Wiltshire CouncilCommunication
Pregnancy:
- Start communicating with your baby in pregnancy through talking and touch
From birth:
- Babies communicate from day one
- Take time to watch your child, wait and listen
- Find time every day to talk with your baby/child. For example, whilst shopping and in the car
- Playing with your child is important for speech and language development; sing and listen to nursery rhymes and songs together. This also helps to develop your child's language
- Enjoy sharing stories and reading together
- Rather than asking too many questions, comment on your child's play or actions and add a new word or idea. For example, "Mmh a banana. A yellow banana", rather than "what's that you're eating?"
- Give time for your child to respond in their own way - with a look, a gesture, or with sounds and words
- Use the Five to Thrive principles: Respond, Cuddle, Relax, Play, Talk. This will build attachment and support language development as you are connecting with your child.
If English is not your first language:
- Use the language you are most fluent in to talk to your baby - this is important to help your babies brain development to support speech, language and communication
- Children learn English faster if they are building on firm foundations in their first language
- On average, children with a well-developed first language reach fluency in English 2 to 3 years sooner than children without
- Wiltshire Children's Centres - Children's Centres Parenting Programme
- Wiltshire Children's Community Services, Speech and Language Therapy Department
- Wiltshire Parent Carer Council
- Local pre-schools, nurseries and childminders
- Top tips for starting school
- Talking point - website with information on children's communication including ages and stages
- Development Matters - non-statutory guidance which supports all those working in early childhood education settings to implement the requirements of the Statutory Framework for EYFS
- Wiltshire Children's Community Services website has toolkits for different areas of communication and the Preschool Communication Tracker
- CPD Online Short Course: An introduction to speech, language and communication
- Bilingual top tips - Literacy Trust website
Wiltshire EAL Helping Hand for Early Years Practitioners [101.54KB] - A useful resource to support understanding around using a child's first language to support their development.
- 'More than 10% of children and young people have long term speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) which create barriers to communication and learning in everyday life.' Bercow 10 Years on
- Less than half of all children who had not reached the expected levels of language at the age of 5 years went on to achieve the national benchmark scores in reading, writing and maths at 11 years' Centre Forum 2016. Education in England Annual Report
- 'Children with poor vocabulary skills are twice as likely to be unemployed when they reach adulthood' Bercow 10 Years On
