Must Haves to Get to First Words (Part 2) Ep 3

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, a speech language pathologist for over 35 years, and I'm excited to bring the next five precursors to when your child is developmentally ready to talk.

Remember, last week I said that they don't just wake up on their first birthday and start talking. That this whole 12 months is really getting them ready to socially engage as a communicative partner. So the first thing is to review from last week, of course, numbers one through five. Number one, reacts to events in environments, what he sees, what he hears, feels, even his motor responses. Number two, responds to others.

So he smiles, he looks at other people when he hears a noise, he listens, he makes facial expressions like he is listening, like his brows burrow. He vocalizes and focuses on you. He realizes he's making a connection with somebody similar to him, a human being. He enjoys other people and builds relationships, and he responds to his name around month three or four. That's number two. Number three, he begins turntaking. And this is the initial stage.

He's not really sharing items yet, but he's beginning to understand he has a part in this communicative dyad. It's mostly nonverbal at first. If you bang on the table, he'll bang on the table. If you stick your hand out and say, give me five, he'll slap it. He begins this reciprocity, understanding that you and him are in it together. Number four, he begins to develop longer attention spans. I shared last week that for a one or two-year-old, it's about three to six minutes.

It can vary, but it's a shared activity. It's not like he's just sitting there listening to you, but it's with a book or with blocks, but you guys are in it together. The attention building must be there before kids really learn how to talk and engage verbally. So we build this through a lot of play-based, nonverbal. We're talking a lot, and he or she is just doing it with us, sharing the book, sharing the blocks, sharing the balloons or bubbles or whatever.

Number five, they begin to shift focus while sharing a task, an item. So he looks at the book and looks at you. You comment about something on the next page, he looks at you. Um, your building blocks and it falls over, and he looks at you and smiles and laughs or waits for your response. Like, oh my gosh, is this good or bad? They all fell off the table and made a loud crash. You know, the cars bang and hit each other, and he looks at you.

It's all about shifting his focus and his engagement with a communicative partner, you, the adult, and an item or something outside of this dyad. In the beginning, when there were babies, those first couple of months, it was all about peekaboo. It was all about you and me, and in it, and breastfeeding, and bottle feeding, and hugs and snuggles. And now we're expanding his world, and he's looking at items and actions that are close and far and sharing with you. So that was number five.

It's all building up to verbal communication around the first birthday, give or take. Um, okay, so we'll go on to the next five precursors or pre-linguistic developmental steps, right? Necessities to when your child is developmentally ready to verbally talk. Number six, he begins to really play appropriately with a wide variety of toys. He can open and close, you know, little toy boxes, um, really tries to do puzzles and how they fit together.

Again, they're usually bigger, chunkier puzzle pieces, maybe with a little um pincer grip on it. They build with blocks and see how things can go together or snap together. Um, that's why those Lego blocks, the big ones and the middle size, and then the smaller ones when they're a little bit older. They play with animals and barns and all of that.

Um, again, trying to understand how these parts fit together with appropriate direction, even though they can, you know, crash things and throw things and dump things all day, every day, but they're beginning to understand how to play with a variety of purposes. They're very interested in like knobs and latches and partments that fit together. Um and that is their cognitive ability that's growing, understanding how this world works and how his little environment, how can he interface with it?

Um, pretend play, all of these toys, is really closely linked to speech and language development because it's building his thinking, his questioning, not with language inside his head, but there's like this humming almost, where they're wondering what happens if I open this or close this, or how can these two pieces fit together?

They're they're thinking without language, but they're doing something, interfacing with you and objects, um, and building their understanding of how the world works and making those neuroconnections. Every time he does some blocks or knocks it down or builds it back up or zips or unlocks something in a board, he's building neuroconnections. So oftentimes parents will say, Well, you know, you're just playing with my kid, or you know, preschool, they're just playing all day.

They're just outside playing. Everything he's doing, he's building neuroconnections. Unless he's sitting in front of a screen, he's not building neuroconnections. I just have to say that loud and clear, especially these early, early years, birth to three, three to five. They don't need screens. I know a lot of moms out there are saying, Oh, Aaron, you had me until then. But I'm just here telling you the truth that we have to learn how to navigate this modern world.

