What You Say Matters!

When it comes to language development, three-year-old kids can be bipolar indeed: some of them talk all the time, while others barely say a word.

The environment around which children find themselves affects how often or how rare they talk. When my eldest daughter first started preschool, her teachers thought she could not yet talk, because she had never said a word all morning! And this went on for weeks! I had absolutely no idea this was happening because as soon as I picked her up, she would talk all the way home describing what she did in school that morning. It took my daughter a whole month to feel comfortable enough in her preschool setting before she would freely talk. 

You may have observed that three-year-olds can talk in both short phrases and complete sentences. When your kids use short phrases, you can expand their thoughts into a complete sentence. When you hear them say, “Cat meow,” you can complete it for them by saying, “Yes, the cat is meowing.” 

Use the same words your child used (in that case, they’re “cat” and “meow”) to emphasize the difference. The more you do this, the more they learn and assimilate the same structure in their own sentences.

You may also notice that your child has started to use pronouns. He will switch from “Michael hungry,” to “I am hungry.” You can help your child use pronouns more often by substituting names for their correct pronoun counterpart. Start with names they identify with easily, such as Mommy, Daddy, Sister, or Brother. This way, they would find it easier to understand what “she” and “he” stand for and how they are different from one another. The more you engage in these exercises, the more new words your child learns, and the better he or she understands.