Questions tagged [language-development]
Learning to talk in the first place, and learning to speak properly. See also the tags [language] for general language issues and [bilingual] for issues involving more than one langauge.
172
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Teaching the difference between "you" and "me"
My daughter is 20 months old and quite the talker. However, she doesn't understand the concept of pronouns (understandable since it's an abstract concept) and thinks that the word "you" ...
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3
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How to help our 7 year old "get to the point" of his stories. Or is this a developmental stage?
Our 7 year old takes a long time to tell a story or relate an event. He will repeat sentences over again if he stumbles over a word or detail. He will ramble on over a minor detail. How can we help ...
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2
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Should we raise our child as trilingual or quadrilingual?
Let me provide you first with some context. My partner and I live in the Netherlands. I am Italian and he is Spanish, and we both speak fluent English (the second language for both and the language we ...
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3
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1
answer
296
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First Dad - How to make her understand that I am DAD [closed]
I am first time parents and my daughter is 22 months, she is turning 2 in 60 days. My concern is she is not responding to her name, sometime she do, like once or twice in a day. Her hearing is fine. ...
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2
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1
answer
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Appropriate age for use of electronics
I was searching for this video for the last 3 years.
In it a salesperson refuses to sell a tablet to the parents of a 5 year old saying that they can come back in 7 years and 12 years is the ...
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1
answer
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Introducing English to toddler later than planned. What's the right approach?
We're an already bilingual household, neither of which is English. Parents speak the primary language, and grandparents speak the secondary language (who visit frequently and babysit)
Our son (21 ...
- 3,441
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3
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908
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Raising a quadrilingual child
My husband and I are aiming to raise a child who’d speak 4 languages natively (I’m a native speaker of Ukrainian and Russian, my husband is Japanese, and we are both proficient in English and use the ...
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Can I read the same topic to my toddler with two different languages from two different books at the same time?
I am not a native English speaker neither is the country I am living in. However, I want to introduce my toddler to English. Does reading the same topic for example “feelings” from different books one ...
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1
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408
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My son doesn't understand me when I talk to him
My son is 20 months old, and an active child. He listens when I call his name, and we have some non-verbal communication. But he doesn't understand what I'm saying to him. Whenever I say, "Come ...
- 21
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3
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299
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Which is better for a toddler - music or podcasts?
My son does school with mom in the morning for 30-60 minutes during which time I take care of our daughter. We go downstairs to not be a distraction.
I've been putting podcasts on in the background ...
- 111
3
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1
answer
227
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Introduce third language not consistently
My wife and I expect our first child and are currently preparing everything for the arrival. We read some books and also were able to observe friends with their children. I speak fluently English (...
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2
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326
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Can I teach my baby to talk with a recording of my own voice?
My baby is coming in four months, and I am doing my homework on how to teach it to talk. I have seen some studies show that babies cannot learn languages through voice recording and TV program, ...
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1
answer
229
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Trying to figure out how to teach three languages to our soon to come twins?
My husband is Armenian and I am Mexican. My husband speaks a good amount of Spanish and we both speak English. I have 2 amazing stepchildren, 9yr old girl and 11yr old boy. They only speak English. We ...
- 31
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0
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200
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Identify this A-B-C children's song in Dutch
My wife remembers the first couple of verses of a children's alphabet song (in Dutch) from her childhood and would like to find the lyrics of the complete song. She remembers singing this at least 22 ...
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Communication, Wording, Elaboration, Language Expression
How can a parent that has a severe problem in communication, wording, elaboration and language expession without any problems with the languages in themselves communicate with their offspring so as to ...
- 293
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3
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Functional illiteracy, Reading and Listening
How to stimulate one's own offspring to process/hearken to/understand what they read and what they hear in everyday life? What questions to ask so as to test their Cognitive Function and incoming ...
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2
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Should we link words when we talk to our 2-3 year old children, For example: her eyes /həraɪz/?
Ok, Linking words is one of the main point in speaking English.
For example, "her eyes" /hə-raɪz/
But I am worried that my 2-3 year old child may misidentify the correct pronunciation.
For example, ...
