Encouraging Vocalizations Here are some highly reinforcing and encouraging items/activities that may increase your child’s vocalizations. Sometimes a child is only using a few words or seldom repeats the words they hear. Materials like a paper towel roll, dollar store microphone, and simple audio devices like a tape recorder can be helpful and fun to increase those skills. These items can encourage your child to speak if they like them. They can also help them pay attention to what they are saying. This can also help them understand that sounds and words have meaning. Here are some things to try to help your child vocalize:
- Use any voice recording device (tape recorder, video camera, karaoke machine, etc.) and show your child how to talk into the machine. Using some of their favorite toys or stuffed animals, ask them what sound they make. Let them listen to their voice from the machine. Then encourage them to tell you what they like about the item. Repeat what they say and tell them something you like about the item. Then play the voice back to watch and/or listen. Stop when they get tired of the game.
- Make up silly songs with sounds. Sing them with your child(ren) through the cardboard tubes from rolls of paper towels or a microphone. You start by making a funny sound in the tube (dum-da-dee). Give your child the tube/mic and ask them to make a sound in the tube/mic. Be sure to give them plenty of time to make a sound, then you repeat it.
- From your library, get a recorded book of rhymes. Listen to it with your child, and say the rhyme while the recording plays. Using one of the rhymes they like best, encourage them to say it with you as the tape plays again. You can also try to encourage them to say the rhyme with the tape while doing a little dance with you. The more fun it is the more they are likely to try and copy what you are saying. The tape helps keep your speaking rate slow and the repetition of the same voice and inflection aids the child’s auditory bombardment of the sounds.
