. And it's not in front of a screen. Again, I'm gonna say this until I'm blue in the face, that it's not screen attention at all. It's human connection, it's attention with purpose while they're playing or investigating, whether they're digging in the dirt or digging in the sand or trying to, you know, figure out how to put their shoe on.

It's attending with their mind and whatever's in front of them. And with us, with with the other humans. You'll hear me say this over and over again, too, that attention is really the gatekeeper to any higher order language or learning. And even though ADHD is thrown out there over and over and over again, it's more of an academic label. And so I think the medical system and the educational system kind of got together.

It became pretty popular in the 1980s, in the 1990s, everybody seemed to be a little ADHD. But if we go back to that first year, to especially three months and six months and nine months and 12 months, that we need to help our child build their attention. Stay with me, play with me. If I'm interesting enough, if I'm goofy enough, if I'm um diverse enough, meaning that I'm not just a flat person playing with you. What do you want to do now? I don't know how to play with these blocks.

So no, I'm engaged, I have facial expressions. You can't see me on this podcast, but you know, I have a big smile and I make funny faces and I play peekaboo and I'm present and I speak to them and with them, and I slow it down and I over-enunciate, but I don't talk like a baby. I don't use wah wah for water. I use oh, here's some water. You want some water? I stress the word I'm targeting. I give them clear pronunciation.

And, you know, if something, let's say we knocked over water, and I say, whoops, the water is on the floor. Uh-oh. Let's wipe up the water. And I talk to them clearly and distinctly because everything that's going in their ears, they're trying to decipher. This human voice is a this a coding system that they need to learn how to decipher and map and sequence. So let's go back to the longer attention span. Keep in mind three to six minutes with a toddler, a one to two year old.

If you're not quite sure, look at their age, add one minute. And that's the baseline. So we want to always be kind of pushing that baseline. And attention really is the gatekeeper to higher order learning, which includes speech and language and listening and directions and reading and all of those much, much higher academic social skills. So, one of the things that we do need to look at with this number four longer attention span, are their sensory processing.

And are they able to really kind of ground themselves and sit there, whether it's on the floor or in a high chair? I always use a high chair, and then I'm in the little seat, and babies and I, and kids and I are always eye to eye. So, us grownups, once again, we have to get to their level. We have to, we have to be in it with them in order for them to feel it and want to be with us.

But we have to kind of um rule out or investigate where their sensory processing, and that's the visual and the auditory and the tactile, all of that information that's coming at them in this three-dimensional world, and how are they processing it and integrating it and tolerating it, right? So we do need to look closely at attention and build on that.

And what I say to all of my families, like if he's even three years old and he can only do this one task for one or two minutes with me, okay, that's where we start. And then we go, we build up from there and we add 30 seconds, or in one week, you know, we want to see if we can expand it and and really have him enjoy it with us for longer and longer periods. So receptive language or understanding needs to be strong and fluid and smooth before they really start talking.

Even though all of these things are being developed simultaneously, and it's this very intricate system, this human nature of ours, but before they can gather enough motor coordination and ability to produce speech with intention. This is moving beyond like the the initial cooing and then there's babbling. And I'll certainly have other podcasts talking very, very specifically about speech and speech sounds and motor planning and all of that.

But what we're talking about here, these are precursors to talking and receptive language, being able to understand and engage with us is really um a strong precursor to spoken words. And now for number

five of this list of ten is that your child begins to shift focus with joint attention. And I know a lot of preschool teachers and doctors and pediatricians that will talk about joint attention, joint attention, and that's very, very important. But there's a little bit more depth to it. So, for example, imagine kind of this triad where you have this triangle, and the two corners on the bottom are one, you, and two, the baby.

And then this object above it, this outside object, that you're sharing this, right? And but also that the baby, your toddler, is able to look at you, look at the object, look at the object, look at you. And it's really this ability to shift and they become cognitively aware. And remember, cognition is not intelligence per se, but cognition is just an understanding that we're in it together, right?

And that they're we're sharing this, and that um they're beginning to really understand that there's a connection, there's a purpose.

You know, whether it's you know, playing with a puppet or looking at somebody, you know, swinging or or something closer up, you're looking at a book, you look at the book, and you say, Oh my gosh, she's eating an apple, and you she the baby turns and says, Apple, and they're making this real this relationship or this cognitive association with what's going what you're sharing, and you, the human being, and maybe something else that they they're beginning to understand.

