Child’s development differs. Some are advanced while some are delayed. In the case of my 2 daughters, Deye was more talkative at 25-26 months and could sing more than 4 nursery rhymes including Bahay Kubo, but was able to walk at her 15 month. Ishi talks a lot too but majority of her words need careful understanding. At almost 25 months, she is also able to say her full name and sing half of Bahay Kubo, and was able to walk at 12 months and 2 weeks.
So how did I manage and encourage them to talk and sing at this age? One factor is our overseas set up with my husband. In able for me to update him about our girls’ latest antics, I record and send him the clips. After recording, I play the clip again and again and let the girls listen to and watch it, and let them know how good they were when they did it! That makes them do it more, again and again till they get the correct words and lyrics.
{Deye, my eldest at 24 months}
Aside from getting them to sing and talk till they feel bored (my bad!), I make a conversation with them during bedtime as if I am talking to an adult. I never used “tagalog” baby talks like papa (eat) or mamam (drink). Until now, I do this with Deye. Bedtime is our time for updates like she telling me what her classmates had told her and things like that, till she dozes off to sleep. I am following the same pattern with my youngest but of course, they are not the same and I will never expect for them to be the same. It need a lot of work and attention. It’s not like you buy gold coins online and you’re done!
Anyway, here are the rest of the activities that I do with them:
Count fingers.
Sing A-B-C.
Imitate them.
Throw kisses.
Wave and say bye bye as I leave the house for work. I even taught Ishi the famous John Lloyd’s “Ingat!” from the Biogesic TV ad, where John Lloyd salutes as he says “Ingat!”.
Introduce animal sounds and associate sound with a specific meaning: “The cat says meow meow.”
Know the body parts.
I could go on and on but so far those helped us a lot.
