Making Decisions For Children Is Difficult

At this point we can begin to understand the limitations of body language, facial expression and gesture when language is not available. Although they allow for instant communication they cannot help a child to understand what is being seen or provide a way in which afterwards the child can communicate what she has seen. This means that children who only have the basic communication skills of body language, gesture and facial

Some parents do worry that teaching their children how to sign may result in the slowing down of speech development. On the contrary, signing may actually improve vocabulary and language.

We also use communication books to for each child, this makes it easy for parents/ carers to communicate messages to a child’s key worker and to inform them of their child’s daily activities at nursery. This helps to build a good positive relationship with parents/carers and also offers us the opportunity to include parents in the further development of their child at home too. (Parents and practitioners can have a lot to learn from each other).

Sign language is language that uses visual hand patterns to convey a meaning without using any vocal. It truly is a superb way of communication, although it was not always accepted in society. Wherever communities of deaf people exist, sign language develops. There was no

Language Development: Baby will make a lot of noises, often happy sounds and when they are distressed and upset they need to hear a familiar sound such as a mums voice.

Babies enjoy rhythm time and peek a boo games of hiding and repetition. The use of blurring and babbling will occur. The bonds with parents are

Communication between a baby and parent/carer starts from birth with babies crying to let the adult know they are hungry, tired or distressed. At 1 month a baby should coo when content. At 3 months a baby should smile back

Babies prefer the sound of humans interacting to other sounds and from this, they quickly learn to recognise and identify their mother’s voice. Babies form their first relationship through emotional attachments with their mother or main carer. The first year of a baby’s life is a period of incredible growth, and a baby’s brain goes through critical periods during which stimulation is needed for proper development. During the babies first years, visual stimuli or verbal language is necessary for areas of the brain to grow and without this growth, a child’s vision or speaking abilities might be impaired. Infants tend to have different cries for hunger or pain, as well as making other noises. These abilities show your child is gaining communication and pre-language skills. Infants from birth to 6 months will forget about objects they cannot see however they begin to explore objects they can see and grab by putting them in their mouths. They will also follow moving objects with their eyes and look around at nearby objects. Infants in this stage will turn to look at a source of sound. These developmental milestones show a baby’s brain is developing and they are gaining new skills. From 7 to 12 months, infants also learn the idea of cause and effect, and they might repeat an action that causes a

At around 4-6 months old a baby will have developed an awareness of sound in particularly a person speaking and will turn towards the sound when someone familiar speaks for example their parents. They will start to mimic sounds and start to babble and laugh. Intellectual development is rapid and although they may not be able to speak in more than just babble, their understanding will be greater and they will become much more inquisitive. They will be able to understand simple instructions such as “point to your nose.” By a year old, they’ll be able to say simple words like “Mama” and “Dada” or words with similar sounds. They may start to develop their own language with odd sounding words for common objects that take their interest. Sometimes these words will sound similar to the name of the object particularly if their parents spend time speaking to their child and repeating the names of these objects.

seen and provide a way that afterwards the child can then understand and be able to communicate what they have seen effectively. These skills are all very crucial in helping children and young people to learn and manage how to listen and understand different concepts. They can then have a chance to develop their own opinions and ideas to then be able to participate in different decision making and problem solving in appropriate ways. Babies are nonverbal so to begin with they use sounds and facial expressions to communicate to adults expressing themselves and their needs (e.g. smiling, cooing and gurgling). Toddlers then start to have a small understanding and can use words and gestures to make connections to people and be able to develop their knowledge and understanding

Finally, at the end of my observations hours I reached to the conclusion that babies or infants use different ways to communicate with adults doing sounds, gestures, and expressions, and crying its one of the most common way that babies use to tell us what they want or what they

Babies will try to communicate through body language as they do not yet have the capability to converse.

Second benefit is improvement of social skills. Knowing a different language helps children to adapt easily to a new environment, increasing his/her self-esteem and self-confidence. How would you feel if someone asks you a question and you don’t understand? I know that feeling. Children feel more confident and secure and will never feel humiliated by not being able to communicate.

I also want to briefly point out the range of hearing impairments that a child can have. Even though a child may not be classified as “profoundly impaired” or deaf, this does not mean that the child will not face several of the obstacles a deaf child does. Therefore, even though this site is taken from a “worse case scenario” perspective, many of the methods and therapy situations may apply to those with less severe impairments.

Reading to a child has a tremendous impact on their language development. The more a child is read to the more connections are made in the brain. Rereading the same book helps the child make connections between the way the words look and sound.