He or she, your kids, will have all the electronics they can possibly absorb in the future. Right now, you're building their little brains, wiring those neurons, neurons that fire together, wire together. And with that, they build critical thinking and language and communication and turn taking and building attention and curiosity. All of that is now. They don't need screen time. So I hope I didn't lose too many of you with that bald face fact.

I'm here to tell you the truth, to speak clarity and to give you honest direction. They will get it, but right now they need you. Right now, they need adults, they need talking human beings to engage with them with purpose. Okay, because one through six and one through ten altogether, but these are huge red flags if kids are struggling with any one of these things. I'm listing out, I'm spelling it out for you.

And we will talk in more detail about how do you, if if a child is, say, for example, not, you know, have the attention span or the interest, how do we build those? And we can talk about that because I'm all about prevention. If you see a glitch, let's go there, let's strengthen it. So these red flags really are giving us critical information that we cannot ignore.

I don't abide to wait and see, I don't abide to they all catch up in the end, I don't abide to kids all grow and develop at their own pace. Yes, we have different kids with different temperaments and different styles and different curiosities and strengths and weaknesses, but we have very, very specific developmental expectations. There's a little wiggle room, a couple weeks here, a couple months there, but they're not these huge gaps.

Kids rarely wake up at three on their third birthday and start talking. I'm sorry, that's the truth. I know you'll always have a friend or an aunt or a cousin that will say, ah, I didn't say anything until I was four, and look at me, I'm totally fine. I have two masters and I've written five books. Okay, there's your anomaly. But I'm speaking to the general population.

After 35 years of practice with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of children, I know what the expectations are to ease the developmental process, to help kids feel their best at every developmental step, to lay this foundation for speech and language, for lifelong learning, but also to set them up for academic success and social success.

And it's not necessarily about going to school and getting straight A's, but it's really just building those zero to five, zero to six speech and language skills. So then when they're ready, they can sit at the table, they can follow directions, they can listen to speech and break it down to those individual sounds so they're ready then to really jump over the next big hurdle, which is reading and writing.

And we'll get on talking about that, but later, but this is really laying the foundation to all of that. Without this, that's going to be a challenge, believe me. Okay, so on to number seven, receptive language. And that's really the hallmark of all of this. And yet, at the same time, even though I say this the hallmark or the benchmark, it is the most overlooked red flag. Pediatricians don't understand it. Uh, educators and teachers don't understand it.

Parents often misunderstand it because kids will go along, say they're in the preschool with two-year-olds or three-year-olds, and they see what everybody else is doing and they just follow the lead, right? They're they're clever enough to say, oh, okay, now it's time for snack. I'll just walk over the snack table.

When he really didn't perceive and understand the directions, when the teacher says, Okay, kids, start to clean up, let's move on to snack time, wash your hands, or whatever the directives are. And parents will often say, Oh, he's just really active, he's all boy, he's a little stubborn, he's choosing not to listen. I hear that a lot. Or he's very, very independent. And the truth is, kids at this age want to be with us grown-ups. They want to be engaged. And so they will respond to our language.

Will they ignore us from time to time? Of course. Will they refuse? Of course. I'm not saying that, but I am saying that you have to really test the waters. You have to give them a variety of simple directives with no clue, with no gestures or looking at or pointing, but you just have to say, Hey, Sammy, will you pick up your cup? Hey, Mary Jo, go get your blue socks. I want your blue socks. Can you go get them for me, please?

Or you say a directive where you walk into the room and you say, put your cars on the table and let's go pick up your brother. Now that's a complicated task, but it's really basic, where it's like, put your cars in a specific spot and then go get your brother is something that he or she has heard over and over again. So these verbal directives and comments about the environment when you're giving them no clues or no pointers.

Say you're sitting at the table and we're we're going to clear off the dinner table dishes or whatever, and you say, Oh, can you go pick up all the napkins? Go get the napkins, put them in the trash, and you're being very, very specific. And kids at two and three should be able to follow those directives. Or you're putting toys away, and say you have a cow, a car, and a bear, and you say, Can I have the one that growls? Or which one gives us milk?

So you're giving them something other than just the name, but you're making it a fun game. So those kinds of receptive language are critical to really tease apart and make sure that your toddler, one, two, and three-year-old, is really getting it. And it's there's a huge difference between that one-year-old or that 16-month-old and that three-year-old. But but we often assume they're understanding because they're going along with a crowd, or that he's just strong-willed, or she's just stubborn.

