Supporting Language Development at Home
This topical guide will introduce you to important books, videos, and information resources available from the EI Clearinghouse and other sources. Contact us via online form or by phone (1-877-275-3227) to request a resource listed below (or ask your local public librarian). Note that some videos may be viewed online, and journal titles will take you to the publisher’s homepage.
Table of Contents
EIC Resources
Books
This book shows parents how to boost their child’s language development and literacy.
This book has many activities to promote language development at home as well as many other skills necessary for toddlers. This book contains over 280 activities designed to stimulate a toddler’s mind and body using easy to find and inexpensive items.
This book is infused with current research on communicating with young children and their families. The text considers change and current culture in the United States as it affects language and little ones in the context of 2017, while respecting universal pieces that continue to be helpful.
This book focuses on the most commonly used words for creating sentences and incorporates literacy, games, writing, art, and cooking activities that work within the home, school, and clinical settings.
This book gives parents the information they need to allow them to stimulate their child’s speech and language. These skills can be used at home.
This guide shows parents how to help their child communicate through talking during daily activities.
This book provides caregivers and parents with over 55 activities that are designed to enrich children’s speech and language abilities.
With expert guidance and specific instructions and numerous examples, you will learn how to appropriately stimulate and catapult your toddler’s communication.
This book provides activities to promote language development and information on how to get your child to talk.
This book analyzes the six stages of language learning in children and discusses how to encourage babbling, develop verbal communication, and recognize when there is cause for concern that skills may not be developing properly.
This easy-to-read book shows parents how to talk to and play with children in ways that support their emerging language skills.
This book teaches you how to stimulate speech using everyday play. It makes learning to talk fun and engaging for your child using easy-to-follow activities.
This book describes how reading aloud supports language and social-emotional development and gives parents and caretakers what they need to make read alouds a regular and enjoyable part of the family routine.
Videos and Media
The videos discuss how to help infants and toddlers develop early literacy skills. The user’s guide explains how to use the videos in professional development and family workshops.
Did you know serve and return is a simple technique you may already be doing? It’s an important skill that impacts brain development. When baby does something, respond to them! This increases the likelihood that baby will do it again! Back and forth communication is important. Just be sure to give baby time to respond back to you!
This companion to the It Takes Two to Talk book provides video examples of activities parents and professionals can use to develop the language and communication skills of young children. Includes video examples of children at each stage of early language development, from those who communicate non-verbally to those who have begun to use short sentences. Presents the accounts of two mothers of children with language delays and their participation in The Hanen Program for Parents.
This video is part of the Kitchen Conversation webinar series and provides information about virtual therapy and ideas on how to support young children by incorporating speech/language goals into everyday activities.
This observation of preschoolers shows them engaged in activities that exemplify the extraordinary advancements in language and literacy that children make at this age.
Organizations
ASHA is a professional association for speech-language pathologists and audiologists. This site contains numerous resources, including topic-specific guides, continuing education opportunities, ASHA publications, articles, an online store, and the latest research. ASHA Special Interest Groups were created to promote specific professional interests among members, develop communication and networking in diverse professional settings, identify and convey concerns and needs to the Association’s governance, and assist in policy formation.
ASHA’s Identify the Signs campaign educates about typical communication development as well as the early warning signs of speech, language, and hearing disorders.
Articles
The purpose of this article is to describe family coaching strategies and their implementation features to teach parents to incorporate specific NT strategies into their family routines and activities
Early, consistent reading demonstrates improved language scores as early as 9 months of age. This article discusses the results of a small, single institution study that looked at how setting minimal daily reading expectations impacted daily reading compliance early in life.
Web Resources
This page offers age-appropriate ways that parents can engage their young children to help develop speech and language abilities.
This free toolkit details communication skills that parents should expect to see in their child by age and tips for how to support children’s development through daily reading. PDFs also in Spanish.
This page describes communication skills and milestones and provides examples of activities for caregivers to support a child’s communication development.
This is a tip sheet about reading to your toddler to promote language.
This tip sheet has information on building language through talking with your toddler. Available in multiple languages.
It’s happening again! You’re running errands with your children and suddenly you’re stuck—in traffic, at the clinic, in the checkout line. Many parents find that playful learning activities can help reduce children’s impatience when they have to wait.
It may seem like a simple question, but communication is more than talking! It is any form of message sent from one party to another, through sounds, words, or physical hints, like body language.
This guide will take you through disorders for which speech, language, or communication issues are a component and offer resources that you can use to educate yourself on how speech therapy can help your child.