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9+ Ways to Capture (and Keep) Your Toddler's Attention
- Gabrielle Fischer Posted On Feb 8, 2017 | Social-Emotional Learning
Getting a toddler to pay attention to what you’re saying can be frustrating. And if you expect them to follow directions, forget about it.
The thing is, you get it. You know that whether they’re 18-months or 3-years old, toddlers are easily distracted. It’s developmentally appropriate for them to have short attention spans and immature communication skills. You also know that these youngsters are exploring their independence. What mommy has to say can wait, right?
Well, not necessarily. It can be easier than you think to capture... and keep... your toddler's attention. Check out the 9 tips below...
1. Keep it simple
When you speak, they might be hearing the teacher from Charlie Brown, “Wah wah wah wah wah.” Maybe, instead of saying, “Brendan, darling, I’m hoping you’ll help mommy by putting these trains back in the box because we’re going to the store soon and….,” say ”Brendan, please put your trains in the box now.”
2. Be specific
The directive to “clean up the playroom” might overwhelm your child, especially if there’s a floor full of tracks, engines, dolls, and fish shaped crackers. They just don’t know where to start, so they keep on playing. It might make more sense for you to start with something simpler like, “Put all of the tracks in this green box.” Then you can give the next directive.
3. Ride out their emotions
If your toddler is acting out because they’re really angry or tired, they’re definitely not in a good “head space” to listen to you. Be patient and validate their feelings. It works better than criticizing them for crying or not listening. Then you can move on to what you’d like them to do.
4. Meet them at their level
Instead of yelling something from the other room, move to where they are. Crouch down to their level and look them in the eyes. This gets their attention while also letting you know they are ready to listen.
5. Make them part of decision
Even though they’re young, toddlers like to make decisions. With a toddler, though, you can’t ask them an open-ended question like, “What do you want for lunch?” It’s better when they have two options, such as “Would you like grilled cheese or a turkey roll?”
6. Use the word when
Toddlers want what they want and they want it now, and even though you’ve asked them to put their crayons away 10 times, they’re perfectly willing to leave them all over the table if you’ve told them you’re taking them to the park. That’s when you say, “When you pick up your crayons, we’ll go to the park.” Then they know that the park is contingent upon their compliance.
7. “Repeat after me”
Building listening skills involves receiving and giving information—and it takes both focus and practice. When you’ve asked them to do something, have them repeat back what you’ve said by saying, “What does Mommy want you to do?”
8. Give positive feedback
Why not compliment your toddler when they’re doing a great job listening? It’s so easy to point out when they’re not listening, but positive reinforcement can help them make better choices (i.e. listen!) during future interactions.
9. Make listening fun
There are some delightful things you can do to help your toddler develop listening skills:
- Use a puppet to talk to them about anything. It works on children’s TV shows, right?
- Set up a treasure hunt. They have no choice but to pay attention and follow your directions if they want to find rewards.
- Give your activity a theme song. In addition to being silly, it can help them learn and make connections. It makes cleaning up less boring for you, too.
- Read together. This might be the perfect way to help your child engage and listen while spending quality time with you.
- Play Games. Practice with games that require listening skills, like name that toddler tune or I spy.
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Toys for Talking- Peekaboo Learning Farm The Learning Resources Peekaboo Learning Farm is my daughter's new favorite toy, and I can't say that I'm surprised! It makes learning so much fun, and there are a multitude of ways to play with it. Her favorites include making me sing Old McDonald while she opens up each barn and matching the animal finger puppets to the pictures in one of her farm themed books (Click here for our favorite!). Like I said...so many opportunities.
What does the Peekaboo Learning Farm include?
- 5 colorful barns
- 5 adorable finger puppet farm animals (cow, horse, pig, chicken & mouse)
How do you use the Peekaboo Learning Farm?
The Peekaboo Learning Farm includes numbered, colorful barns that can be used to work on color identification, counting, matching, sorting, and more. Children are able to develop their fine motor skills by opening the colorful barns to find a farm animal finger puppet inside. The Peekaboo Learning Farm even encourages children to engage in imaginative play.Where can I find it?
You can find it at Learning Resources HERE or at Amazon HERE.How can you use the Peekaboo Learning Farm to encourage speech and language development?
For receptive language development?
- Following directions: Make following directions fun with the Peekaboo Learning Farm. Have your child follow directions, such as, "give me the chicken," "open the blue barn," or even "take out the mouse and make him eat."
