Teaching Your Toddler To Follow New 1 Step Commands: Speech Therapy
Teaching your child to follow 1 step commands will help them stay safe and advance their understanding of language.
Most children begin to follow routine directions at around 12 months old. In this lesson, we’ll work on following 1 step directions that are outside your everyday routines, which most children start to do around 15 months.
At this stage, the goal is not for your toddler to follow directions ALL the time — just at least 75% of the time, with some help.
Most importantly, we want to help them truly understand the words you’re saying.
Speech therapy tips for helping your toddler understand 1 step commands
Tip 1 - Ask your child to follow the right kind of directions
First, let’s define what qualifies as a 1 step direction or 1 step command in speech therapy. For the purposes of this lesson, a one-step command:
should contain a specific verb (or action word) and a specific item or object
should not be part of an everyday routine
should serve a specific purpose (It helps if your child knows they are following your direction for a reason.)
An example of a 1 step command might be “Wash your cup” after drinking juice. This direction contains the action word “wash” and the object “cup.” This direction will probably make sense to your child; they are likely used to hearing “wash your hands,” but “wash your cup” is not part of their everyday routine. Finally, the direction has a reason — when something is dirty, you wash it.
Tip 2 - Help with gestures
At this stage, it’s okay to use gestures, act things out, or point to help your child successfully complete the direction. Make sure to repeat the direction as you do this.
If your child still has trouble completing the direction, you can actually show them what to do by modeling completing the direction yourself.
Tip 3 - Expand your child’s vocabulary while practicing with directions
One reason your child might not follow a 1 step command is that they don’t yet know the meaning of one of the words you used. In this case, you should help them learn the meaning of those words by saying them over and over within the context of your daily life. Repeating these target words while giving directions and during daily activities can help accelerate your child’s learning.
Get a free PDF copy of our 3 activity guide to practicing with 1 step commands at home ↓
At home activity to begin teaching your toddler new 1 step commands: Speech therapy DIY
Nature walk
Materials:
Bucket (or container of some kind)
Other optional items you have have around the house include:
Small spray bottle
Shovel
Kid binoculars
Kid flashlight
Kid magnifying glass
Set-up:
It’s time to go on a walk with your child, focusing on exploring things around you, not on the destination of where you’re going. Together, you will look at or look for things like: leaves, flowers, seed pods, plants, rocks, trees, bugs etc. Prepare yourself that this will be a slow-moving walk to explore, not to get your daily exercise in :)
If this feels like a hard activity for you/your child, you can try setting some boundaries that you will keep consistent, and will help you feel successful such as
Flowers stay on the plants, because they are still growing. We take flowers that fell on the ground.
Gentle hands. No touching spiky plants if Mama says they are sharp.
Walk or jump together, stay with Daddy.
You can also start this activity in just your own yard or patio, if a walk feels like too much, or if you’re concerned that your child will run away.
What to do:
Gather some materials that your child can use for exploring. You will use the bucket to let your child gather up some items they find to bring home. You may want to have the other exploring items in a backpack or bag, to pull out to use when your child starts to lose interest.
What to say:
Focus on giving your child a one-step direction to guide him toward a new idea/action to do while on your walk.
Simple more familiar ones such as:
Put the flower in your bucket
Give me one leaf
Jump off the step
These are not routine everyday directions, but use familiar words such as “put in” and “give me” that your child is likely to understand. Remember that you can gesture to the item, or point to it to give extra help if your child needs it.
More difficult one-step directions could include:
Go find one stick
Let’s go look for a bug
Water the flowers
Scoop up all the sand
Crunch that leaf up in your hand
As your child starts to lose interest, you may be able to extend the activity, or to have another variation to try tomorrow. These variations use the same premise as above, but are expanding their play just a little bit. These variation ideas include:
Small spray bottle with water: using this to “water” plants that you find as you go on your walk. This is a surprisingly exciting activity for toddlers/preschoolers.
Shovel: to scoop up dirt, rocks, sticks and move them or put them in the bucket
Binoculars: still the same activity to search for items, but having binoculars on while you do it is soooo fun when you’re little. Your child may let you take turns with the binoculars, or may not, and that’s ok too
Flashlight: again, same searching idea but with a flashlight to hone in on items. This can be done during the day, or for extra *magic*, at dusk/night.
Magnifying glass: another variation to look closely at items
Download our at home activity guide for learning 1 step commands with this activity + 2 more!
You May Also Like These At Home Speech Therapy Tips And Activities:
Created In Collaboration By:
Stephanie Keffer, MS CCC-SLP
Stephanie Burgener-Vader, MA CCC-SLP
Melissa Sartori, MS CCC-SLP
Yvette Faire-Bostick, MS CCC-SLP
© 2020-2022. Stephanie Keffer, MS CCC-SLP. All Rights Reserved.
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