How to Help Your Children Build Superior Language Skills

Language skills are important not only for academic success, but also to your child's future.  For example, strong communications can help them to manage their emotions, develop healthy relationships, and succeed professionally.

As a parent, you can accelerate and enhance Your children’s verbal development by the way you interact with them. Many studies show that talking and reading with your children extensively from an early age helps them to increase their vocabulary and other verbal abilities.  Although reading the same story to them over and over might drive you crazy, your children are leaning an d remembering new words and their minds are developing readiness for reading.

To give your sons and daughters a head start, follow these practical tips full of simple and fun activities that will help your child to speak and write more effectively.  Use these 14 tips  asa guide or to give you new ideas.

Tips for Talking with Your Child

1. Sing and dance.

Children enjoy sounds and movement. Music also makes lessons more memorable and demonstrates the rhythm of language. Focus on repetitive lyrics and funny tunes.  Movement, music and repetition helps them learn.

2. Share stories.

Make up stories for your children and invite them to create their own tales. Personalize your works by using the names of family members and other familiar information.  Create books with them based on those stories. This will help develop their reading and writing skills.

3. Ask questions.

Children learn by asking questions, and answering them can help too. Use open-ended inquiries that will stimulate conversation.  

4. Play word games.

Make learning fun with puzzles, puns, and riddles. Show how words that sound the same can have different meanings. Laugh about silly noises like ducks quacking and balloons popping.  

5. Discuss routine activities.

Turn household chores and errands into teachable moments. Describe what you're doing as you bake a cake or go shopping for school supplies.  Allowing them to take part in baking teaches them math and science.  Shopping provides an opportunity to comparison shop, learn math, and introduce them to commerce.

6. Follow their lead.

Give your child your full attention when they're talking to you. Build on what they're saying. Ask them how they feel about various situations.  Doing this teaches them to get in touch with their feelings.  It also gives you an opportunity to show them how to process those feelings and understand them.

Tips for Reading with Your Child

1.Create a home library.

Fill your home with attractive and enriching books and other reading material. Design an inviting reading nook like a table covered with blankets to look like a fort or a stack of soft pillows on the floor.

2. Encourage their interests.

Pick books about your child's favorite subjects. Maybe they're wild about horses or robots.

3. Expand their vocabulary.

Teach your child new words. Sound them out together and use them in a sentence.

4. Take turns.

As your child grows older, they can start reading to you sometimes. Even when they're small, they can point out pictures and describe them. 

Other Tips

1. Give gentle feedback.

Children are bound to make some interesting guesses as they're learning about pronunciation and grammar. To guide them without discouraging them, try repeating back the corrected version of what they said while praising them for their efforts.

2. Plan field trips.

Bring language to life by visiting places where your children can see what they're learning about. Attend special exhibitions at art and science museums and check the calendars for hands-on family activities. Visit amusement parks, state fairs, and toy stores.

3. Limit electronics.

Many experts recommend no screen time for children under 2, and limited hours at any age. While some educational programming can be beneficial, interacting face-to-face- with your child builds language skills more effectively than passively watching TV.

4. See your pediatrician.

Language skills can be affected by other events in your child's life. For example, they may regress to baby talk during challenging transitions like starting kindergarten or adjusting to a divorce. Talk with your pediatrician if you have any concerns.

Help your child to succeed in school and beyond by teaching them how to express themselves and understand others. Spending time talking and reading with your child draws you closer together while you encourage their growth and development.

Learn more about helping your children build language skills here.

In Recognition of Global Day of Parents

The Backstory

The Global Day of Parents has its origins in 1930 Korea, where some Christian communities in Korea began celebrating Mother’s Day. Subsequently in 1956,  The State Council of South Korea declared May 8 as Mother’s Day which eventually became as Parents Day and is a national holiday.  Fast forward to 1994 USA, when President Bill Clinton signed a Congressional Resolution into law for supporting, uplifting and recognizing the role of parents for nurturing children. As a result, the fourth Sunday of July of every year was declared as a parents day holiday.  Then in 2012, the United Nations designated June 1st as Global Day of Parents, a.k.a. World Day of Parents, to honor parents throughout the world.  The purpose is to the sacrifices and affections of parents, grand parents and even great grandparents have towards their children.  The day aims to reinforce of the importance of parenthood as parents are children’s first teachers and initial source of human interaction.  The day is observed with program that promote the stability of nuclear families. 

A Tribute to My Parents

(Portions of this tribute are taken from my speech Through the Eyes of a Child)

The Nurturer and The Provider

Although things fell apart during my senior year of high school, their example showed me the benefits of coming from a traditional family household, especially during a child’s formative years.  Seeing them separated taught me that: 1. it is important to acknowledge and work though the challenge of whatever particular family dysfunction we are given; 2. who you choose as a spouse is something not to be taken lightly; 3. children need both parents in their lives.

