ABSTRACT
Children aged between two and a half and three years are often very chatty. They are delighting in their now confident ability to express themselves, they are interested in everything around them. They may talk to themselves and their toys, as well as to friends, siblings and adults, especially while deeply absorbed in play. This helps them to order and develop their thoughts and practise new vocabulary and sentence structure. Children receiving care from qualified early year's practitioners may be identified as having Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND) at any age, but communication needs are most often noticed between the ages of two and three years, when children are learning to speak or when they are settling into a pre-school or nursery class. Adults must send the messages that they want children to receive and work hard to ensure that they understand the signals the children are giving to them and interpret them correctly.
