What games are best for encouraging communication. My child can speak, but has a bit of a laziness and prefers not to. What games can I play to spark some interest that may want to start using his words more?
Answer:
Thank you for your question! This question would be best directed to our speech language pathologist, Jessica, but I will give you some ideas in the meantime. First, not exactly a game, but depending on the age of your child just playing with them, especially pretend play has lots of fun opportunities for communication. For example, playing with toy cars and saying "vroom vroom," "crash," "go go go," etc. Start small with things like that and then you can expand if he shows interest. "Let's drive to the kitchen!" You can ask him, "Where should we drive next?" Lots of open-ended questions instead of yes/no while you're playing would be ideal. Any toys you have laying around the house you can turn into a communication opportunity. Kitchen centers are great, "What should we cook?" One game I really like is called "Let's go on a picnic!" You go thru the alphabet and take turns naming something for each letter that you would take to the picnic. Also, singing songs encourages communication. I like to sing with clients and then have them fill in the missing words like, "Twinkle twinkle little _______." I start with the last word of the sentence and then as they get more comfortable and are having fun I will have them fill in more and more words until they are singing the whole song! You can also Google "games for communication" and tons of examples will pop up. I just Googled it and here's another good game. "Name Ten in Ten": You pick a category like fruit and have to name 10 fruits then the next person picks a category. Of course you don't have to do 10, but another fun game. And of course you can add reinforcement to the mix for motivation. "Whoever wins gets a prize!" I would give these options a try, but also try to get on one of SLP, Jessica's calls because she probably has some great ideas, too. Good luck!
Thank you for your question! This question would be best directed to our speech language pathologist, Jessica, but I will give you some ideas in the meantime. First, not exactly a game, but depending on the age of your child just playing with them, especially pretend play has lots of fun opportunities for communication. For example, playing with toy cars and saying “vroom vroom,” “crash,” “go go go,” etc. Start small with things like that and then you can expand if he shows interest. “Let’s drive to the kitchen!” You can ask him, “Where should we drive next?” Lots of open-ended questions instead of yes/no while you’re playing would be ideal. Any toys you have laying around the house you can turn into a communication opportunity. Kitchen centers are great, “What should we cook?” One game I really like is called “Let’s go on a picnic!” You go thru the alphabet and take turns naming something for each letter that you would take to the picnic. Also, singing songs encourages communication. I like to sing with clients and then have them fill in the missing words like, “Twinkle twinkle little _______.” I start with the last word of the sentence and then as they get more comfortable and are having fun I will have them fill in more and more words until they are singing the whole song! You can also Google “games for communication” and tons of examples will pop up. I just Googled it and here’s another good game. “Name Ten in Ten”: You pick a category like fruit and have to name 10 fruits then the next person picks a category. Of course you don’t have to do 10, but another fun game. And of course you can add reinforcement to the mix for motivation. “Whoever wins gets a prize!” I would give these options a try, but also try to get on one of SLP, Jessica’s calls because she probably has some great ideas, too. Good luck!