- Answering Yes/No questions: Before having the ability to answer Wh- questions, your child must be able to answer yes/no questions regarding things they want, objects, and actions. If your child is working on the concepts of yes and no, ask your child, "do you want the blue barn?" You could also make it a little silly to see if your child can answer yes/no questions regarding the function of the Peekaboo Learning Farm (Examples: should I eat the barn? should I kiss the cow? should I open the barn?). Want another fun idea? Pair this toy with a farm themed book. Look at the animals on the pages of the book, and ask your child if they match the animals in the barns (i.e., "Is this a pig?").
- Answering Wh- questions: Work on who, what, where & why questions while playing. Build comprehension by asking your child questions like "what is the mouse doing?," "who is in the red barn?," "where is the pig?," "why is the pig sleeping?" etc.
- Understanding spatial concepts (in/on/off/out): Work on these early developing spatial concepts by having your child take the roof off the barn, putting the roof on the barn, taking the animals out of the barn, or putting the animal back in the barn.
- Building memory skills: Play a memory game! Hide the animals in the different color barns, and see if your child can remember which animal is in which barn. Then have your child hide them for you to guess!
For expressive language development?
- Practice animal sounds: Learning animal sounds is fun, plus animal sounds are often comprised of early developing sounds, making them easier for children to say! Encourage your child to imitate you saying each animal sound. You can even try singing Old McDonald while opening up each barn. Be sure to pause at the end of the song, and wait for your child to fill in the blank (Example: here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a....)!
- Farm animal vocabulary: Talk about the different farm animals in each barn, and see if your child can label them.
- Requesting: Have your child request for the barns, animals or to open each barn. Depending on how much expressive language they have, they could use a simple word such as, "open" or "more," or a phrase or sentence like, "I want open" or "Can I have the purple barn?"
- Commenting: Encourage your child to comment throughout play. Model appropriate comments while playing with your child. Use language like, "I see a blue barn, what do you see?"
- Use of prepositional phrases: Place the animals in different locations and have your child use phrases to describe their locations. Put them in the barn, out of the barn, on the roof, or behind the barn.
- Vocabulary of action words: Pretend that the animals are doing different things and ask your child what each animal is doing. Depending on your child's vocabulary, you can focus on simple verbs like eat, sleep, and drink, or be more creative and use of verbs like swing, hop and slide.
For play development?
- Pretend play: These barns provide so many pretend play opportunities. Children can use their imaginations to pretend that the animals are eating, sleeping, playing, or even having a birthday party! The possibilities are endless!
For social language development?
- Turn taking: Develop turn taking abilities by asking your child if you can have a turn opening the barns.
- Asking questions: Model appropriate questioning during play by asking your child questions like, "What barn do you think the cow is in?" or "What is your favorite color barn?" Encourage them to ask you questions back!
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What does Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog include?
- 2 piece hedgehog
- 12 peg shaped quills
How do you use Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog?
Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog has lost his quills! Children can take turns putting the hedgehog's peg shaped quills into his back and then pulling them right back out. In addition to all of the speech and language skills listed below, this toy can help children build:- Fine motor skills
- Counting skills: Have your child practice counting each quills or placing them in numerical order. There are numbers on each quill!
- Sorting skills: Practice sorting the quills by color or make it even more complex by having your child sort them into warm vs. cool color categories
Where can I find Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog?
You can find it on Amazon HERE.How can you use Spike the Fine Motor Hedgehog to encourage speech and language development?
For receptive language development:
- Following directions: Build your child's ability to follow directions by telling them which quill to put in or take out (Examples: "put the red quill in!" or "take the purple quill out!").
- Understanding spatial concepts (in/on/off/out): Work on these early developing spatial concepts by having your child take the quills out of the hedgehog, put the quills on the hedgehogs back and in the hedgehog's body. You could have even more fun by pretending the hedgehog lost all of his quills and hide them around the house! Have your child look for the quills and talk about where they found them (Examples: under the couch, in the sink, behind the bookshelf).
- Understanding quantitative concepts (all/none, more/less, most/least, one/all): Count the quills with your child and take turns placing the quills in the hedgehog's back with your child. Talk about whether you or the hedgehog have most of the quills (or who has the least amount of quills.)