And that's not always necessarily true. Um, and parents will often be very, very surprised when I sit down and I try to give them a standardized test, or even something that's just informal, and I say they're having a hard time processing, understanding my spoken language. That was number seven. Receptive language, remember, is the most overlooked. Number eight is that a young child, those first 12, 14 months, are getting ready to become a verbal talker.

They must have a lot of practice using their own voice. And it's not real talking per se, although many, many kids will like have a conversation with you and you don't really understand, but they are having these pitches and these tones and these hand gestures and these facial expressions, and you are playing along. You're going with it, and you're like, Yeah.

Just the other day, for an example, um, this little guy that I've been working with, he's about um uh 18 months now, and you know, he just is beginning to really find his voice. And we're kind of playing, and in my in my clinic, in my therapy room, I have a one-way mirror so parents can watch.

And this little guy um heard, or we both heard the siren outside the window, and he started talking, and he's pointing to the window and he's talking to me, and he's pointing, and I didn't understand a bloody thing he was saying, but it was so darn cute and it was so conversational.

And he, you know, something about the fire truck, or maybe, and so dad did tell me later, who was watching, he's like, Oh, yes, the last time we left your your office here, the the fire station is behind my office building, right? And in order to get out of my parking structure, you have to go around the fire station. So apparently, last time they got stuck behind the fire truck. And so they actually got out and they got to get up to the fire truck really close.

And so I'm sure this little guy was telling me a big, beautiful story about him and his dad in the fire truck. And and it was beautiful. Um, was it intelligible? Absolutely not, but I knew what he was thinking, and that was the most important thing. So, in their practice, those 12 months of practicing, finding their voice, all those prelinguistic um vocalizations. They whine, they grunt, they squeal, and they have a lot of this self-talk. And they're practicing.

So they're doing a couple of different things. They're they're having this conversational flow with themselves, maybe talking to their animals or their toys or themselves. Um, but they're also working out their oral motor structures. And we'll be talking a lot about this because that's the physical part of talking. Right now we're kind of laying the foundation with the prerequisites to talking, but these are kind of the cognitive, social, nonverbal engagement building blocks.

But as he's he's vocalizing and finding his voice these in these 12 months, he's working out the mouth, the mouth, right? He's finding phonation. Ah, and when they're little babies, two, three months old, they're cooing, right? And a lot of that, that cooing in the back of the mouth, like, is uh vocal play, and they kind of find it by accident.

It feels good in the back of their throat, so they do it again, and then we start to imitate them, and then they are like, okay, I'm doing this turn-taking thing. You say something funny, I say something funny. But all of those physical practicing is coordinating the jaw, the lips, and the tongue. And we'll definitely talk a lot about how all of that, those physical features grow and develop in these first three, five years, right?

But up to this point is really mostly the jaw, moving it up and down. And this is where they're finding their their voice and and they're finding all the vowel sounds. So you're gonna want the in that first to second year that they're they find all of the the vowel sounds. And in English, they're about 20. We have the short vowels and the long vowels, and then we have these things called the diphthongs, where we move from one vowel sound to another. And again, we'll talk about that later.

But right now, not to pop your bubble, but when when babies start to say mama or dada, papa, those really aren't identifiers to us as their parents. Um, that is uh those are sound patterns based on motor skills. And it's true across all continents, all languages, all kids, no matter what. The lips come together and we start to say ma. The lips come together and we say bah bah ba-ba-bah ba or pa.

And then the the tongue tip, or maybe even just a little bit further back, the dead, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. Um, and so those early developing sounds are just vocal play. We take on them as identity and we say, yes, I'm your mama, mama, and you point to me, mama, mama, and then he's gonna imitate you because you're sounding kind of funny and interesting. And it goes back and forth.

That's why when I ask, when a new family comes to my practice and I say, you know, how many words do they speak? It doesn't have to be, you know, perfectly clear, but how many words do they say other than mama or dada or papa, right? Because those are just kind of the initial sound patterns that they that they start to develop.

But you're going to want to help them or or begin to monitor how are they using all of the self-talk and finding their voice in the crib when they're by themselves, you know, in the morning or at nighttime, in the car when it's kind of quiet. And it's really good for young children to, you know, turn off the music and please, please, please, please don't give them screens in the car.

