ABSTRACT
Helping children’s language development is important to facilitate their understanding of the meaning of other people’s words, to help them to express themselves, to help them to understand and manage their own behaviour and to understand that of others. Most parents, often quite unknowingly, model behaviour for children, for example, when a parent is feeding a very young child they often open their own mouth as they take the spoon towards the child’s mouth. Children’s self-esteem is closely tied to the messages that people around them have given them about themselves, so wrapping children in positive language is an important skill. Language competence depends on the way in which it is taught and all of the principles for teaching new behaviour are relevant to language learning. Sometimes problem behaviour happens because, although children’s demands are not inappropriate, the method of making the demand is.
