Tips to make your kids smarter and confident talkers

Want to Make your kids smarter and more confident? Here’s how

At Kidmunicate Pediatric Speech Therapy, our goal is to help children become more skilled and confident communicators which we believe makes them smarter. We recently found a great infographic (below) called 101 ways to make your kids smarter. What we especially like about this list is that many of the tips help improve communication skills.

Increasing a child’s skill and confidence at communicating has countless benefits. A child who can communicate verbally will find it easier with the written word, and will therefore perform better in school. A strong communicator will make and keep friends easier, share feelings more openly, persuade others more successfully and empathize more deeply. They will be able to ask for directions or assistance more clearly and be able to help others too. Down the road, they will perform better in interviews and presentations and negotiate or persuade more successfully.

Improved communication skills helps all kids, especially those with special needs. A few years back, a nonverbal child with autism came to us. After consistent therapy, this beautiful child started sharing this thoughts and feelings with the world. One day very clearly and confidently, he told us that his goal was to work at Kidmunicate and he talked us into giving him a job. How could we refuse? We gave him a job for a day. He worked hard and delighted us and our other clients.

Many from the following tips from the list of 100 ways to make your kids smarter have relevance to speech and language development, but here are 20 or so of our favorite to improve communication skills.

#3 Expose them to music

#4 Read to them and when they are old enough read with them – here is a list of 100+ Children’s Books for Speech and Language Development arranged by sounds.

#6 Start Early – Birth to age 3 is the most critical time for brain development.

#7 Support them unconditionally.

#8 Choose toys and games that build speech and language development. Here is a list of 100+ Toys for Speech and Language Development arranged by age.

#10 Have one-on-one interaction with your children. Talk, listen, let them talk. Bring language development into every occasion by using expressive language. Here are some great examples; Language Learning Experience with Lemonade and engage in active conversations about birds and bees (actual birds and bees). Encourage conversations at the dinner table (#28). Share your childhood memories (#22). Encourage them to share their feelings (#53). Teach them things on the go (#71)

#11 Let them play. It’s good on so many levels.

#15 Limit their screen hours. Don’t let technology be the babysitter (#46). Read Babies who use handheld electronics risk speech delay and Is technology addition holding your child back?

#18 Don’t overload their schedules. Let them have quiet time and make sure they get enough sleep (#16)

#23 Provide them with a peaceful learning environment

#24 Praise results. Praise their efforts, not necessarily their smartness (#60), but let them know that failure is not a bad thing. It’s a learning experience.

#25 Encourage social activities. Children learn from parents and teachers, and they also learn from playing with their peers. They learn how to express themselves, negotiate, debate, read expressions, respect personal space, take turns. etc. This is especially important for children with autism, which is why we have dedicated a section on our website for Social Stories for New Experiences. Social stories help prepare children with autism and / or anxiety to cope with new experiences. It helps them get out of the house and experience the world and interact with others. Combined with other options for children suffering from aniety are these gummies.

#86 Teach them to be independent in life to whatever extent is possible.

#87 Don’t answer all of their questions right away. Guide them, but let them figure things out.

#88 Help them realize their strengths and opportunities.

#100 Hone their decision making skills. Again, guide them with decision making information, but let them make some decisions even if you know the decision is not the best one. That is a learning opportunity.

The Kidmunication Point

First of all, and this is important to understand, all kids are different. They have different skill sets and challenges. They learn at different rates and at different stages. We are not sharing this list hoping to make every kid a genius, we are sharing it to help parents help their children reach their full potential. The list above and many more ideas from the list below can help make kids smarter and better communicators, any and all kids, despite their disabilities and challenges. Adapt the list to the needs and abilities of your child.