We strongly urge parents of children with special needs to get all of the information they can. Taking part in an Infant Development Program or Early Childhood Tracking is one option. Attending workshops this one is another. A third way is taking courses on-line. We realize on-line courses have not traditionally been part of Native American culture, but at one point horses weren't part of our culture and we adapted to them.
Free on-line learning on child development in general can be found here at our Developmental Psychology course.
You can also get quite a bit more information on language development in our Caring for Our People Training workshop on Early Childhood Intervention, including an Even Dozen Ways to Teach Language to Children with Special Needs. In fact, we like it so well, we recommend you go there now. Go ahead. We'll wait.
There are a great many books on teaching your young child with special needs. Would like to mention a few we have found really helpful.
A Guide for Parents and Teachers: The New Language of Toys: Teaching Communication Skills to Children with Special Needs is full of ideas.
In the previous pages we talked about teaching your child sounds, exposing him or her to language. Once your baby has moved past two- and three-word sentences you can start teaching concepts such as larger and smaller, and cause and effect. Let's start with nesting blocks or rings. You put one block inside the next and, as you are doing it, repeat
"This one is smaller so it fits."
"This blue block goes inside the bigger, green block."
Watch your child play and give her the words for what she is doing.
"You are putting the red block inside the blue one. Good for you! "
What if you don't have toys like stacking rings, blocks of different sizes that fit inside one another? Look under your sink. Do you have pots and pans of different sizes? Tupperware containers? Plastic bowls that you bought for 99 cents each at Wal-Mart? Those will work just as well.
NEXT: Using every-day toys to teach language