I know it's hard, I know it's hard, but please, it's great for them just to think, just to be, just to self-talk, to learn how to entertain themselves, to be bored. And we'll talk about this in the future too. It's really, really good for kids just to chill and to be bored and go, hmm, let's watch all the trees go by, hmm, let's watch all the cars go by, or maybe converse with you.

You sing some songs, you play some vocal games, a lot of different things to go to do, to choose to do in the car other than a screen. Okay, um, that was number eight. Number nine will be gestures. And as we are moving through these months in this first year, of course, gestures are really a huge piece to early, early pre-talking skills, right? But they now they need to use these gestures on their own. And um, I can't remember the name off the top of my head, but I'll get it to you.

Um, it's called First Words Projects, and it's titled 16 Gestures by 16 months. And you can Google it, but I will definitely have a link down in my show notes. Um, that gestures always come before real words: waving goodbye, pointing to things, blowing kiss, high five. Um, you know, sometimes kids will shake their head. I know it's very popular these days, and it's gotten more and more popular to teach sign language or baby signs. And again, we can have another whole discussion on that.

Um, and over the years, I've kind of relaxed some of my opinions on that. But the truth is, signs are important, and the evidence is pretty consistent that you know, baby signs that doesn't necessarily teach them to talk faster or earlier, sooner, or better. It what it does is it can reduce some frustration with kids, um, but always stressing vocalization, right? But gestures in general, if you want to use gestures like more or mine or sorry, that's fine.

But always, always be stressing verbal communication with it jointly, right? So gestures and or baby signs should facilitate verbal communication, it should never be um in place of. But I think that's hopefully understood. But we can certainly talk about those kinds of I can't really call them fads, but there's certainly, I think what happens are early educators or the colleges will take a thread of truth to some research and then kind of generalize it. Um, and we just have to be careful.

We have to always understand that our what's our goal, right? And I talked about that uh, you know, a couple of um uh podcasts ago about what's our goal. Our goal is for the seven-year-old, even though on this podcast it's talking toddlers, but you know, what does a talking toddler mean to us, right? It means that those first 12 months have been really well defined, lays the solid foundation.

A talking toddler also means that they're on their way to conversational speech and that they're on their way to better understanding social communication. It also means that as we continue to build this verbal communication, talking and listening, that then you're laying that foundation to breaking a code, a man-made code that I will be talking a lot about, and that's reading and writing or literacy.

So I've spent 35 years really studying and implementing methods that will help with that speech, language, and literacy connection. Because reading and writing is man-made, it is not natural, unlike everything that I've been talking about for these last two weeks. Um, so all of these precursors, this is what makes us human. But babies need to be stimulated, babies need to be enticed, babies needs to be engaged, so then they learn how to be a good communicator. So, number nine is gestures, right?

Um, and then number 10 of this list of 10 is imitation of actions, and that kids need to start to really do this routinely. So they will begin to imitate gestures, and then they begin environmental sounds or noise making or bubble, you know, noise that you make out of your mouth and vocal play, and then they'll begin to imitate words. Um, and it becomes really exponential after the first birthday.

So you're really wiring the brain and you're helping build that listening foundation and receptive language and helping them engage and connect and build initial turn taking. And the first words usually kick on around 12 months. Again, give or take, we're gonna give them a little wiggle room, but not a lot. Because by their second birthday, 24 months, they have 50 to 200 words, and 50 is the baseline, that's the average.

And I know things have been changing in this interesting world we're living in, and I will definitely have many podcasts on why and how, and is it right? And do we do we really agree with changing some. Of those developmental milestones that the CDC recently changed and never asked one single speech pathologist, let alone our organization.

So it's important that we stay true that for the last hundred years, as we are tracking what milestones are and expectations, at least the last, you know, 60 years, that a two-year-old should have 50 words minimum or average, and not average, but minimum. That's the baseline, uh, up to 200 words or plus. And they should start to be putting these words together. And it's not, you know, like all gone. That's not a two-word utterance, but it's truck broke, daddy home, doggy hurt, you know.

So they're these two concepts: there's a noun and an action, or some kind of descriptive term, right? And I know that schools and pediatricians have slowly but surely gotten on board really looking at that 24-month marker. And so that's why it's really important that we hold that line and we don't lower our expectations just because we've gone through hell and back over the last two years. And in the future, I will dive deep into these conversations.

