Early communicators

There are lots of skills involved in communication and to be able to help young children in their communication development we need to understand:

• what early communication skills are.
• how adults can support their development.

You might also find it useful to refer to the Communicating Kids pages to see what skills we might expect to see at different ages and stages of early childhood.

We know that life with little ones is busy but we also know that children make the best progress when strategies are used regularly and consistently by all the people around them. Our daily activities pages give ideas about how you can use strategies to support your child’s communication development in your everyday life.

Our Resource Library has lots of useful and very accessible information on:

• Joint attention
• Tuning into your child
• People games
• Commenting
• Giving choices
• Using signs and gestures