Modeling during Daily Routines

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:

1. make a choice
2. negate something by indicating “no” instead of having a tantrum
3. 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.

When a child has a means to communicate, he has power–he has an element of control within his environment.

This is so important for all children beginning at the toddler ages.  As I’ve said before:  It’s imperative for children to have some control in order to make a request, express themselves and make choices within their environments.  BUT, it’s important to not give up all control to your child.

When a child has the feeling of control, anxiety, frustration, and tantrums may lessen.

When a child has a means to communicate, he is being social.

Communication is social.  Becoming more social leads to relationships with family members and eventually friendships with peers.

So what can we do to assist our children with their communication skills?

1. Model the play that you want your child to engage in.
2. Model the gestures and signs that you want your child to use.
3. Model the verbal language that you want your child to imitate and understand.  If your child is nonverbal, it is still so important to model language to assist your child with his receptive language, or the language that your child understands.

How do I model so that my child imitates?

1. At the beginning, model play and language without pressure on your child to imitate.
2. If your child doesn’t copy what you are doing or saying, help with hand-over-hand assistance.
3.  Make sure you are reinforcing your children when they imitate.  Verbally reinforce, but also give other reinforcers of clapping your hands, giving a hi-5, squeezing his hands/feet/arms, or giving his back a rub if he finds those thing  reinforcing (positive).
4. Model during all of your child’s daily routines.

Modeling for your child doesn’t mean only sit down therapy time.

Yes, it’s great to add engagement times (providing the opportunity) to play with your child.  That is definitely what you should be doing.  Here are some ideas for adding language and social play within your daily routines.

Meal Time

1.  Make sure you are labeling the foods that you are serving.
2. Also label:  cup, plate, spoon, bowl & fork, if your child uses these.
3. Give choices so you can label.  “Green plate or blue plate?”  Offer two and see if your child prefers one over the other.  If he points, gestures, or tries to grab one, then he is making a choice.  “Blue plate, good choice!  Blue plate, please.”
4. When something is served warm, blow on it and encourage your child to imitate.  “Ooow, hot!”  Blow on it and wave your hand.  “Now it’s just right.”  Place the food on the tray.
5. Model fun sounds and words:  yummy, mmm, ow, oh, uh-oh.
6. Use some gestures and facial expressions to keep your child’s attention as you talk about yummy or hot.  Rub your stomach for “yummy” and wave your hand by your mouth for “hot”.
7. Use some American Sign Language (ASL) signs as you also verbalize:  eat, more, all done, please, no thank you.
8. If you are working on gaining attention appropriately, or asking for more, give your child some of his meal and have him gain your attention or ask for more before giving more food.  Attention: If your child has feeding concerns, please consult with your child’s therapist first.

Bath Time

Sometimes we forget that bath time is a fun time for many kids.  Use that to your advantage if your child enjoys this time.  Plan on spending a little more time there to work on language and social engagement.

1. Use different sized cups to pour water between them. (This is pre-math, by the way!)
2.  Have your child choose which color of wash cloth or towel he will use.
3.  Have plastic animals jump into the water and label them as they splash.  Give your child  a choice of which animal he wants next.
4.  Give a baby doll a bath. Label body parts as you wash.  Give a direction:  “Wash the baby’s arm.”  If your child doesn’t follow through, then help your child follow the direction by pointing or using hand-over-hand if he tolerates. “Arm, wash-wash”
5.  Sing songs or make up little jingles.  “This is the way we wash our toes, wash our toes . . . ”  Many kids love music and will respond to songs or sing-songy words more often than regularly spoken words.
6. Add some shaving cream to the walls and make pictures and shapes with your finger or write letters and numbers.  Encourage your child to use one finger as you did to create.
7.  Label items that you use for bath time: wash cloth, water, soap, towel, wet, dry, bathtub, in, out, all done.
8.  Talk about your child’s clothing.  Label the clothes that you take off and put on.  Talk about the colors if your child is interested in colors.  Ask him to help with dressing.  “Lift your foot up”, or “push arm through”.

Bed Time

Keep a night time routine and include your child.

1. Encourage choice-making:  choose which stuffed toy to sleep with, which books will be read or which pj’s to wear.
2. Reading the same books are helpful because children anticipate what will happen and what will be said next.  Also books with repeating verses are great–Brown Bear, Brown Bear.
3. Read or sing the verse and pause to see if your child will fill in the blank. “Twinkle, twinkle, little ___”.  Pause and encourage your child to say, “star”.  Do this when reading your favorite book to determine if your child knows and will say the next word.
4.  Sing songs and use gestures.  Encourage your child to imitate your gestures, sounds, and words.
5. Say “goodnight” to a few thing around the room.  While doing this your are labeling common objects or people, pointing, exhibiting joint attention, and establishing a routine.
6.  Use the natural gesture for “sleep” (hand on the side of your face) and encourage imitation.
7.  Make and use a personal photo album.  Talk about the familiar people in the photos and what they are doing. Point to the pictures as you talk about them.
8.  Use the natural gesture for “quiet” (finger on lips) and say “shh, time to sleep, night-night”.

Don’t pass up all of these opportunities to model for your child.  You don’t have to necessarily add more things to a busy schedule.

Use modeling within your daily routines to boost social engagement, language, joint attention, and participation.

Enjoy and let me know how it goes!