Talking with Your Toddler: 75 Fun Activities and Interactive Games that Teach Your Child to Talk

by Teresa Laikko, Laura Laikko

Ignite verbal communication with your toddler with this handy parent's guide that turns professional language development into child's play.

Are you concerned that your child is not verbalizing? The solution may be as simple as a game. Talking with Your Toddler teaches you how to stimulate speech using everyday play. It makes learning to talk fun and engaging for your child.

With proven therapies and easy-to-follow activities, Talking with Your Toddler makes an ideal home companion.

- Tips to promote talking throughout the day
- Hands-on games that teach new words
- Tricks for turning drive time into talk time
- Fun ways to promote further practice
- Techniques for keeping kids engaged

Written by experienced speech professionals, this book’s straightforward approach is equally useful for parents at home, teachers in the classroom or therapists in a clinic.

Genres: Parenting, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published July 12, 2016

Reviews

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is extremely informational, but I have two complaints about it. First, it was so thorough that it covers a lot of things that seem obvious to me. Two thirds of the book (the 75 activities/games) could be easily summarized with one sentence: "Have conversations with your child about who, what, when, where, why, and how - everywhere you go and in everything you do." The other third of the book (the chapters focused on speech therapy processes, techniques, and standards) was very helpful and informative. ... My second complaint is that, in my opinion, the title is inaccurate. A toddler is typically considered to be 12-36 months old. Many of the suggestions in this book are a for children older than that. Considering the book is likely to be read by parents of children with speech delays, that is especially problematic.

[Quinton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought that Laikko & Laikko's "Talking with Your Toddler" was excellent. I love the authors' voice - very playful and fun - but also love that they are experts. This isn't just a list of activities, it is a guide to your child's language development. Of course, it also includes a lot of fun activities as well!

I have been reading books specific to bilingual children, and I thought I would try this, even though it is not specifically about that. The result was that actually this book is great for parents of bilingual children. It mentions bilingualism briefly (making clear it is not a reason for speech delays or problems), but in reality all of these strategies and activities are perfect for the context of bilingualism. Bilingualism in children is basically the same as monolingualism, just with more language to practice and learn - so these tips are even more valuable!

"Talking with Your Toddler" was published in 2016, but it feels like it was published yesterday. The recommended materials and the bits about technology are still completely relevant. The information is very up-to-date. I am glad to recommend. I may purchase a copy for myself to keep as a reference.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has a lot of good ideas in it, and has a lot of great tips for learning to engage with a young child.

There were a LOT of craft ideas in here, and "ideas" for outings--the things that all parents do, with the reminder that you can talk to your kids while you're doing them. Like other reviewers have said, a lot of the book consists of this stuff that might seem to be common sense. I bought the book for the promised "TrickS for turning drive time into talk time," but there was really only one trick for drive time. This is one of the main things that isn't intuitive for me, so it would've been nice to have some more ideas.

After I got over that disappointment, I really enjoyed the chapters on reading books with your child and communicating feelings. I got a lot of ideas I didn't even know I needed from the feelings chapter.

All in all, I thought this was a great book but don't expect to find the whole thing useful.

[Shelby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful in some chapters, mostly redundant. Will keep on hand to find activities for me and the spawn.

[Ty Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a parent, this book was great for helping me to better understand some ways to interact with my little one and encourage her speech to improve. Some of these ideas, I already knew, but it was refreshing to have a new batch of activities and recommendations provided that will help her as well as let us do something fun together.

Now... as an editor... my partner has scolded me for nitpicking and screaming about this book in the midst of reading it. At no point should a properly published and well-circulating book have this many errors. Grammatical issues, punctuation errors, and even the wrong words being used? Not just misspelled, but completely incorrect words being used?! It was frustrating, to say the least. Like, good lord, if you need an editor, HI. And if it's something I'd be reading for the sake of my kids anyway, I'd do it for free just to avoid having editor-brain get set off like crazy while I'm trying to further educate myself.

Overall though, if you don't make a living by having your brain dissect others' grammar and language while reading, I strongly recommend this book. I have thoroughly enjoyed it otherwise.

[Tara Goodwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have not fully read this book but I have looked through it and planning on buying it as a resource for my sons speech therapy. There are multiple activities that I am looking forward to using as a fun way to interact and encourage my talk to talk! Anyone with children in need of speech services could benefit from borrowing or buying this book!!

[Dorottya Molnár-Kovács · Rating 4 out of 5]

Especially useful for people who are absolutely clueless about how to talk to small children, as a lot of the things in the book come naturally for most imo. But it is a great collection of ideas for games, books, tv shows and more for anyone! In fact, I am kind of bummed that I only have the ebook version as this seems like a useful book to have on the shelf.

[Nancy M · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don’t like leaving negative reviews but this book was really not great. Most ideas are obvious, for example, talk to your kids. Some ideas are more mad, like take ice cubes to a bath?!

I found one vaguely useful suggestion, which is to stretch with your child in the morning hence 2 starts and not 1.

[Priya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I totally like this book. I would say this is a perfect book for kids who has speech delays. Both of my boys are premees and the younger one is a toddler. After reading this, I got better ideas to handle his tantrums.

[Jega Deesan.M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet to complete it.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm excited to look up the apps that it mentions. My kids love the tablet.

[Casey Blau · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty basic ideas and activities.

[Kari McDowell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simple guide to engaging with language with our kiddos. Some good ideas for sure!

[Jamie Neary · Rating 4 out of 5]

It had a lot of good idea about how to talk to my toddler more. It’s just a little difficult since my husband and I are introverted and do not talk a lot.

[Benjamin Elliott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Received through a Goodreads Giveaway.

The 5-star rating is for its intended audience, which I would not say that I am-even though I have a 2 1/2 year old child.

I have a speech-pathology background (though I'm not working in the field), and my wife is in education. As such, I was really excited to see evidence based principles laid out in easy to understand language in the first chapter or two, but they were things I was familiar with. Then as the chapters continue it is just laying out activities in different contexts where you can use those same principles. For anyone who has an educational background in speech pathology, education, early childhood development, etc., there won't be any new ground covered here and the activities are similar to things that were probably already doing or could easily find online.

However, if you don't have that sort of background, this is a really approachable book that provides a solid foundation to understand the strategies and principles that will best help your child develop their language. In that case, the repetition to highlight different situations and activities helps to develop the concept and make sure readers have a firm grasp. This would be an excellent resource for any head-start program or similar facility to have available for its parents. I'm going to donate my copy to the library for the parenting collection where will hopefully provide a lot more benefit to people who are looking for help in this area.

[Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won a copy of this book in a goodreads free giveaway. Such a delightful book with so many great ideas and activities to spend time with your toddler. I am going to send this book to our daughter so she can do some of the fun activities with our granddaughters.
Thanks for the copy of the book. I really enjoyed reading it!

[Joanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent help for parents who are teaching their children to talk. I am sharing this book with my granddaughter to use with her son, who is learning to talk. How neat to have help like this. Thanks for the book.