@my_sensoriumFor expressive language development:
- Labeling colors: This hedgehog's colorful quills are a perfect way to help your child learn their colors! Label each color while your child is playing with the different colored quills. Bring in other toys that are the same colors as the quills and sort them so your child can generalize the color names to other items! (*Side note-Children begin to recognize colors at around 18 months and continue to develop this skill through 2 years of age. By three years of age, your child should be able to label at least one color).
- Requesting: Hold the quills so that your child must request in order to get one. Whether they have a little bit of language or a lot of language, you can work on requesting in the following ways:
- If your child's not yet talking: Ask your child "who want's it?" and have your child gesture place their hand on their chest to gesture for "Me!" If they don't gesture independently, take their hand to help them perform the gesture and say "me." Children learn best through our models!
- If your child only has a little bit of language: Encourage your child to use one word to request. Have them use words like "me," "more" or even "quill" to ask you for each quill.
- If your child has some phrases: Support your child's use of phrases to request by working on "I want" phrases. First, model these phrases for your child by asking your child for the quills by saying, "I want quill" or "I want red." Then encourage your child to do the same!
- If your child is perfecting their language: Work on grammatically correct questions with your child. Have your child ask for each quill by saying, "can I have a quill?" or "may I have the red quill?"
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- Functional use of objects: Your child can practice demonstrating the functional use of objects, by putting the quills in and then taking them out.
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“Be Careful! Scissors are DANGEROUS!” or something along those lines is what parents usually shout when they see their little ones holding scissors in their hands. While I don’t disagree with the statement by any means, I want to share all of the ways scissor skills are so important for development, as well as all of the fun ways we can incorporate underlying scissor skills into everyday play…even for the youngest of our learners!
Using scissors efficiently requires a lot of motor planning, coordination, and dexterity. Before a student can successfully use scissors, there are many underlying skills that can be worked on and strengthened so that we can set up the student for optimal success. There are so many ways that we can interact and play with our kiddo’s to help develop the many different motor control areas!
Grasp/Release:
Activities that promote opening and closing of the hands and fingers such as using tongs, tweezers, clips, squeezing, etc.Two-handed Coordination:
Activities that promote the use of both hands together such as tearing paper and peeling and sticking stickers.Hand and Finger Strengthening:
Dough, putty, tweezers, tongs, spray bottles, stress ball squeezes, etc.Visual Skills:
Activities that promote active and intentional use of the visual system such as eye-spy, hidden pictures, following targets with eyes (rolling a ball and following eyes, marble tower, etc)When introducing scissors for the first time, spring loaded scissors are extremely helpful and can ease the introduction. The spring mechanism will “bounce” back the blades to reduce the amount of strength and coordination required, therefore, allowing kiddos who do not quite have the strength or coordination to still be able to cut! The best part is that once they outgrow the spring, you can “turn it off” and use them as normal scissors.
As a School-Based Occupational Therapy Assistant (COTA/L), we are often checking out the progression of scissor use in kiddo’s and here is a general milestone timeline that we use as reference.Starting at/around:
25-26 months
We like to see kiddos snipping with scissors in one place37-38 months
Cut a piece of paper in half41-42 months
Cut out a 5” line within ½” of the target49-50 months
Cut a 3” circle within ¼” of the target for 3/4th of the circle53-54 months
Cut out a 3” square within ¼” of the line While development isn’t always linear, we often see a general progression as outlined and the underlying skills are very important in achieving these skills.Here are some fun tips and hacks to help your little ones practice their scissor skills:
- Start with “snipping”. practicing small snips will help promote practice, as well as success! We want our kiddo’s to feel like they are successfully cutting and expecting them to open/close and move forward can be tricky at first.
- Using a more restrictive paper such as cardstock or thicker paper can help with control (much easier to hold the paper steady than flimsy paper or thin material). You can also steady the paper for them to reduce the amount of work and coordination.
- Along with restrictive paper, you can also use restrictive materials such as dough, putty, straws, paper plates, index cards, etc.
- Teaching “thumbs up” when holding the scissors by placing a small sticker or Washi tape to remind them which side is up – tell them to make sure they can see their sticker.
- When teaching the forward motion aspect, make it fun! Pretend like the scissors are alligators, trains, cars, etc and have them cut across a path or road.
Trace Ace Scissors has been a great addition to my therapy toolbox. With my little preschool students, we had fun learning to use a stencil. Mini crayons help reinforce proper pencil grasp as they color, stencils help incorporate the use of the two hands together, and we used cardstock paper so that it would provide more resistance and help stabilize the paper as they cut with the spring loaded scissors.
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