Attention and listening
Good attention and listening skills are vital for joining in with activities and interacting with other people. They are the foundation that underpins all language development.
Developing good attention and listening skills are essential to help your child to become a good communicator. These skills will also help your child understand and use language.
Play and social skills
Providing play opportunities allows children to explore and learn new things in fun and engaging ways.
Social skills are the skills we use every day to communicate and interact with each other.
This could be with words, or through:
- gestures
- facial expressions
- body language
Play is the way children learn about the world around them. Children need to have a variety of experiences to help them acquire language for thinking, learning and communicating.
Play can include:
- people play
- cause and effect
- construction
- pretend
- outside or physical play
- songs and stories
- messy play and crafts
The NHS Ayrshire & Arran app has a whole section on children and young people’s social skills, with lots of advice and support to help you and your child.
Pregnancy
Even before your baby is born, you can help their development. See our video below on the importance of talking to your bump when you’re pregnant.
Children aged 3 to 5 years old
Below are a few videos:
Children who find social communication difficult
Some children may develop play and social skills in a different way. This is often the case when a child is autistic or has a learning disability.
Children who find social communication difficult may:
- prefer to play on their own
- prefer to play with or talk about the same thing over again
- find it easier not to look at you
- not understand the words you use
- use different ways to communicate such as gesture, sign, pictures or a voice output device
Top tips for play
- Observe, wait and listen to see what your child is interested in.
- Get down and play alongside them, with whatever they are showing interest in.
- Use single words or short phrases to match what your child is looking at or playing with.
- People games such as peek-a-boo or tickle games are good at getting interaction started and developing turn-taking.
- Copy what your child is doing, using a similar toy.
- Add a new idea to the play, then wait. For example, if your child is rolling a car, you could use a different car, copy your child’s actions, then make the car crash and wait for your child’s reaction.
- Act out everyday activities to develop imagination. For example, have a teddy bears’ picnic, or pretend to go shopping.
Resources
- Bookbug (Scottish Book Trust)
- Learning through Play (LEGO Foundation and UNICEF) – a detailed look at strengthening learning through play in early childhood education programmes
- We’re here for you | Parent Club
Websites related to autism and neurodiversity: