A major goal for most of our kiddos includes functional language in order to get their needs met within their daily routines. Children learn language when we model and they imitate.
Use modeling within your daily routines to boost social engagement, language, joint attention, and participation.
Why is functional language so important?
If you have a nonverbal 2-year-old or a child with limited communication, you already know the answer!
When a child has a means to communicate, he has a “voice”.
I don’t mean a literal voice, because the mode of communication could be gestures, signs, picture cards, or another augmentative means, as well as verbal.
When a child has a voice, he can:
- make a choice
- negate something by indicating “no” instead of having a tantrum
- label an item to show common interest and joint attention.
There are a million things I could list here, but I think we all can agree that this is a biggie, as far as importance goes.