What really matters- Receptive language development- Another small indication on Whitney’s understanding of the world was her new ability to understand “multi-word” sentences. For example, When I said “Put the block down”. Whitney would actually put the block down demonstrating she understood what I meant with the sentence. Frequently we underestimate what our toddlers understand because they are not speaking yet. But their receptive language far out paces their ability to speak and it is an important contributor to her understanding and communicating about her world.

How to put it into practice-

Tuning In- Again the best way to see this ability is to create command sentences and see if our child demonstrates her understanding.  Simple sentences such as Put the block down, Close the door, Get the ball, Come over to the table, can reveal a lot about her understandings.

Bridging- One thing we do to encourage this growth in receptive language is to describe what we are going to do before we do it. We break the day down into small blocks of time that are graspable to a toddler.  For example: "First we have breakfast, then we'll go the park and play in the sandbox.” We might even describe the whole day to her the night before or in the morning when we get up.As well as review the whole day before we go to bed.