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6
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Is it common that 2 to 3 year old children use articles and plurals incorrectly?
Ok, English is not my first language. My mother tongue is Vietnamese. There are 5 people in my family: my parents, my wife, my son and me.
I decided to teach my child bilingually. So, about 6 months ...
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22
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10
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Two year old son sometimes using female verb endings - grammar issue?
My native language is Russian and this is important in scope of the question: past tense verbs are gender-specific here, for example "I've made..." will be "Я сделал" if you are a boy and "Я сделала" ...
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2
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345
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Does excessive cooing mean early talking?
My grandson is three months old and is cooing/making noises ALL the time, except when he is crying and sleeping, of course. Does that have any correlation to talking? Meaning, are there statistics ...
- 482
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votes
2
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377
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One parent one language: three-way conversations
We are planning to use One Parent, One Language to raise our child bilingually. Parent A uses German with Child, Parent B uses English with Child. Communication between Parent A and Parent B is in ...
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1
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313
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When should we be concerned about garbled speech in my 2.5-year-old?
My 2.5-year-old toddler has started saying words (more like noises) that me and my wife can sometimes understand, but they barley sound like the intended words. At what point should we start to get ...
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Why do we teach animal sounds to children?
I was reflecting on the fact that, at least in Western culture, most children are taught at a young age what sounds animals make. However, this is mostly a "useless" information from a practical point ...
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How best to help a language-delayed 3.5-year-old in a foreign language environment?
We are an English-speaking American family with 2 children, and have recently moved to Germany. The length of our stay is indefinite, and we've decided to try to integrate culturally and ...
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Is it normal for a 3-year-old to repeat the question before answering?
My 3 years and 3 months old son has speech delay. He repeats the question and then answers (mainly choice questions). At age 3, if I asked him any question ('this or that'), he simply repeated ('this ...
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2
answers
229
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My 2 1/2 year old won't talk on his own And stares into the distance
He does say things like "mommy" "daddy" "ewww" "Mickey" "owww" and "drink". They're slurred and you have to know what he's saying to understand them. But he won't say anything else on his own. We can ...
2
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1
answer
236
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Teaching a child 2 languages that are not part of their environment
I've seen a few question regarding language, but none that fight my current situation.
I live in Ukraine and my wife has a 2 year old child that almost exclusively heard Russian so far. I, on the ...
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2
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203
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Can a 2 year old learn "hard" and "soft" for "don't throw"?
At 22 months we've just entered the throwing and hitting stage. For "throw this, not that" I'm thinking of teaching him "hard" and "soft" and that's okay to throw soft things. I'm wondering if anyone ...
- 131
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2
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160
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Which languange should I start teaching my baby after moving to a new country? [duplicate]
I moved from my home country to America and gave birth to my first baby, and one thing bugs me. I want my child to know my languange so she can speak to her family from my side because my family doesn'...
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2
answers
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My 2 year 8 month old son is not interested in hearing stories [closed]
How to make child get interested in stories? He colors the book but by seeing somewhere. He just shows interest in only very limited food. He is suffering from constipation. He is able to say rhymes, ...
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0
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1
answer
393
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My 2-year-old son is still not talking. Is this normal?
I have a 2-year-old son. He still isn't talking, he'll say words here and there like "bird" when he sees a bird and he'll say words like mama or dada sometimes but never in correlation with my wife or ...
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1
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740
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How to explain -gasm to 10 year old
I was watching a daytime TV programme about Asian food with my 10 year old son. One of the presenters said while looking at a very nice piece of fresh tuna "I just had a sushigasm"
My son asked me ...
- 281
4
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5
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597
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How to encourage speech of minority language for bilingual child?
Note: I am going to use 3rd person plural pronouns (e.g. "they", "their") when referring to my child as I think gender is not important here.
Situation:
My wife and I are using the One-parent-one-...
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1
answer
109
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How to enrich my “everyday” vocabulary as an ESL parent in the U.S.? [closed]
How to quickly acquire the "everyday" English vocabulary needed to communicate with my preschool child? I am an immigrant IT professional who speaks fluent English, but who learned his English as an ...
