Does Your Little One Have a Language Delay? Wait Time Will Help
Increasing wait time during daily interactions will help your child with a language delay. Here are a speech pathologist’s tips to implement this early intervention technique.
Are you guilty of it?
The one thing I catch almost all the parents with whom I work doing?
It’s an easy mistake to make. Even as a speech pathologist working in early intervention! And the reality is that most parents don’t even recognize that they’re guilty of it. They’re inadvertently making communication with their child more difficult than it has to be.
Can you guess the mistake?
I’m talking about wait time. And, specifically, a lack of it.
Making simple changes to your daily interactions by increasing wait time will help support your child with a language delay. It’s one of my favorite early intervention strategies!
What is Wait Time?
Wait time is, quite simply, the amount of time you take to pause and wait during communication with your child. Generally, it’s a minimum of three seconds. (1) Ideally, it’s between five and ten seconds. (2
As adults, we are accustomed to fast-paced conversations. We come to expect that our communication partners will respond quickly to our questions and comments. And we feel time pressures within ourselves, too –– we often automatically rush to fill any silent lags with words. This is what the social world dictates.
But we forget, sometimes, that little ones are still learning. Their brains are working hard to process the language we use with them. (Not to mention the planning and processing that must happen to formulate language to share with us!)
This process happens a bit more slowly for some. And, particularly, it happens more slowly for those with language delays.
Think of wait time as a way of giving your child space. You wouldn’t burden a child learning to walk with physical pressures. Don’t burden a child learning to talk, either
Wait time can feel unnatural, but it’s powerful. It’s a simple (though not always easy) fix that will have profound impacts on your child’s ability to communicate.
When to Wait
There are two general situations in which you’ll use wait time. (3)
The first: after you speak. When you ask a question, give a direction, or make a comment –– pause. This will give your child the cue and the processing time to generate a response.
The second: after your child speaks. To avoid cutting your child off prematurely, pause after your child gives a response. You may be surprised to discover that there’s more to come!
Why to Wait in Early Intervention: the Power of Wait Time
DON’T wait to intervene when it comes to your child’s early development, but DO wait when you’re talking to him or her. You’ll see a range of benefits. Here are a few:
More Words
If a conversation feels like a pressure cooker to your child, you’ll see him or her clam up. This is a common response, and it can be prevented. Instead of inducing a sense of rush and panic with rapid-fire questions, take a deep breath. Pause. Remember to use more comments and fewer questions. Studies show that children’s responses tend to be longer in length with increased wait time. (3) Maybe you’ll start to hear more words and word combinations each time he or she speaks!
More (and Higher Quality) Responses
How often do you attempt to engage your little one in a conversation, but you get no response? Or maybe you get a response, but it gives you minimal information. Think: “I dunno” or simply “no.” Get more engagement and more substance by reducing time pressure on your child. (3) With increased wait time, the rate and quality of children’s responses also increase.
Better Attention
This may seem counterintuitive, but research tells us that children become more focused, less restless, and more consistently on-task when we wait them out. (3) The well-meaning parent may quicken the pace of a conversation –– or even repeatedly ask the same question again and again –– in an attempt to keep a child’s attention. But this does everyone a disservice; it sometimes even resets the processing time a child uses to understand and respond.
Higher Confidence
Imagine learning a new language. You’re starting to combine words to make phrases and you finally can understand some routine questions. You’re feeling great. Then, a fast, fluent speaker bombards you with questions. Might this shake your confidence? We want our children to feel like successful communicators. We can help by providing them with whatever time they require to process and produce language. With increased wait time, children feel more confident. (3)
More Initiations
When there’s more space in communication, your child won’t feel stressed to jump in and start an interaction with you. We see more children taking the first turn in a conversation (something we call “initiating” in the SLP world) when we use wait time as an early intervention technique. (3)
How to Use Wait Time Like an Early Intervention Speech Pathologist
Increasing your wait time is a simple fix, but it can be surprisingly difficult to implement with consistency. Here are four tips to help make the learning curve less steep for you!
Count. It might sound silly, but it’s an age-old trick: Pause and count slowly to five. What’s better? Count breaths or pat your leg. Three seconds might feel like an unbearable amount of time at first; counting keeps you accountable.
Use a visual. Visual supports don’t just work for kids; they work for adults, too. Create a visual reminder for yourself. This might be a simple post-it note with a handwritten word (e.g., “wait”) or a stop sign picture card from this bundle. Be sure to have the visual accessible, particularly around communication-heavy activities
Record yourself. There’s nothing quite as illuminating as observing yourself communicate with your child. Use your phone or tablet to record an interaction –– even just an audio recording will do. Later, watch or listen to yourself and monitor your success. Do you see yourself waiting three or more seconds as your child responds? If not, try again
Focus on progress, not perfection. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the cognitive burden of using wait time all the time, start by creating a plan to use the technique in certain situations. Or, set a goal to use wait time a certain number of times in a given activity. Gradually, you’ll build these new “muscles,” and you’ll shift the goal accordingly. (2)
Wait Time and Other Early Intervention Techniques
Be patient with yourself! Soon, the wait-time technique will feel like second nature. Then, you’ll be ready to discover more simple ways to support your child with language delays!
For no-prep handouts to help you succeed with wait time –– and 24 additional early intervention techniques –– check out Speech and Language at Home’s instant PDF download available here.
Wait your child out, but don’t wait to get them help.
Sources
Via www.hanen.org
Via www.scoe.org