Does your child produce playful sounds when playing or interacting with you? These sounds are the precursors to spoken language. We often say a noisy child will often become a verbal child. When working with early intervention clients, I often will ask about the types of sounds a child makes. From babbling to sound play, these vocalizations are the foundation for the production of spoken words. It is important to focus on imitation of speech sounds (e.g. ‘buh”, “duh”) and playful sounds (e.g. “moo”) to eventually encourage imitation of words. There are several examples of playful sounds including environmental and vehicle sounds, animal sounds, sounds of exclamation, happiness, and surprise.
Environmental & Vehicle sounds: car/truck sounds (varoom, beep-beep, honk-honk, getting gas sound-woosh!), train sounds (whoo-whoo, choo-choo), boat sounds (toot-toot), sirens (nee-noo-nee-noo), bells (ding-ding, ting-ting, ding-dong), crashing sounds (urch!-boom!)
Animal Sounds: I like to sing songs with animal sounds (e.g. Old McDonald, Baa-Baa Black Sheep). You can also play with farm animals or produce the sounds when you see pictures of the animals (Baa, neigh, moo, woof-woof, meow, oink, dog panting (ha-ha-ha).
Sounds of Exclamation, happiness or surprise/wonder: showing surprise/wonder (wow!, whoa-whoa, uh-oh, tah-dah, boo!, ahh, ooo!, aaaa!), pretending to sneeze (ah-choo!), showing disgust (ieww!, bleh!), laughing (ha-ha-ha, hee-hee-hee)
Playing and interacting is much more exciting for the child when you use playful sounds. For example, if I am helping a child build a tower with some blocks, I may say Whoa-Whoa and gesture that it may fall and when the child pushes the tower over, I may say “BOOM!” and then “uh-oh”. I do this over and over and eventually the child will also produce these sounds as well. The more a child imitates sounds the more prepared they are to imitate speech sounds and then words. Just pick a few playful sounds to start with and produce them throughout your day.
Reeni Krafft, M.A., CCC-SLP is a nationally certified Speech-Language Pathologist and the owner of Without Limits Speech & Language Therapy, Inc., a private practice located in Columbia, MD.