One of the ways to help your child learn to communicate is to have interactions that go back-and-forth many times, with both of you being active participants. Researchers at Harvard University refer to these as “Serve and Return” interactions, which are like a game of tennis [1].
A tennis game starts with someone serving the ball, and the other person returns the serve. Then the ball is hit back and forth, with each player hitting the ball back to the other (known as a “rally”).
You can help your child by thinking of communication as a tennis game. The idea is for your child to start the interaction (serve) and then you respond to your child (return the serve). If you return the serve by saying and doing something related to your child’s message, it’s likely to get a conversation (rally) going.
Why is this important? Well, children who have more of these back-and-forth rallies have more activity in a part of their brain involved in producing and processing speech and language [2].
Here are some tips to help you get the game going!