One thing I avoid using with babies & toddlers

While I normally stress that you don’t need to stress about what materials/toys you’re using during speech therapy or play with your own child, here’s one material I do avoid: flashcards.

Flashcards themselves aren’t inherently bad, but if we use them in the traditional sense, it’s not appropriate nor fun for our little ones.

When I think of the “traditional” way of using flashcards, it’s just memorization & drilling the words/pictures. It’s not a way to get functional communication with our kids.

If you’re just incessantly asking “what is this?”, maybe your toddler can label it, but there are ways to make it more interesting & integrated into their world.

So, instead of: holding up a card and incessantly asking “what is this?”…

        Try to:

• Label it for them (i.e. “dog!”).
• Hold the flashcard close to your lips so your child can see how you are articulating the words.
• Model action words: “the dog is jumping! Jump jump jump!”
• Relate what’s on the flashcard to something in their world 🌎 (i.e. flashcard with a car ➡️ bring in one of your kid’s cards and pretend to have the car drive around (“vrooom”, “beep beep”, “fast!”) 🚘

Remember, our little ones do NOT like to be pressured & asked a million questions. That just creates fear of being wrong.

The more we just  r e l a x  and make it interesting to them, the more they will communicate willingly
…not just because they’re being demanded to 😉

Here’s a quick Instagram Reel from me, @talkteaspeech, showcasing how to use flashcards appropriately with toddlers/babies: Click here

I hope this was helpful!

With love & joy,

Tiffany