Being able to understand question forms and being able to ask questions is an essential part of language development. It's the way we give and get information about our world. Questions lay the foundation for children to participate in conversations, demonstrate their knowledge and gather information.

Children with language delays generally have difficulty asking questions as well as answering questions and giving information. Below you will find some tips on how you can help your child learn to both understand and answer questions and also how to ask questions to gain information.

First, however it is important for you as a parent or caregiver to understand basic age guidelines for both asking and answering questions so that you guide your expectations accordingly. Please understand that if your child has a language delay these age guidelines will be lower depending on the severity of the language impairment.

Age Guidelines for Understanding/Answering Questions:

1-2 years understands "What's this?" and simple "Yes/No"
2-3 years understands "What doing?" ("What are you doing?")
understands simple "Who?" ("Who's that?")
understands simple "Where?" ("Where is daddy?")
understands simple "What" (function)? ("What do you do with a toothbrush?")
3-4 years understands simple "How?" ("How did you do that?")
understands simple "Why?" ("Why is he crying?")
understands simple "What…if?", "How many/much?" and "which?"
4-5 years understands "When?"
5-6 years understands most questions, but will still have trouble with complex and abstract questions.

A child's ability to understand and answer questions appropriately develops gradually. By including your child in conversation as much as possible you are providing a good model for your child of rich language including question forms. Is it not necessary for an adult however, to dominate the conversation with questions - both questions and comments are important. Modeling the answer is important as well, especially if you're not sure your child is understanding the question.

Here are some tips for helping your child answer questions:

• Make sure you have your child's attention before asking a question
• Include your child in as many conversations as possible
• Use as many comments as questions during your conversation
• Allow time for your child to think and respond to your question
• Make your child feel successful by asking the types of questions you know he can answer
• Model the answer if you think your child doesn't understand
• Ask simple questions while reading to your child ("What is that?", "Who is crying?", "What is she doing?", "Why did he do that?"…)
• Relate questions from a story back to your child's day ("She went to the store." "Where did you go today?")
• Ask questions by recapping events from your child's day
• Use visual cues if necessary to help your child understand

Age Guidelines for Asking Questions:

2 years        yes/no        "Johnny go?"
2 years        What           "What's that?"
3 years        Where          "Where's daddy?"
3 years        Who            "Who's that?"
4-5 yrs       Why             "Why is she crying?"
4-5 yrs       How            "How does that go in there?"
5-6 yrs       When           "When is daddy coming home?"

Asking questions is a way for us to gain information. Some children have difficulty asking questions. This could be because 1) they don't have the thinking skills to successfully request information, 2) they don't know how to put words together to form questions, or 3) they don't know how to ask questions to get the right information from their listener.

Here are some tips for helping your child ask questions:

• Give your child your full attention when he is trying to ask a question
• Be patient if your child is struggling putting thoughts into word
• If your child's word order is not correct for asking a question, model the correct word order
• As you're doing activities with your child, talk about what you're doing as you do it and "think" out loud asking and answering your own questions ("Where does this piece go?" - "Oh, it goes right here.")
• Engaging with your child in interesting activities will stimulate your child wanting to learn more
• Play games with your child where you ask him a question and then he has to ask you a similar question

Your child’s understanding and formulation of questions lays a foundation for developing skills in all areas of communication and processing information in his environment. Parents and caregivers have endless opportunities to give children practice in questioning and answering techniques. The mastery of answering and asking questions is invaluable to the early learner.

I want to introduce a wonderful CD and activity book set designed to listen to and engage your child in order to help enhance speech and language skills in a very indirect way. This CD and activity book set was created by Karin Howard, MA, CCC-SLP, a fellow speech/language pathologist, along with Alan Riva (Captain Al).

This is a 2 CD set with songs and play activities divided into 6 different areas or parts of speech and language development. As Karin puts it…"it takes all the parts working together to function well. For example, in order for a child to have good articulation (sound production), they need to have at least a core vocabulary. Likewise, children need to understand the information that they hear, see, feel, and smell (receptive language) in order to use expressive language proficiently". Therefore, this CD set was designed with that in mind and focuses on the six major parts or areas which are: articulation, vocabulary, expressive language, receptive language, voice, and social language.

These CD's are meant to be listened to with your child and they can be listened to with or without the accompanying activity books. Feel free to come up with your own activities too.

These CD's are:

• great for children ages 6 months to 5 years
• great for parents, grandparents, preschool classrooms and early childhood educators
• great to listen to in the car with your child/grandchild
• great opportunities for creative movement that promote quality time with children
• great for enhancing the 6 essential areas of speech and language development
• great for educating parents on how to facilitate emerging speech, language and cognitive development in their child
• great for preschool and kindergarten readiness skills
• great for inspiring your child to want to sing along!

To purchase your own CD and activity book set click on this Buy Now button and you will be taken to Paypal where you can pay just $23.95 using any major credit card.

Are you concerned that your child isn't talking as much as you think he should be by his age? Are other children in your playgroup talking a lot more and putting words together more easily and following directions better? There might be more going on than just "he's not picking up words" or "he's just a late talker." A receptive language delay/disorder may be an underlying factor in why your child is not picking up words as easily as other children around him.

Late talkers often have a receptive language disorder that is overlooked. It makes sense that a chid can't use words that he doesn't understand. Words don't make sense to a child who is not understanding fully the meaning behind the words.

Children who have difficulty understanding language or processing language have difficulty following directions. This can easily be mis-diagnosed as a behavior problem both at home and at preschool or day care. You might think that your child understands just fine because he understands many words. The breakdown typically occurs, however, when it's all put together in longer utterances and when simple nouns that your child may know individually are combined with adjectives and verbs and prepositional phrases.

Some characteristics of children with comprehension or processing problems include the following:

• repeating the last couple words of a question instead of answering it
• ignoring questions
• not following more than a single step direction
• giving off target (unrelated) responses to questions
• shaking head  for yes or no instead of answering
• may understand the individual words and vocabulary, but not when it's all put together in a longer direction or question

If this sounds like your child, I strongly encourage you to have your child evaluated by a speech/language pathologist or early intervention specialist. Click here to learn more about this process. The earlier your child receives intervention for this, the better off he'll be and the chances of overcoming this specific delay with be greater.

Ways you as parents can help at home:

• teach your child how to use words and what they mean - instead of just teaching them to say words
• teach words in context and generalize across many contexts (if you're talking about the word "shoe", use the word when you are tying his shoes and when you are putting your shoes on and when you go to a shoe store and see shoes or when you look at a book with your child and come across shoes, etc.)
• exaggerate words and actions while teaching meaning
• exaggerate vowels instead of consonants (b-a-a-a-l instead of b-b-bal)
• when giving a direction, break it way down if necessary
• shorten your sentences when giving directions and asking questions
• model the answer to help them learn how to respond and what you're expecting
• tell your child to do something - if he doesn't do it or doesn't understand, show him and then if necessary physically assist him
• don't just teach your child nouns, also teach verbs (action words), adjectives (descriptive words) and prepositions (location words)

In a subsequent post, I will address asking and answering questions with your child and what types of questions should be mastered by what ages.

I hope this article has been helpful. Please fill in below with any comments or questions you may have on this topic.

Thank you