Top Tips for Toddler Language: Speech Therapy at Home for 3 Year Olds

Parents may notice their 3-year olds child’s vocabulary is not quite caught up to their peers’ vocabulary. Toddlers with delayed language are sometimes called “late talkers.” A licensed speech-language pathologist (SLP) like myself can provide an evaluation and a personalized therapy plan detailing how to begin increasing your child’s expressive vocabulary. In the meantime, I’m happy to list my favorite strategies I use with my clients. 

Looking for advice to teach younger children? Check out more tips in my blog, “Top Tips for Toddler Language: Speech Therapy at Home for 2 Year Olds”

1. Choices 

Offering choices gives a child some creative control. It also motivates them to point, use a sign, or try a new word to indicate their preference. The questions below are helpful because they come with two specific answer choices, unlike open-ended questions. I find it helpful to hold the items in two separate hands to really show the space between the items while giving a visual cue.

Here are some common choices I offer:

• Do you want a ball or a car?

• Goldfish or apples?

• Juice or milk?

• Should we swing or slide?

• Blue shoes or red shoes?

2. Repetitive books

These types of books work well because they have a similar routine on each page, with a slight variation or new word introduced. They also tend to have a rhythm which almost becomes a familiar song to the child.

Here are some of my favorite repetitive children’s books:

• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? 

• Peekaboo Books 

• I Thought I Saw a Dinosaur!

• Pete the Cat books, especially Pete the Cat and his Four Groovy Buttons

• Goodnight Gorilla

3. Reduce open-ended questions 

Asking less questions allows us to model more statements. These short comments provide the child with a realistic model of what they could say, and reduce the pressure to answer questions. 

Obviously, it’s not possible to eliminate questions altogether as they are a necessary part of life. I like to focus on my ratio of questions to comments while playing with toddlers. We can increase our comments by converting common questions into statements. For example, if the child picks up a ball, rather than saying “What’s that?”, or “Is that a ball?”, I will comment “Ball”, or “Green ball!”

4. Comments and sound effects

Did you know sound effects count as vocabulary words? As long as the child uses them consistently and in the correct context, sound effects factor into their total number of spoken words. While playing with a toy, use these sound effects multiple times and see if your child imitates them!

These are some that I like to model for toddlers:

• Animal sounds: moo, woof, meow, oink, ba-a-a, chirp chirp, etc.

• Sound effects: boom, crash, beep, whoosh, shh, boing, etc.

• Exclamations: yay, ow, whee, boo, whoah, ahh, ick, eek, mmm, etc.

I hope this helps at home! Contact me if you have any questions: alyssa@leapspeechandlanguagetherapy.com

Written by:

Alyssa Pitts, M.S., CCC-SLP

California Certified & ASHA Nationally Certified Speech-Language Pathologist