Sing a song

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

My husband and I adopted our two daughters from China. I was already an SLP and just finishing my PhD dissertation on a topic in speech development and delays. When we got our first baby, I knew what I should be doing – talking. So I talked to her a lot. But it felt strange knowing that she had no idea what I was saying and one way I dealt with that was by singing “finger play” songs with her. I started off with the ones I already knew like Twinkle Twinkle Little Start, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and If You’re Happy and You Know It. She was about a year old, and she caught on quickly. Within no time she would request “Twinkle Twinkle” by looking at me and making the gesture for that part of the song. At the time I remember asking a colleague who specialized in language development whether songs like this would boost language learning in toddlers who were adopted internationally, and she said no. Her explanation was that children just need to hear enough language and they will learn. Now we know that language learning is enhanced by gestures, and a recently published paper showed that new words are learned in songs.

There are (at least) two parts to word learning – understanding the meaning of the word and using the word appropriately. When parents do action songs, like Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes with their children, children learn to point to body parts when their parents ask “where are your toes?” Usually understanding comes before saying new words, so look for your toddler to point to or touch his head before trying to say head.

Erica Mackay wrote a great blogpost for Organized Mom with videos of popular songs and explanations of how the songs can benefit children’s language learning.

10 Toddler Songs That Will Help With Speech Development

So parents, get singing! And let me know how it goes. What did your children learn through songs?

Amazon has a downloadable album of favorite songs here:

Watch the original version of Baby Shark by Pinkfong on youtube – watch out! there’s a reason it was the number one song in 2018.