How do I get my child to talk more in playtime?

It’s easy to think that if you ask your 1-3 year old child questions while you play together, for example while playing farm “where is the cow going?” “what is the sheep doing?” that he or she will answer and talk more. That draws our language right? Usually not. Have you noticed your child often ignores you and keeps playing? This is actually a much harder task that you might expect.

What we need to do as adults is model narrative language in play. “My sheep is eating hay.” “Lets drive the tractor out to the field.” “Jump horse! Jump!” When we narrate our play, we make use of so much vocabulary and language structure: nous, verbs (with -ing endings), lengthened phrases, direct objects, spatial concepts, etc.

Play is one of the main ways children learn language. So try to use more comments and statements than questions in your play. You’ll find that you are correcting yourself all of the time - it’s a tricky change to make! But your child will hear and observe so much more and hopefully begin using the play ideas and the words you have modeled for him or her.