But for right now, this has been true for my last 35 years as a developmental specialist. And so this is my best recommendation to all of you. Hold the line, be true, and understand that there is a little wiggle room. But as we looking at these kind of lists of words, as I say to many parents, it's easy to run a list of words that they say, whether it's 30 words or 150 words.

But I also want you to look at these underlying prerequisites that I've just talked about, these last 10, about connection, about listening, about being purposefully present with other people. And because as we move from the first words at 12 months, 50 to 200 words at 24 months, then it's a thousand plus, a thousand words to 3,000 words at 36 months. And we'll talk about how the heck do kids do that in 12 to 24 months, really. And there's a thing called fast mapping.

There's um it just is remarkable how the brain is just ripe for this acquisition of their native language. And we'll also talk about you know what happens when there's two languages or three languages. Is that a problem? My quick answer is no, but we always have to look at all of the pieces. This whole child, remember, I'm talking about the whole child.

I am a speech language specialist, but I have, you know, played with kids on the floor looking at their whole essence because we can't tease it all apart. And that's why, you know, in a perfect world, it would be that the educators and the parents and the OTs and PTs and speech people and everybody else would all be working together, but we don't. We we have compartmentalized all of that, and that's not always necessarily in the child's best interest either.

But for my podcast here, I'm talking about the the speech and language development and how that interfaces with everything else that this beautiful toddler and preschooler and kindergarten ready kid is all about.

Um, and how the brain wires itself for learning and how it wires itself as they really, really engage with the environment, and not just with talking and listening, but moving and and climbing and being and building and you know, making mistakes and learning from that, and then you know, really kind of reworking it.

And we'll talk a lot about how the brain wires itself and what are the environmental lifestyle implications that will enhance or inhibit, and how do we gauge uh the pace at which they're growing and learning and developing and and hopefully prevent real issues because after 35 years of working with kids who are truly struggling, and most of the time, you know, kids have come to me mostly, well, the first half of my practice, it was, you know, somewhere between their second birthday and their

third birthday. Um, lately, the last you know, five years, it's been closer to 14, 16, 18 month-olds. Um, so the good news is we're trying to catch them earlier, but we're not catching enough kids earlier. My thing is all about empowering the parents, give them clear answers, give them things to do now, today. Turn off the screens, be present, get on the floor, talk to them, listen to them, watch them, become a detective. Where is my child?

Whether he's 16 months or 20 months or 30 months, where are they developmentally? What happens if I kind of clear the room and there's just, you know, a couple of interesting toys for him to play? And if I really want to dive in and share it with him, how does he respond? Is he is he in it with me? And we and they would do that through their life experience with us.

And as the parent, the primary caretaker, the most important influencer in this child's life, then hopefully until middle school or high school. Um but during these critical, critical years, we need to understand how we can best support and shape that beautiful mind, that beautiful ability to interact, to socially communicate, to express himself, to learn, to love, and be curious about his environment.

So talking toddlers just went through the second half of the list of the prerequisites to when your child is developmentally ready to talk, right? All of these things has to be, have to be solid. Um, if they're not, then we go there. If you have questions, get answers, reach out. You can find me on my um Facebook page, higher learning.

You can find me on Instagram, and you can find me on my um my website, higher learning, H-Y-E-R, and um reach out, ask questions, do not wait, do not settle, be assertive. Your child needs you, and you got it. But you don't you don't let the new normals, whatever the heck that is, dampen your your gut instinct, your your mama's intuition or your parental right to say, you know what, something doesn't fit well right now.

And and um there's a lot of information online that can help you, but I know it's overwhelming. So I'm trying to be really, really clear with what you can do now today. It would be great if you could share this with friends, family, college students, grandparents, your teacher, your preschooler, your neighbor. Just share it and spread the word.

Let everybody know that you are going to be a proactive, engaged parent, and that there's a lot of misinformation out there, a lot of misunderstanding, and a lot of noise. And that talking toddler Aaron Heyer has been doing it forever, and that we need to work together and prevent issues so kids can grow up happy and solid and free and just thriving. We don't want to limit their choices, we don't want to make them struggle, and so together we can avoid that.

Share this, and I'll see you next week. All right, take care, bye.