All Entries in the "Receptive Language" Category

Teaching, Not Testing - Ideas for Helping Your Child Learn Language at Home

I’m working with a great family right now. My little friend in this family is a darling boy who will be 2 in April, and he’s a total handful! He’s so unlike his older very compliant, very praise-driven sister, who I also had the privilege of working with a few years ago.
The sister was so different from [...]

Auditory Processing Games for Preschoolers

If your preschool child has difficulty following directions at home, this can be frustrating for both him and you! You think he seems to understand  the individual words, but then he can’t follow through to be able to carry out your verbal instructions.
Some parents automatically assume that this is a behavior issue, but often it’s not. Auditory processing disorders make it very [...]

“Best DVD for Receptive Language Therapy at Home!”

ARE YOU FRUSTRATED TRYING TO TEACH YOUR TODDLER TO UNDERSTAND WORDS?  DOES HE IGNORE YOU WHILE OTHER CHILDREN HIS AGE ARE INTERACTING WITH OTHERS AND EVEN BEGINNING TO TALK?   
Maybe everyone around you, even your pediatrician, is telling you that everything’s fine. But you can’t get past that nagging feeling that something’s not quite right. 
You know he should be doing more [...]

Teach Me To Listen and Obey 1 and 2 are NOW Available!

The DVDs Teach Me To Listen and Obey 1 and 2 are NOW available for a special pre-sale offer with an anticipated shipping date of on or before January 5, 2009.
I’m so excited to FINALLY get to offer this DVD series for helping young children learn to understand language. By the time we were [...]

Tips for Teaching the Pronouns “I” and “You”

A mom e-mailed me this question this weekend, and I thought I’d include it here since I haven’t written about this anywhere else on the site.  

“Hi Laura! I have a question for you.  Gabe has recently started saying “you want…”  instead of “I want…”  When we model “I” for him, he will correct himself.  He [...]

Guidelines for Referral for a Speech-Language Assessment for Toddlers

I recently found a great article written by Marilyn Agin, M.D., and author of The Late Talker.  It was written for a pediatrics journal, but it also has great information for parents who might be on the fence wondering if their child will catch up on his own, or if they should go ahead and be referred for a [...]

Foreign Language and Late Talkers

I just evaluated another two-year-old little girl who has language delays, both receptively (how she understands words) and expressively (how she communicates her wants and needs).  Her parents are both highly educated professionals from another country.  Naturally, they want to teach their daughter their native languages, as well as English.  Yes, languages, since they are both from different parts of the same [...]

Ear Infections & Hearing Assessments in Toddlers

One of the standard recommendations during the diagnostic process for a late talking toddler is an audiological or hearing assessment.  If a baby can’t hear, he’s not going to learn to talk.  Now with universal hearing tests mandatory at birth in the United States, very few children with significant hearing losses are missed at birth. 
However, your child’s ability [...]

Teaching Your Toddler to Answer Questions - Receptive and Expressive Language Delay Issues

Many toddlers with language delays have difficulty learning to answer questions.  Common problems include:

Repeating or the last few words of the question rather than answering
Answering incorrectly such as shaking their heads “yes” when you ask them a question with 2 choices 
Giving an off-target response such as answering, “Two,” when you ask, “What’s your name?”
Not responding or ignoring questions

By 30 months of age, [...]

Helping Your Toddler Listen and Obey - Improving Receptive Language Skills in Your Young Child

I have seen many parents and daycare teachers label toddlers as “difficult” or a behavior problem when the real problem is that the child doesn’t understand and process language as well as other children his age.  Parents sometimes overestimate what their child who is not talking is able to understand.  When I was talking about this with a good friend of mine who is a developmental interventionist, [...]