Using Routines to Support Your Child’s Communication

Joint action routines are everyday activities your child can repeat and predict. During a joint activity routine, you and your child are focused on the same item or activity together at the same time.

Once your child learns the routine, they know exactly what they need to do. This helps them relax, participate and communicate. You can change it by adding new words or actions, taking things out or doing unexpected things. Your child may comment, ask for something or disagree with the change. This helps improve their communication.

Talking during daily routines is a great way to support language development.

Here are some tips for talking and using language concepts during these activities:

Help your child learn names for body parts and descriptions while dressing.

• Name clothes: “That’s a sock,” or “There is your shoe.”
• Describe: “That is a pretty blue shirt,” or “This is striped.”
• Compare: “You have 1 white sock and 1 green sock,” or “This coat is thick, and that shirt is thin.”
• Make a request: “Hand me your coat,” and “Please pull your sock off.”
• Teach order and sequence:
  • Lay out your child’s shirt, pants, socks and shoes.
  • Take the shirt first and say, “arms up” and “shirt on.” 
  • Next for pants say, “leg up” and “pants on.” 
• Soon your child may lift their arms on their own and even fill in the words when you pause.
• After you have the routine down, you can change the routine and see how your child responds. For example, you can put their socks on their hands!

Help your child learn concepts by using them during the bath/shower.

• Teach nouns by naming bath items: “towel,” “faucet,” “washcloth,” “soap,” etc.
• Name body parts and locations such as “foot,” “nose,” “left” or “top.”
• Use actions words like “rub,” “rinse,” “drip,” “pour” and “dry.”
• Describe: “The bubbles are on top of the water” or “The shower is like rain.”
• Give directions: “Lean back” or “Close your eyes.”
• Pretend: “Splash like a duck” or “Swim like a fish.”

Mealtime is a great setting for children to learn the rules of conversation. In the morning, talk about plans for the day. At night, talk about what happened that day.

• Name things like foods, food groups, utensils, kitchen appliances
• Use words to describe opposites like: cold/hot, sweet/sour, liquid/solid. “This soup is hot.” “The milk is cold.”
• Use words to describe (adjectives) colors and shapes of food like: crunchy, mushy, cold, smooth. “The carrots are orange.”
• Ask questions like: “Do you want more juice?” or “Do you want your food cut?”

Play routines are another way to support your child's communication. Try these examples:

• Open a jar of bubbles, take out the wand and blow the bubbles. Describe what you are doing. Repeat every time. “Open bubbles, wand out, blow bubbles.”
• Encourage your child to pop them. Say, “pop-pop-pop” while they do it.
• You can show your child what to do to keep the routine going. Point to bubbles and say, “bubble.” Then they hand the bubble container to you.
• Pause between steps and wait for your child to fill in the blanks of your routine. Wait and your child may say, “open.” You say, “blow…” and your child may say, “bubbles.”

• Take turns stacking blocks with your child.
• Use simple language such as, “block on.”
• After you have done this routine a while, pause just before you put the block on and wait for your child to make eye contact with you or say, “block on.”
• When all the blocks are stacked, your child gets to knock them down. Say, “fall down” or “crash” or “boom.”
• Keep the routine going and say, “do again” or “more blocks.”
• Then say, “my turn” when you put your block on the stack.

After every playtime, make a routine of cleaning up toys with your child.

• Pick up a ball and say, “all done ball.” Then put the ball in the toy chest.
• Do this for several toys, and then hold up a toy and pause. See if your child will imitate, “all done.”
• You can add a clean-up song to your routine.
• You can turn a lot of activities into joint action routines. Try these other ideas: peek-a-boo, hide-and-seek, tickles, chase, and tug of war.

Song-gesture routines are similar to the joint action routines. With this routine, instead of using objects, you use songs with repetitive words and gestures. You can sing common songs or make up your own songs to go with your routines.

Songs to try: “Itsy-Bitsy Spider,” “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” “Wheels on the Bus,” “Row-Row-Row Your Boat,” “Ring around the Rosie” and “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.”

• Sit face to face with your child. Smile and use big facial expressions.
• Encourage your child to copy the gestures that go with the song.
• You can help your child make some of the gestures if they can't do this on their own. Over time, reduce your support as your child becomes more independent and begins using the gestures on their own.
• Pause throughout the song to see if your child makes eye contact, smiles, fills in the word, or performs the gesture in order to keep the routine going. For example, when singing, “Old McDonald Had a Farm” say, “E I E I” and pause to allow your child to say “O.”
• Sing slowly to give them time to process the melody, gestures and sounds.

These books encourage communication and social interaction in children. You may find them at your local library, bookstore or online.

• More than Words: A Parent’s Guide to Building Interaction and Language Skills for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder or Social Communication Difficulties, 2nd edition
  Fern Sussman, 2012.
• Learning Language and Loving It
  Elaine Weitzman and Janice Greenberg, 2002.
• The New Language of Toys: Teaching Communication Skills to Children with Special Needs, a Guide for Parents and Teachers, 3rd edition
  Sue Schwartz, 2004.