How to Support Listening

Exploring sounds and making listening fun will help your child develop skills they need to build on their understanding and talking. Remember to turn off the TV or radio or go somewhere quieter to help your child learn to listen.

These activities will all help with your child's listening:

• Singing songs and rhymes.
• Playing jack in the box games - your child gets in a box (ensuring they can get out safely if they need to), or crouches down and waits for you to make a sound, such as clap, before they jump up. They may need to be shown how to do this and encouraged to wait for the sound.
• Ready steady go games - rolling a ball, pushing a toy car back and forwards, or coming down a slide. Say “ready, steady…” and build anticipation for “go”. Add in a gesture like pointing when saying go. On “go” your child can roll the ball or car towards you, or come down the slide.
• Explore instruments – you can use wooden spoons on saucepans, rice in an empty squash bottle, elastic bands on a cardboard box - they don’t need to be expensive toys. Start by having fun making noise, with young children you can play with ‘go/stop’ and ‘quiet/loud’. For older children you can get them to copy your rhythms, or have matching instruments and hide yours behind a big book or box. When you make your noise can they find the same instrument that you played and copy it? Hold it up to show them they are right or help them find it if they are not sure.
• Stop… and listen – indoors or outside – what noises can they hear? A bird? Traffic? Washing machine? Listen together and talk about what you can hear, is it loud, quiet, a long or a short sound?

Developing Taking Turns

Conversation involves one person speaking while the others listen, and then the other person speaking while the first one listens. Any game or activity that involves turn taking helps to develop this important skill. 

Tap yourself or point to your child to help them understand whose turn it is and label the turns saying “My Turn” or “Your turn.” Talk about taking turns e.g. “Who’s next?” “My turn, your turn”, “Now Daddy”. 

Some activity ideas: 

• Blow bubbles - take it in turns to blow or pop bubbles. Wait for your child to look at you before you blow the bubble for them to pop. 

• Rolling a ball or push a car to each other. 

• Take turns putting bricks on top of each other to build a tower and see how high it gets.  

• Lots of activities can be made into turn taking games; taking turns stirring a cake mixture, running races, clapping, lifting flaps on a book.  

• Some games encourage turn taking e.g. Pop up Pirate, Building Mr Potato Head, Kerplunk, Fishing Games, Puzzles 

Developing Joint Attention

Joint attention just means taking notice of all the little things that your baby or child is interested in and paying attention to the same things as you talk to them.  

It’s a very important skill though, which will really help their communication.  

Attention Autism

This approach by speech and language therapist Gina Davis includes activities which are motivating, a shared experience and worth communicating about. The approach helps children to understand and respond to a structured, adult-directed routine. It gives children an irresistible invitation to engage in an adult-directed activity.  

Attention Autism will help support and build attention and listening skills. It will also support and develop your child’s social communication skills, such as taking turns or using speech. Your child does not have to have autism to benefit from this approach, the ideas and activities will benefit any child in building their skills.  

Learn more about Attention Autism