Joining in with simple conversations: Support for children beginning to have conversations

An open chest with colours coming out and a symbol on the front.

Who is this advice for?

The following resources may be useful for children who are beginning to have conversations and their conversation style and interaction style might appear different. For example, within conversation your child might take a longer turn, speak about a small range of topics and talk about a topic in detail. This is a different style of communication to neurotypical communication, and our aim is not to change this, but accept this within an inclusive environment. To find out more about this, please refer to the 'Celebrating Autistic Neurodivergence webinar'

They will be useful if your child is:

  • using phrases to comment
  • beginning to have conversations

How will this advice support my child?

(setting staff can use this wording to write targets) 

These resources will support your child to be able to engage in conversations for topics they enjoy by:

  • commenting e.g. about their likes/dislikes
  • sharing information about the past and future

(The resources within this section are NOT designed to tell people how to act or behave – they are designed to support the child to be able to engage in conversations about topics that they enjoy should they want to. Please see section 5 ‘Social skills and friendships’ to learn more about different communication styles). 

 

Advice

Create a reason for your child to comment and model comments to suit their profile

Webinar: Encouraging comments for children with social communication differences.

  

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'Encouraging comments for children with social communication differences': Watch this 23 minute webinar explaining how to create reasons for your child to comment, model comments at your child’s language level and understand when and how to use questions with your child.

Download the 'Encouraging comments advice' sheet: Learn strategies that can be used in everyday play and routines to encourage meaningful, functional and spontaneous communication for a range of reasons.

Follow their interests, model conversational turns and comments about likes/dislikes

Webinar: Supporting conversation skills

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'Supporting conversation skills': Watch this 5 minute webinar to learn how to adapt your communication to engage in conversations with your child if they would like to.

Advice sheet on Supporting conversation skills: Learn how to adapt your communication to engage in conversations with your child if they would like to.

Share information about the past and future

Webinar: Supporting advanced conversation skills

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'Supporting advanced conversation skills': Watch this 9 minute webinar for tips to model new ways to communicate in conversation in a neuro-divergent affirming way for your child to use if they choose to do so.

Download the Supporting advanced conversation skills advice sheet: Tips to model new ways to communicate in conversation in a neuro-divergent affirming way for your child to use if they choose to do so

Support understanding and use of language using visual coding

Download the Visual coding advice sheet: Using Hertfordshire Integrated Visual Coding to support children to understand question words (e.g. Who? Doing? How? Etc.) and to answer questions.

Support and accept different play styles

Webinar: Understanding and supporting different play styles 

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'Understanding and supporting different play styles': Watch this 6 minute webinar to learn to understand and support different play styles. And, how to support others to value your child’s play styles and preferences.

Advice sheet: learn to understand and support different play styles. And, how to support others to value your child’s play styles and preferences.

Further support

Training for setting staff

Supporting children’s understanding of language, and vocabulary and grammar. The Speech and Language Therapy service provide a mixture of free face to face and virtual trainings.

We recommend the following trainings: 

Blanks Levels of questioning 
Narrative approach to learning language in the classroom

Access training from our Speech and Language Therapy team.

Support from Hertfordshire’s Speech Language Communication and Autism (SLCA) Team 

Staff can request training at a targeted level with no referral required. 

Specialist support also available via teaching staff referral to the SLCA team.

Go to how to request training.

Access training or workshops to support speech, language and communication needs in the classroom.

 

How can we help you?

  1. Work with us
  2. Our services
  3. Children's services
  4. Adult services
  5. Make a referral