And so there's this kind of human connection that they're really grasping that the words we're saying aren't just nice sounds, like in the very beginning, when you're saying, Ooh, baby, I love you, baby. And those were just pretty tones, not that pretty in my voice. I'm not much of a singer, but the baby was attending to it because it perhaps was different, and so that draws the attention, or perhaps it was just soothing to them, or they think, uh, Erin, you can't sing. That's really funny.

But there wasn't meaning behind the words. They didn't know. Now, when they're closer to nine months old, that we can share this book, we can look at the apple, and they can look at us and say, Apple, let's go get an apple. And they can put it all together. And they, so they're not really talking a lot, but they're cognitively understanding how all of these pieces are starting to fit together.

So I know that parents are told over and over again, and I, you know, I've done it too, that we need to narrate everything. We need to become our baby and our toddler's narrator in order to expand their world and their vocabulary. And that is absolutely true. Um, some of the research, or a big part of the research, suggests that babies need 21,000 words a day to hear, positive words, mind you, and good words that are purposeful. So that averages out about 2,100 words every waking hour.

So we do need to narrate, we do need to hold up his side of the conversation and mine, but they need to be emotionally present with me. But this narration also needs to be shared. So you need to give them moments when I say, Oh, I see a banana in the book. And then you're quiet and they find the banana, and then they look at you and you say, Yes, that's a banana. And they share it and they get excited with sharing it with you. You're positive, it's a big Dopamine hit for this little guy or gal.

And this is an emotional connection. And this makes that builds that human connection to want to do it again and again and again. And hence building their sustained attention. So it's not just sitting there labeling a bunch of stuff in a book or just going through the motions. They build the connection with you when you're excited, when you're present with them. And I talk about in one of my courses that I developed about the three Ps, right?

For parents to be present and with the child, to be purposeful with the activity, whether you're playing with balloons or you're playing with cars or trucks, or you're just putting their shoes on and you're being purposeful, but also to be playful. You can be playful putting your shoes on. You know, I take the shoe and I put it on my ear and I say, Is this where it goes? And they look at me like I'm ridiculous. But it's getting them engaged in the moment and connecting with me.

And when I label and narrate, then they're putting these bizarre sound patterns, what you and I know of as words, and connecting it with objects and actions and more actions and more objects. And so it's really pulling it together with them and helping them from the bottom up build a neuroprocessing network through human verbal communication and engagement. And so these five, I'll read

them off again, are necessary for developmentally being ready to talk. That your child reacts to events in the environment about three to four months, right? Watches someone walk across the room. Number two, responds to others and really enjoys the engagement with another person. Number three, that they begin turn turn taking. It's the initial step to turn taking. And that they're beginning to cognitively understand, oh, I'm in it, I have to do my part in order, especially to keep this going.

Number four, they begin to have longer attention spans. Remember, about three to six minutes with an activity, whether it's plain bubbles or blocks or or um peekaboo, that they're engaged with you. It's not screen time. Let me say that again. It's not screen time. And that attention is the gatekeeper to higher order skills, such as talking and conversation, and storytelling, and math, and reading, and all of those really, really high, high skills.

And that receptive language is laying that foundation and helps with attention if they're in it with us. And number five, that your child begins to shift focus with a joint tension. So think of a triangle. You and him are on the bottom, you're sharing this joint activity, and he can shift back and forth. Think of a book, or if you're building something together, you're you know trying to balance it out before it falls over, or something like that, right?

You're really, really playing together, and that's about nine to ten months, and that they're really um in it with you. So those are the first five. Like I said, next week I will go over the next five. So you'd have the whole guide for for your 10 precursors to talking. And if you want to get jump ahead, go to my website, Higher Learning, H-Y-E-R, HigherLearning.com, and you can sign up to be on my email list, and you can get a whole bunch of different guides.

But this one, um, you can find the link there. And I would love it for you to share it with friends or share it with your spouse. Um, really look it over. You can reach out if you have any clarifying questions. I'd love to answer them right here. This is very exciting. Number two podcast. You don't have to go alone. You don't have to do it alone. That we um that there are some really, really good information out there, but sometimes you feel a little overwhelmed.

And I want to be able to help you build your confidence over time so that your little guy or gal also grows up with confidence and communication and clarity and you know, just thriving to do whatever they want to do. So, talking toddlers on Tuesdays. I'm Aaron Heyer, and I'm checking out for now. See you later.