Does your child label objects and point to get what they want? Maybe your child produces a variety of single words, but is not yet combining words? Expansion is a simple language enhancement technique to help your child’s communication skills take off.
Reinforcement and Exposure
Expansion involves repeating what a child has said and adding to it. For example, if your child points and says, “ball,” you can add a descriptor and say, “Red ball” or “It’s a big ball!”
Not only does this reinforce the child’s communication attempt, but it also models the next level of complexity and provides exposure to new words. Children learn by listening, so model expanded phrases by repeating what the child said and adding more detail.
Here are some words you can use to expand your child’s speech:
- – Color: red, blue, yellow, rainbow, bright, striped, spotted, dark, light
- – Size: big, huge, enormous, small, tiny, wide, skinny, fat
- – Number: one, two, some, all, a lot, a few, several
- – Texture: soft, fluffy, bumpy, hard, rough, sharp, smooth, silky
- – Emotion: Excited, happy, sad, angry, crazy, scary, silly
- – Actions: bouncing, jumping, running, laughing, drinking, sleeping, crying
- – Basic Concepts: full, empty, high, low, open, closed, heavy, light, hot, cold
- – Pronouns: my, your, her, his, theirs, ours
Looking for more ideas?
Expansion is just one of the many language facilitation strategies you can incorporate into everyday speech to help support your child’s language development. Looking for more ideas? Check out our other language blog posts or call our office at 773-687-9241 to set up an appointment with a pediatric speech-language pathologist today!
