When does your child learn to talk about the past?

Has your child learned to time travel yet? Around the time they start school, children’s worlds expand beyond the here-and-now. They learn to make longer sentences with words that relate to the past and future. Words like 'so','because', 'after', 'before' and 'when'. It’s an exciting sign that your child’s actually learning the structure of language! It’s still early days so they’ll probably make the odd mistake here and there, like using ‘why’ instead of ‘because’ and saying something like I ate it why I was hungry.

If they make a little mistake, don’t worry. They know what they want to say and they’re using everything in their language toolkit to try to say it. And, the good news is, the most important person to help your child’s language toolkit grow is… you! Researchers, studying conversations between children and their parents, discovered just how important the language children hear is to their learning. The results were simple:if parents use more complex sentences, so do their children! So does this mean, you have to recite Shakespeare to your little one and read them the dictionary from cover to cover?

Of course not. If you want to help your child become a language time traveller, just talk to them lots about things that happen in the past and future. Story books are fantastic for this. They’ll have more complex sentences than picture books. But telling them your own stories is brilliant for their learning too. They’re bound to make the odd mistake but as they get more experience at school and at home, they’ll pick it up in no time!