As their language skills develop, your child may start to better understand talk about things outside of the here and now, including things that have happened, might happen and more abstract ideas. Speech and language therapists call this 'decontextualising'.
It's a key skill for children to develop their communication to the next level, and a great way to start to build this understanding is to try to make time to talk to them about things that happened in the past.
Watch the film below for some ideas on how to strike up these sorts of chats.
As children get a little older, their memories develop to become more advanced and they'll start thinking and talking more about the things that have happened to them in the past.
You can help them to develop their understanding about the past and their ability to put these thoughts into words by speaking to them about things that have happened to them, you and people they know.
Talking about the past can help them to start building their vocabulary further and putting together more complicated sentences. It's a big milestone in their language learning.
Ways to get children thinking and talking about the past
- An easy way to try and start conversations using the past tense is to ask children questions about things they've done very recently, either that day or the day before. Ask questions like 'What did you see at the beach today?' or 'What was your favourite thing we did at the park yesterday?'
- Even if they aren't using the past tense yet, it's great practice to get them thinking about details of past events. You might ask 'How many ducks did you see?'
- Story books are a great prompt for talking in the past tense - ask them what happened at certain parts of a story they've just heard. For example, 'What did the princess do when she woke up?'
- Photographs are great for talking about the things people they know have done in the past. You can talk to them all about the events that took place in the pictures, e.g. 'This was at Christmas, Daddy made a cake'.
More about children's memories and talking about the past
- Dr Jane Gilmour explains all about how children's memories develops
- The 'can you remember? game' is great for putting children's short-term visual memory to the test
- We explore the benefits of using the past tense with children in our Speech Lab
In case you missed it
Talking about the past. video
A film modelling how parents can ask lots of questions to encourage children to talk about the past. Would support comprehension targets for past tense and early sentence construction at the 4 +word level
The tomorrow game - talking about the future. video
A film showing how parents can encourage talk about future events by asking lots of questions.
