Loving Language
At Indigo, we empower families through innovative, evidence-based and family-informed learning and childcare solutions. We aim to support families and communities by improving health, wellbeing and learning, giving children the best possible start in life. We are committed to raising attainment and building resilience through whole-family support and our Family Matters and Loving Language programmes have been created in response to that.
The Indigo Experience describes how we do things at Indigo. It involves high-quality language and communication support in all interactions within the services as well as sharing these values with our families and wider community. We know that early speech, language and communication development has lifelong outcomes and our Loving Language programme focuses on improving the language and communication skills of all our children.
Language and communication are essential for:
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Communicating needs and feelings
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Building relationships with family and friends
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Learning and development
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Positive mental health and wellbeing
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Future education and employment opportunities
Unfortunately, many children have unidentified speech, language and communication needs and there is an increased risk associated with the attainment gap and lockdowns.
We know that strong positive speech language and communication development particularly under 3's but certainly under 5 has massive positive effects on children. Early identification and intervention, the long-term impact of language and communication difficulties can be greatly reduced or prevented. In the early years in particular we have an amazing opportunity to enrich the language and communication of all children to equip and empower them for life through working closely with our families, ensuring high-quality interactions in our services and sharing our learning with the wider community.
Key Messages of Loving Language
For children’s wellbeing, positive relationships and for the growth of language and communication it is essential to have interactions that are:
Loving
Enjoyable
Back & Forth
Language Rich
Loving, nurturing relationships are central to attachment and well-being. Children feel loved when adults are being responsive to their emotional needs and promote positive relationships.
Enjoyable interactions in everyday routines and fun experiences are where children learn language and communication best. Adults can follow the child’s lead, include their interests and join in the play the child’s way to make interactions enjoyable for the child.
Back & forth interactions means we aim for good turn taking between the children and adults. When children participate in back-and-forth interactions with their caregivers, their language skills improve. Creating opportunities for children to take a turn allows learning of the key communication building blocks. Turns children take may be looking, facial expressions, gestures, body language, making sounds or using their own words and sentences. Opportunities for back and forth interaction can be created within all everyday routines as well as playing, sharing nursery rhymes and books together.
Language Rich- Once loving, enjoyable, back and forth interactions are established, the optimum environment for language learning has been created. This is where adults can add quality language to the interaction. Highlighting language that is appropriate to the child’s stage of development will increase the child’s understanding and teach words and sentences they can use to express their own needs, opinions and stories as they grow. Using your imagination in play, looking at photos together, reading books, singing songs and having conversations are just some of the ways we can have language rich interactions and use strategies we know can expand and extend children’s language. FULL TOP TIPS HERE
What does Loving Language involve?
Helping communities to understand how and why speech, language and communication development is important in early years for life-long impact.
Sharing language and communication advice and activities at family and community events.
Sharing Loving Language information through leaflets, social media and our website.
Loving Language advice service for families.
Professional learning, coaching and advice to deepen knowledge, skills and understanding of speech-language development and practical strategies to support that including Hanen Teacher Talk and Makaton signing.
Supporting to create inclusive enviroments for the children which are communication friendly and language rich.
Establishing and supporting interventions to help to develop language and communication e.g Attention and Listening, Bookbug, Languageland and Communication Buddies.
Find out more information
If you would like to find out more information, Kirsty Dawson, our Speech and Language Therapist coordinating Loving Language, can be contacted by email on kirsty.dawson@indigogrp.com.
We have created this video alongside Paddy McKenna at Delve to capture what Loving Language is and its importance for our families and the community. We would like to thank all the families, children, young people and the Indigo team for participating in this video and certainly not least we would like to thank Paddy for creating the video and taking the time to come down and interview our team and families to capture Loving Language.
Credit: LinkedIn:@Paddy McKenna
X: @paddymck
Website: www.delvecollab.org