The Nurturer

I was born at the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement in the year of Emmitt Till’s death and three weeks after Rosa Parks’ arrest.  By the time Martin Luther King, Jr. rose to prominence, my parents had established themselves in El Barrio where my earliest memories began.  In those days, El Barrio was much more diverse than I believe it is today.   My mother, who was a housewife, would help me to conduct experiments with my little chemistry set, taught me botany using kidney beans to illustrate the growth process of plants, how to sew - to keep me out of her way while she was sewing, took me on trips to the local library, and to the Museum of the City of New York where I was always fascinated with the giant dollhouse display. 

I remember how patient she was when she taught me how to write the alphabet.  The perfectionist in me would get so frustrated and ready to throw a tantrum when I made a mistake.  She showed me how to learn from those mistakes and rhythmically recited the movements that I should make as I moved my pencil across the paper, “Down and around and across” as she showed me how to make the first letter of my name.  Her tone said, “see how easy this is?” And I was encouraged.  Suddenly, it was easy!  She stood tall back then.  Looking up to her with adoration, I saw her as second only to God.  Back then, at 5 feet, if that, she towered over me.  Now it's the other way around, except that I still see her as second only to God. 

The Provider

I’ll always remember how my father’s body trembled with emotion when he said those words. The emphasis that  he placed on “black”communicated two things:  1. something was amiss;  2. I had better adapt,  but to what I had no clue.  All I knew was there was a concept of categorizing people by color which led me to a new dilemma:  If I’m black and Andy is white, what does that make Judy?  Even though it is always there, nothing raises people’s consciousness of their connectedness to one another than disaster and tragedy such as Katrina, 9.11, and The Insurrection.  I believe that children, because of their inability to articulate like adults, have a heightened sense of connectedness. With my ability to reason in only concrete terms, I sought an appropriate color designation for Judy.  So at five years old, I concluded, based on my father’s logic, that Puerto Ricans were the grey people.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, my father, who held an MBA in finance, could not get a job on Wall Street.  When he showed up for interviews, security would show him the service entrance.  When he landed a job at a major department store, he endured the humiliation of people coning to see the black man - if he was even referred to as such - who had an MBA and worked as a clerk.   He left that job, worked in government, and eventually used his degree by serving the El Barrio community as a civic leader.

With the Civil Rights Movement as backdrop, my father protected us from the indignities that black Americans suffered by maintaining:

• the strength to refrain from making disparaging remarks about people of other races;

• the expectation that we excel in school and by providing positive black role models to show us the possibilities for our futures in the form of our music teacher, our pediatrician and family physicians, and by chairing strategy meetings in our home with other community leaders;

• by providing a stable home life that gave me a sense of security in the knowledge that my mother, who hosted those strategy meetings and assisted my father with speech writing, was home while I was at school and when I returned.

Top 10 Life Lessons to Teach Your Child

The best time to learn life lessons is in childhood, before poor habits are developed. Now is the perfect time to teach your children essential truths that lead to a happy and successful life. 

Consider the things you wish your parents had taught you when you were younger. How would your life differ from today? What can you teach your child that will help them for the rest of their lives?

Teach your child how to happy and successful:

1. Be a good winner and a good loser.

Everyone wins and loses. It's important to do both well. Those that win and lose poorly struggle later in life. The winning and losing never stop. It makes life easier when you learn how to do both gracefully at an early age.

2. Learn to finish things.

Teach your child to follow through to completion. It doesn't matter if the task is cleaning their room, raking leaves, or playing a game. Adults with the habit of leaving things undone lead chaotic lives. Finish and then move on to the next task.

3. Tell the truth.

Lying is another bad habit. It might feel like a viable solution in the short-term, but it fails in the long-term. Lying is a crutch that creates greater challenges and unnecessary drama. Telling the truth is easier on many levels.

4. It's okay to fail.

Failure is one of the most efficient ways to learn. You make an attempt, come up short, and readjust your approach. Children that are afraid of failing are stifled as adults. Life is too short to hide from every opportunity that might result in a failure. 

5. Persistence wins.

The person who never quits always seems to win in the long-term.

6. Have goals.

A child's goal might be to get an A on a test or be nice to his sister for the rest of the evening. Having an intention leads to success. Without goals, we're at risk of wandering aimlessly through life. Ask your child what they want to accomplish today and help them understand how they can achieve it.

7. Say please and thank you.

Everyone is worthy of a certain amount of respect. Saying please and thank you regularly is one way of demonstrating that respect.

8. Success requires work.

Success at school, sports, work, family life, and relationships require work. Nothing is automatic. A little effort each day is necessary for success in any part of life.

9. Eat well and exercise regularly.

Imagine how much better you'd feel if you had spent the last 20 years eating well and exercising consistently. Habits developed in childhood can last a lifetime. Give your child a fighting chance to avoid obesity and the associated health issues.

10. Save your money.

If everyone consistently saved 15% of their paycheck, 95% of the financial challenges people face could be avoided or easily eliminated. How much could you have saved since you started working? Force your child to save a portion of any money they receive and explain why it's important.

Even if your child is still young, there is much you can teach them. Children trust their parents. There's never going to be a better time to impart these lessons to your child. Consider what everyone needs to know in order to be successful and live an enjoyable life. Begin teaching your child today.

Learn more about the top 10 skills children need for success.