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4
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2
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How to make my 5-year-old speak in first person when she speaks in second person?
My 5-year-old daughter talks a lot. But when she does, it's in second person (i.e. the second person in the conversation), saying what she expects I would say when directed towards her. So she's not ...
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4
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2
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421
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Impact of moving to Germany with a stepson and a toddler with signs of autism
I live in the midwestern U.S. with my wife, my 8 year old stepson and our 2 year old son who shows signs of and is undergoing therapy for autism. The company I work for just offered to relocate us to ...
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4
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Difficulty pronouncing R and L: how fast is it overcome?
This question concerns difficulty pronouncing the sounds R and L between the ages of 4 and 6 years old.
Assuming that there's no serious problem (that is, all other sounds are correctly pronounced ...
5
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3
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Raising our daughter to be bilingual without one-parent-one-language
I've been through a lot of answers here on raising bilingual children, and the general consensus seems to be (1) each parent speaks their language to the child ('one parent - one language') and (2) ...
user30275
10
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4
answers
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Can I teach my 9-month-old child my native language if I only see her for a few minutes at a time?
I am the father of a 9-month-old girl. I am divorced and my ex-wife speaks only Hebrew with the baby while my mother language is Russian. I am also able to speak Hebrew. I see the baby for about 15-20 ...
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7
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Toddler made "incorrect" animal identification that is actually correct. Better to correct her or not?
My niece is a year and a half old. I was reading a book on animals with her recently and helping her learn the names of the animals in it. I noticed that she identified the picture of a lion as a "...
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4
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645
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Raising a bilingual kid. How to speak to my daughter in Spanish (my primary language) when also wanting to perfect my English?
I have an almost a year old daughter. My husbands only speaks English (although understands Spanish very well) and I speak Spanish (my native language) and English (which I learned mostly as an adult)....
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How can I deal with adopted son who promised to the god he believes in to never to speak until he sees mommy again, when mommy is dead?
My 5 year old adopted son is, contrary to everyone else in his entourage, religious - a leftover from his days in a war zone. His mom died some time ago - by suicide - and since then he hasn't said a ...
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20 month old doesn't follow commands
My 20 month old doesn't respond to commands. He doesn't talk yet. He is not responding to his name.
Hearing problem?
But, he responds and looks at me when I sing any of his rhymes. Wherever he is ...
- 41
4
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3
answers
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My 2-year-old son can't speak beyond 2 words yet?
My son will turn 2 on the 5th of August this year. He hasn't picked up any words beyond mama and papa. Firstly is it okay that he hasn't yet spoken beyond these 2 words? There are a few things which ...
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1
answer
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4 to 5 year old child taking time to answer questions
When asked my 4 year old either does not respond to the question or responds slowly and I've seen 3 year olds respond much more quickly.
Is this a development concern or is something in the "normal" ...
- 353
15
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2
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686
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How to further an aptitude toward early literacy?
Every so often in our 2.5-year old daughter's life I catch myself marveling at some skill that our daughter seems to master far beyond what I naively expected her to be able to do. I'm sure many ...
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My five year boy child is not able to speak letters starting with "L" or "R" clearly
My five year boy child is not able to speak letters starting with "L" or "R" clearly.
For example if he has to say "Light" he pronounce it as "Aaight" or sometimes "Haaight". Similar for say "Rat" ...
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3
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1
answer
533
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What to do about a 19-month-old not talking?
My 19-month-old son is an only child and doesn't go to daycare. He doesn't talk, just says mama and baba and not all the time - maybe one or two times a day. I try to talk with him but I don't know ...
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1
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My daugter could not retain letter names prior to kindergarten, now she is taking piano and can't remember letter names. Help!
I worked with my daughter on learning her letters with sounds, books, tiles, refrigerator magnets, ect from age 1 to 5 and she could not retain the information. I could not get her to learn any ...
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2
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920
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What benefits does using "baby talk" provide, and how do you maximize those benefits?
When I was doing my initial language development research about 7 years ago, I vaguely remember seeing several (probably non-scientific or blog sources) recommend against using "baby talk", arguing ...
user420