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Home › Articles › Speech and Language Issues › The Reluctant Talker

The Reluctant Talker

Getting Your Toddler to Open Up

By Mindy Hudon, M.S., CCC-SLP

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Your active, on-the-move toddler comes running up to you waving an empty cup. You graciously take the cup from your child and say, "Oh, you want more juice. You've been playing very hard. You must be thirsty. Here you go honey, here's your juice." Your toddler takes the juice and happily runs back to his toys without ever uttering a word. Has this ever happened to you? If you answered yes, well you're not alone.

As parents, we're the best translators of our children's wordless communication attempts. We know what our children want without them even saying a word, and because we're good, caring parents, we immediately respond to their requests. But are we doing them more harm than good?

Speech Models
It is important for parents to be good speech and language models for their children; however, it's equally as critical that parents and caregivers encourage children to "use their words." Children need to express themselves through their words rather than by actions alone.

"All children have to have the need and desire to communicate at any age," says Dorothy P. Dougherty, M.A., CCC-SLP, author of How to Talk to Your Baby: A Guide to Maximizing Your Child's Language and Learning Skills (Perigee, 2001). Although listening to language is critical for a child's language development, actually using speech to express their thoughts and desires is equally as important. Talking allows children to practice using various semantic (meaning of words) and syntactic (sentence structure) features to develop more advanced language structures. Responding to grunts, gestures and head nods is not necessarily helping a child expand their expressive language.

In her book, Dougherty says, "Most children learn to talk rather effortlessly. Therefore, it may be puzzling to parents, and even to professionals, why some children do not begin to talk within a reasonable amount of time."

There are various reasons why some children are not as talkative as others of the same age. Dougherty discusses that developmental delay, frequent ear infections, family history of speech and language problems, birth order, gender, personality and language stimulation are all risk factors that can have an impact on language acquisition. Some of these risk factors can be genetically or medically based and are hard to control; however, environmental factors can be reduced. For instance, improving how parents communicate with their children can greatly affect how a child talks.

Boys Talk Later Than Girls


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