In the early years, a child’s brain is growing and developing important new connections. Playing a tickling or a light-touch game is a fun way to talk about bodyparts while having fun together. This can enrich the speech your child hears.
You can use tickling with children of any age!
It takes infants some time to learn what language is for, and how to recognize the sounds of their languages. Most infants love tickling, or the sensation of a light touch, and they can start to form connections between your actions and the sensations in their body. Incorporating speech into this fun social game helps to build solid foundations for language learning.
Little ones are building up a collection of words they understand. By naming different tickle or light touch spots like “tummy” and “nose” you give little ones a chance to start recognizing these words, and forming connections between words and the world.
With their growing word knowledge, your little one can start predicting where the next tickle or light touch will come, and may even join in with your naming routine. This gives a great chance for practising recognition and speaking skills, all wrapped up in a fun activity.
As children’s language skills continue to grow, you can start using complicated words like “earlobe” or “eyebrow”! You can make your tickling or light touch games more complicated: ‘ I-say-You-tickle’ is a version where you name a bodypart, and your child tickles you there. ‘You-say-I-tickle’ is the opposite, where your child picks where to be tickled.
Goals. When you add body parts to the tickling or light touch games you play with your little one, you can boost the number of different words you say, and make your talk time super fun! This helps your little-one catch onto the information in a way that is meaningful.
How does it work. Some scientists now believe that the neurochemistry of the brain changes when we interact with a familiar person, and this changes the way that memories can be formed. This means learning is better when little ones interact with a live human than when they hear the same sounds on a TV or on a screen. Tickling is a naturally interactive activity that brings joy to adults and little ones, so it’s a great way to enrich your talking during a fun activity. Tickling also involves physical sensations in different bodyparts, so it’s a great way to help kids make word-to-world connections grounded in the feelings of their own body. Don’t like tickling? You can substitute a tickle for a light touch. It provides the same grounding for multisensory learning.
Key Point. Children learn best when they are engaged in fun interactions. There’s no need to teach-and-test words like ‘tummy’ ‘chin’ and ‘knee’ – if they are part of a fun game then children’s learning will emerge naturally!
Multilingual insights. Different languages have different ways of naming parts of the body. For example, some languages have just one word for hand-and-arm together, while other languages split them up. It doesn’t matter if you can name all of the same body-words across all of your languages. Rather, focus on making the game fun and interactive in whichever combination of languages that works best for you!
Further reading about play and language learning:
http://www.hanen.org/Helpful-Info/Articles/you-are-childs-best-toy.aspx
Read the science:
Abu-Zhaya, R., Seidl, A., & Cristia, A. (2017). Multimodal infant-directed communication: How caregivers combine tactile and linguistic cues. Journal of Child Language, 44(5), 1088-1116. FREE ACCESS LINK: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rana_Abu-Zhaya/publication/307510815_Multimodal_infant-directed_communication_how_caregivers_combine_tactile_and_linguistic_cues/links/5c34c58f299bf12be3b79afc/Multimodal-infant-directed-communication-how-caregivers-combine-tactile-and-linguistic-cues.pdf