Engaging and Social Communication!

Hello again! This week we are continuing to build on your child’s language development by promoting social communication and engagement. How do you gain someone’s attention? How do you begin and continue interactions? By engaging the person, by locking on to his or her eyes and attention and by staying with him or her. You teach your child how to engage by modeling the behavior. When you see your child, you establish eye contact at his or her level. Sometimes you may need to bend down; other times, you may need to lift the child up to your eye level. Then you talk to the child, greet him or her and point out interesting things in his environment. Social communication is not just executed with verbal exchanges; social gestures and other body movements are also used to communicate. Usually they take the form of greetings such as waving hello or good=bye, shaking your hear yes or no or blowing kisses. Infants and toddlers with Down syndrome usually have the desire to interact with people and are socially responsive, which will make teaching these skills fun!

What can you do at home? Practice waving hello and good-bye. Provide hand-over-hand assistance and help your child move his or her hand, Say things like, “Hello/Good-bye, Grandma!” Another activity would be to read a book with your child that highlights social gestures such as Good Night Moon.

Here we have Ellie and Grandma. Grandma is engaging Ellie with great eye contact, and she is using hand-over-hand to clap along while singing “Hello”