Forgotten Functional Words
When teaching your little one new words, most parents focus on nouns (e.g., car, ball, book, etc.), labeling the items around them. In my social media posts and blogs, I encourage parents to also focus on verbs (e.g., jump, dance, bounce, etc.) since verbs are also important and children can imitate the movement as well as the word.
BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE.
There are so many functional words that are forgotten, and they are SO important for language development for a lot of reasons. They help with functional communication of wants and needs, they are short, fun, and easy to say words, AND they are words that can be generalized to many different activities, making them easier to learn and use!
COME ON LADY- TELL ME WHAT THEY ARE!
Ok, ok. Here’s the list:
Out
In
On top
Off
Open
Close
Go
Stop
Uh, oh
Down
I would argue that these words are even more important than common nouns because they serve a better purpose! Plus, these words can be used in everyday routines effortlessly (e.g., taking the laundry out, putting the dishes in the dishwasher, going up/down the stairs, putting the plates on top of the table, etc.) And if you’re clumsy like me, you say “uh oh” a lot!
Think about how often you act out one of the words in the list above versus the amount of time you interact with a “ball.” It’s probably 10 times more AT LEAST. This goes to show you that you can work on modeling language concepts in every day activities, and you don’t really need toys to do it!
So, take this list of words and start modeling them in your everyday and see how your little one picks up the language!
