The Impact of Lockdown on Children’s Language Development

When I was studying for my Masters, I was also working as a SENCO for a large primary school which had a nursery on site.  

During the summer term, the nursery manager got very sick and I was asked to step in to cover.  This unfortunate event coincided with me having to do some research for my dissertation. So, I decided to take the opportunity to work with the preschool children who were moving up to the school that September.  

I researched how I could improve their language skills, knowing that poor speech development can have long term effects on learning. 

The memory of this time came rushing back to me last week when I heard the news. They reported that in a survey,

96% of schools were concerned that lockdown has had a huge impact on this age group and their speaking skills are not up to the level that you would normally expect for 4 and 5-year-old children.  

The report rightly pointed out that children would normally have spent time with grandparents and other family members outside their immediate household. This would have given children opportunities to be part of conversations where people were using different vocabulary and so they would have learned lots of new words. 

Also, children have not had the chance to go on play dates during lockdown, which is a huge opportunity to share and hear different words with their friends.  

The biggest, but most obvious shock for me was that face coverings have made it impossible for children to see someone’s lips move and so they were lacking that crucial part of learning how to speak and pronounce words correctly.  

When you think that lockdown has presented barriers to children learning to speak and listen in a typical way for about a quarter of their life,  no wonder schools are so worried about how this will affect their learning in the future.   

The government is concerned enough to be investing £18 million into catch up programmes for Early Years and Reception children across England.  

Having learned all I have about this age group and the importance of being able to communicate well, I would advise any parent to not wait for the catch up plans to get going.

I want to share with you how you can make the biggest difference to your little ones who are about to embark on the next important steps at school this September. 

• COMMENT on what is happening around you when you are with them.  Children can pick up as many as 3 new words a day and commenting to them is a perfect opportunity to encourage this.  Commenting is like being a narrator describing a scene in a book.  You can do this when you’re out and about with them seeing new things or simply at home when you're going about your normal routines. 

• QUESTION them using OPEN-ENDED questions.  These are questions that can’t be answered with a ‘YES’ or ‘NO’.  Open-ended questions tend to start with a ‘What’, ‘How’ or a ‘Why’.  Great open-ended questions can also start with ‘Tell me about…’ or an ‘I wonder if…’  These types of questions tend to start good conversation and will tune your child to listen and think before responding, creating a powerful learning moment. 

• EXPLAIN things to children even if they don’t ask a question.  Although it can be tiring to do this at times, remember children have a lot going on around them that they don’t understand.  This can be especially true of their feelings.  If your child is upset about something, explain to them what they are feeling and why.  

• EXPAND on what they say is a way of adding to what a child already knows a little about.  For example, if they say ‘I want to ride that bike’, you could expand this by saying ‘Oh yes, the red bike with the stabilizers on it, let’s wait for that little girl to finish riding it.’  This will encourage them to give more detail in their own conversation, which will help them to be and feel understood by others.

It is important to say that, with face masks still very much a part of our everyday lives, GET DOWN TO THEIR LEVEL to speak as much as possible. Children are learning to pronounce new words all the time and they need to see this modelled well from the people around them. It is easy to overlook this in our busy lives but we must take the time with our little ones. They need all the care and support we can give them after all they’ve missed out on this last year.