A baby makes an “oooh,” squeals, or strings together a few playful sounds. What happens in the next few seconds may be more useful than filling the room with another minute of adult talk. Responding to baby babble can be as simple as copying the sound, smiling, and leaving enough quiet space for the baby…

A hearing test can tell whether a child detects a sound, but families often want to know something more practical: what happens when that sound becomes speech in a noisy classroom, car, or playground? New work involving audiobooks is pushing pediatric hearing assessment toward that harder question by studying how children’s brains respond to connected…

A child can tell elaborate stories at the dinner table and become unable to answer a familiar question once the classroom door closes. That contrast can confuse adults, but selective mutism communication is shaped by anxiety and setting; being able to speak comfortably at home does not mean a child can simply switch speech on…

Illinois families may soon reach an autism diagnosis through a professional already involved in many toddlers’ early-intervention services. A speech-language autism evaluation can now provide an additional diagnostic pathway for eligible children under age three, but the new access should not be mistaken for a shorter checklist or a less careful assessment. A child’s communication…

A communication support school transition can affect far more than a classroom assignment. For a child who uses AAC, receives speech-language services, or depends on communication accommodations, a school move can disrupt the tools and routines that make participation possible. Concerns around campus reassignment became especially visible after Texas education officials directed Houston ISD to…

ASL stories for children are becoming easier for families to find, and that matters because access is not only about seeing words on a screen. For many Deaf and hard-of-hearing children, signed storytelling can make a family movie feel more shared, more visual, and more emotionally available. Beginning July 20, Netflix and SignUp Media made…

Gestures and language understanding are closely connected because children do not listen with their ears alone. They watch hands, faces, body movement, rhythm, pauses, and voice tone to figure out what adults mean. That matters especially for children who find spoken language difficult to process. When adults add clear visual cues and a supportive tone,…

A parent does not need to ignore a child all day for a phone to change the rhythm of communication. The bigger issue is often smaller: a glance during breakfast, a notification during play, a scroll during bedtime, a reply during a child’s story. Those moments matter because early language grows through repeated, responsive exchanges.…

Children’s communication skills are not built by hearing words float through the room. They grow when a child asks, waits, listens, explains, disagrees, repairs a misunderstanding, tells a tiny story, and gets a real response from another person. That is why the screen-time conversation is starting to sound less like a fight over minutes and…

Screen time and toddler speech are now linked in one of the most stressful questions many parents ask: is the tablet helping, hurting, or simply filling a hard part of the day? The better answer is not built on panic. It starts with understanding what screens may replace when toddlers need words, turns, gestures, play,…

A familiar song can turn a quiet child into an active communication partner before a full sentence appears. Music and early communication connect because rhythm, repetition, gesture, and anticipation give children several ways to participate—not just one demand to speak clearly. The real value is not the song playing in the room. It is the…

A plastic elephant refusing to share a watering hole may look like a tiny drama, but it gives a child a safe way to rehearse a difficult social moment. Toy animals for social communication work because they turn invisible skills—waiting, noticing feelings, repairing conflict, and responding to another person—into actions children can see and control.…