Humor and Listening and Spoken Language Learning

Put your toddler in a bathtub with no water or give them a juice box without a straw. Read a book upside down to your preschooler or serve ice cream sundaes for dinner. April Fools! 

Silly faces, peekaboo, and unexpected tickles connect toddlers and parents.  Funny business, like silly words to a song or wearing underwear as a hat tickles a child’s sense of humor. Plan fun April Fool’s pranks to create a reason for your child to think, listen and talk.

Kid’s get a kick out of talking about silly situations. Slapstick humor leads to understanding riddles, knock-knock jokes, puns and even sarcasm for older kids. Humor is evidence of brain development and growing listening, spoken language and social skills.

Overused Questions

“What color is that?”

Your child is likely thinking, “It’s red. 

You know that!  

So why are you asking?”  

Why as parents do we ask the same boring, overused questions?

Try saying things like,

“I like the colors you used”. 

“It looks like you loved drawing this picture.”

“Draw something that makes you happy.”.

It is easy and important to turn your questions into comments to foster two-way conversations. 

St. Patty's Day and Early Descriptive Language Learnng

St. Patrick’s Day is all about leprechauns, pots of gold and colorful rainbows. 

But did you know that there is little need to talk about COLORS with your child who is deaf or hard of hearing?  

Once your child uses COLORS to describe they become the easy go-to adjective.

A red apple, the yellow sun, a green frog… 

Children easily learn the colors and then commonly over-use color words in their spoken language learning.

Rather model, expand and talk with your child by describing how the frog hops, has big eyes and can swim in the water.

Isn't this more language-rich than describing the frog is green?