Language Development
42 articles in this category
Watching Bluey with Your Child: Conversation Starters and Language Tips
Pause and talk, name the feelings, predict then check, retell afterwards, then play the games for real. Bluey episode picks by language goal, kept low-key.
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Why Bluey Is a Speech Pathologist's Dream: Language Lessons from Bluey
Why Bluey models the play, feelings talk and back-and-forth that build language, what the show gets right, and what it cannot do on its own.
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Building Communication Skills Before School Starts: Strategies for Parents
Conversation games, directions in daily routines, retelling stories and turn-taking on play dates: everyday ways to build talking skills before Prep.
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Is My Child Ready for Prep? A Communication and Language Checklist
What listening, talking, storytelling and social skills look like in the year before Prep in Queensland, plus a word on hearing and when to assess early.
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Making Screen Time Work for Your Child's Language: Practical Tips
Choosing content that leaves room for talk, watching together, turning watch time into talk time, and why video calls with Grandma are the exception.
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Screen Time and Language Development: What the Research Actually Says
Screen time, content and company all matter for language. Background TV, why toddlers don't learn from video, the Australian limits, and why AAC isn't screen time.
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Supporting a Child with Selective Mutism: Strategies for Home and School
Taking the pressure off talking, responding to every kind of communication, stimulus fading in plain words and how to build a plan with the school.
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What Is Selective Mutism? Understanding This Anxiety-Based Communication Difference
Selective mutism is anxiety, not refusal. How it shows up at kindy and school, its overlap with language and autism, and how we assess without pressure.
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How Bridging Therapy Works: Practical Approaches
What a bridging therapy session looks like at home or kindy, how interpreters and bilingual co-workers fit in, and how to keep every language strong.
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Bridging Therapy for Bilingual Children
Why therapy for a bilingual child should use the home language too, following Kohnert: pre-teaching concepts, bridging to English, coaching parents.
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Reducing Cognitive Load: Strategies for Learning
Simpler instructions, less clutter, careful scaffolding: how to cut the mental load on a child who is learning, and how to spot overload and adjust.
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Cognitive Load in Speech Therapy: Why It Matters
Cognitive load theory in plain terms: the three kinds of load, how overload looks in a session, and how to find the Goldilocks zone for a child's learning.
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Helping Children Follow Directions: Strategies
What to do when a child needs every instruction repeated: get attention first, shorten the language, add visuals, and play barrier games.
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Concepts and Following Directions: Key Milestones
'Put it inside, not under.' Spatial, time and quantity concepts sit inside every instruction, and gaps in them explain a lot of 'not listening'.
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Why Movement Matters in Speech Therapy
What embodied cognition, executive function and regulation research says about moving while learning, and why sitting still isn't always best for talking.
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Supporting a Child with DLD at School: Strategies
What helps a child with DLD: chunked instructions, visuals and pre-taught vocabulary at school, talk and reading at home, and a team that works together.
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Developmental Language Disorder (DLD): A Guide
DLD affects about two children in an average classroom. What it looks like in instructions, discussion, reading and friendships, and why it is so often missed.
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Building Narrative Microstructure: Strategies
Conjunction games, retelling together and watching verb tense: how to strengthen the sentence-level skills that hold a child's story together.
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Narrative Microstructure: Blocks of Storytelling
Conjunctions, pronouns that refer back clearly, consistent tense and words like 'then': the sentence-level glue that makes a child's story easy to follow.
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Bilingual Concept Development: What to Target
A child may learn 'under' in Vietnamese and meet the English word years later. How concepts cross languages and which ones therapy should target.
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Play and Speech Therapy: Why Play Is Serious
Play is how young children learn language, so a speech pathologist plans it on purpose. What that looks like and why it isn't a lesser approach.
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The Power of Shared Reading for Language
What shared reading does for vocabulary, storytelling and comprehension, why the talk around the book matters most, and what to do if your child won't sit.
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Social Communication Strategies for Autistic Kids
Visual supports, social stories, video modelling and interest-led play: what each one is for and when it helps an autistic child with social communication.
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Pragmatic Language and Autism: An Affirming Guide
What pragmatic language means for an autistic child, why different is not wrong, and how support can build understanding rather than teach masking.
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Teaching Sentence Structure: Practical Strategies
Expansion, extension and recasting in everyday talk, plus Shape Coding and Colourful Semantics when a child needs sentence structure made explicit.
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Simple and Complex Sentences: A Parent Guide
Simple, compound and complex sentences: the ages children typically reach each one and why 'because' and 'although' matter for school writing.
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How to Teach Tier Two Vocabulary: Key Strategies
Choose the word, give a child-friendly definition, use it in rich contexts, come back to it often. A practical method for teaching Tier Two words.
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What Are Tier Two Words? Vocabulary Explained
Tier Two words like 'fortunate' and 'compare' carry most school reading. Beck's three-tier framework and why these words need explicit teaching.
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Helping Children Tell Better Stories: Strategies
Story maps at the kitchen table, bedtime retells and visible story grammar during shared reading: ways to help a child tell a clearer story.
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Narrative Macrostructure: Story Grammar Explained
Setting, character, problem, plan, attempt, resolution: story grammar explained, with the ages at which children usually manage each element.
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How to Use Aided Language Stimulation at Home
How to model on your child's AAC system during ordinary routines like meals and bath time, without turning every moment into a test or waiting for a reply.
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Building Rich Vocabulary: Categories, Verbs, Describers
Knowing 'dog' is one thing; knowing it's an animal that barks and can be fluffy is depth. Why categories, verbs and describing words matter.
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When to Worry About Babbling: Signs to Watch For
No canonical babbling by 10 months, few consonants, a very quiet baby or sounds that stop: what each can mean and what a baby assessment involves.
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Babbling: What It Is and How to Encourage It
From cooing to jargon, the five stages of babbling with rough ages, why babbling predicts later talking, and simple ways to encourage it every day.
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How to Help a Late Talker: Evidence-Based Tips
Follow, comment, expand: the Hanen-based habits that help a late talker, what a toddler language assessment involves, and what happens afterwards.
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Late Talkers: When to Worry About Toddler Speech
How many words should a toddler have at 18 and 24 months? The milestones, the signs worth a conversation, and the problem with 'wait and see'.
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Supporting a Gestalt Language Learner at Home
Three things to do at home when your child learns language in chunks: treat echolalia as communication, model easy-to-borrow phrases, follow their lead.
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What Is Gestalt Language Processing? A Parent Guide
Does your child repeat whole lines from shows instead of single words? What gestalt language processing means, Blanc's proposed NLA stages, and what the evidence says.
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Supporting High-Level Language in Teenagers
What to do when a teenager's language can't keep up with high school: ideas for home, classroom adjustments, and what teen therapy involves.
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High-Level Language Difficulties in Teenagers
Your teenager reads fine but misses the point of the text. Inferencing, figurative language and persuasive writing explained, and the signs to look for.
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Alternative Access for Communication: A Guide
Eye gaze, switches, partner-assisted scanning and head tracking: what each one is, which children they suit, and what an access assessment looks at.
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Low-Tech Communication Books and PODD: A Guide
What a PODD book is, how it differs from a folder of pictures, who it suits, and why a paper book can sit alongside a device rather than replace it.
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