What if the most important part of your child learning to talk happens before he ever says a single word?

Most moms don't start thinking seriously about speech until they're counting words: 18 months, 20 months, two years old. 

But talking is not the beginning of language development. Words arrive after months of listening, watching, babbling, gesturing, imitating, taking turns, experimenting with sounds, and learning that communication gets another human being to respond.

In this episode, I share a simple moment from a mothers' group that captures this beautifully. One nine-month-old baby was happily filling the room with a giant “AHHH!” Instead of treating it as noise, I joined her - and expanded what she was already doing. Within minutes, three babies were watching, listening, experimenting, and trying new sounds.

That is how learning happens.

We’ll talk about why language grows through participation, not performance, why questions like “What's this?” and “Can you say ball?” can easily become testing, and how ordinary moments throughout your day give your baby hundreds of opportunities to practice real communication.

I’ll also walk you through my Model → Shape → Practice → Fade framework and show you how it applies from babbling all the way into words and early phrases.

You don't need more speech drills.

You need to recognize what your child is already giving you — and know how to build from there.

FREE RESOURCE: The Top 10 Essential Skills Every Baby Needs Before Talking

Find the free guide in the show notes and learn what to watch for long before you're worried about word counts.

Because long before the words arrive, your child is already learning how to talk.

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Helpful links:

▶ Watch Talking Toddlers on YouTube:  Click HERE

📘 Download Erin’s free guide: 10 Essential Skills Before Talking

💬 Learn about parent coaching or schedule a Clarity Call:
CLICK HERE TO CONNECT

🌿 Visit Hyer Learning:
www.HyerLearning.com

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DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

Whining is one of the most common - and frustrating - phases of toddlerhood. But often, it doesn’t become a pattern because a child is “bad” or manipulative. It becomes a pattern because it works.

In this episode, Erin Hyer, speech-language pathologist and early child development specialist, explains why toddlers whine, why “use your words” is often too vague for very young children, and how parents can begin replacing whining with clearer, more effective communication.

This conversation is not about punishment, shame, or demanding more maturity than a toddler actually has. It’s about understanding how young children learn, recognizing what they are developmentally capable of, and knowing how to guide them with calm, simple, intentional support.

Erin walks through the difference between whining as a learned pattern and whining as a child’s best available communication in the moment. She also shares a practical framework parents can begin using right away: model, shape, practice, and fade.

If you’ve started noticing more whining lately — or you want to prevent it from becoming your toddler’s default way of communicating — this episode will help you understand the why behind the behavior and what your role is in shaping something better.

Because the little years really are the big years.

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Helpful links:

▶ Watch Talking Toddlers on YouTube:  Click HERE

📘 Download Erin’s free guide: 10 Essential Skills Before Talking

💬 Learn about parent coaching or schedule a Clarity Call:
CLICK HERE TO CONNECT

🌿 Visit Hyer Learning:
www.HyerLearning.com

Educational and coaching information only. This episode is not a substitute for an individual speech-language, developmental, behavioral, or medical evaluation.

Do you jump in the second your baby struggles? Wipe her face after every bite? Keep the TV or a podcast running because the house feels too quiet?

These are ordinary, loving habits — but sometimes our instinct to help, clean, entertain, or keep things moving can quietly take away the very experiences our babies and toddlers need to grow.

In this episode, Erin Hyer, speech-language pathologist and early child development specialist, walks through 7 loving habits that can slow your child’s development — and explains what is happening underneath each one.

You’ll learn why it matters to:

• give your child time to struggle and problem-solve
• prioritize floor time over too much container time
• protect quiet so language can develop
• let babies explore food without constant wiping and interruption
• give toddlers enough time to process and respond
• allow boredom and child-led play
• follow your child’s attention instead of constantly redirecting it

This is not about guilt or doing everything perfectly.

It’s about noticing the small patterns that fill your child’s day — and knowing when to step in, when to wait, and when a few extra seconds of space may be exactly what development needs.

Sometimes slowing down is exactly what gives your child enough room to do the growing.

🔗 GRAB YOUR COMPANION GUIDE HERE

Episode 162 SHARED ATTENTION: CLICK HERE

Helpful links:

▶ Watch Talking Toddlers on YouTube:  Click HERE

📘 Download Erin’s free guide: 10 Essential Skills Before Talking

💬 Learn about parent coaching or schedule a Clarity Call:
CLICK HERE TO CONNECT

🌿 Visit Hyer Learning:
www.HyerLearning.com

Educational and coaching information only. This episode is not a substitute for an individual speech-language, developmental, behavioral, or medical evaluation.

Because the little years are the big years.

What is stealing your toddler’s attention?

If your child seems constantly distracted, overly active, emotionally reactive, or unable to stay with one activity for very long, the answer may be more complicated than simply “they need to learn to focus.”

In this episode of Talking Toddlers, Erin looks at four powerful influences shaping a young child’s developing attention: predictable daily rhythms, restorative sleep, screens and overstimulation, and meaningful play and participation.

You’ll learn why attention is not something we can demand from a toddler, why being still in front of a screen is not the same as developing healthy attention, and how sleep, family rhythms, real-life responsibilities, and open-ended play all influence a child’s ability to regulate, learn, communicate, and stay engaged.

Erin also shares why she believes we need to look much more carefully at the environment surrounding a child before quickly labeling problems with attention or behavior. A developing brain has a history—and patterns of sleep, stimulation, movement, connection, and participation begin long before a child reaches school age.

Most importantly, this is not about blaming parents or creating another list of things to worry about. It is about helping you recognize how much influence you already have through the ordinary rhythms of home life.

Because attention is not built by repeatedly telling a toddler to “pay attention.”

It grows through thousands of everyday experiences where a child is rested enough, regulated enough, interested enough, and involved enough to remain present.

And when attention grows, so do learning, connection, participation, and language.

Helpful links:

▶ Watch Talking Toddlers on YouTube:  Click HERE

📘 Download Erin’s free guide: 10 Essential Skills Before Talking

📞 Book a Clarity Call with Erin — Click here and let's talk. 

🌿 Visit Hyer Learning:
www.HyerLearning.com

Educational and coaching information only. This episode is not a substitute for an individual speech-language, developmental, behavioral, or medical evaluation.

Your toddler snatches a toy. The daycare flags it. 

Another mom clocks it at a playdate. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a question starts to form: is something wrong with him?

Nothing is. He's just being asked to do something he isn't built for - yet.

In this episode, I break down the real difference between turn-taking and sharing — two skills that get talked about like they're the same thing, but develop on completely different timelines.

You'll learn:

• Why turn-taking can start as early as 12 months — long before real sharing is even possible
• The honest age-by-age timeline for when turn-taking, and eventually sharing, actually shows up (it's later than most people think)
• Why genuine sharing doesn't reliably emerge until somewhere after your child's third birthday
• How to use the Three P's from episode 161 to build this skill at home
• Why what gets called "bad behavior" is often just a brain still under construction

This one also gets personal. Almost forty years into this work, I share what the last three decades have actually taught me about the systems built to manage a room of toddlers — not to understand your individual child.

New here? I'm Erin Hyer, a speech-language pathologist, with almost forty years working with toddlers and the families raising them. 

This episode builds on episode 161 (The Three P's) and episode 162 (Joint Attention) — you don't need to have heard those first, but they'll fill in the fuller picture.

Grab the FREE one-page Turn-Taking & Sharing Timeline

Next week - episode 164 - we’ll sort through why some toddlers can settle in and focus - while others can't get there at all — and it has a lot less to do with willpower or personality than you'd think.

Helpful links:

▶ Watch Talking Toddlers on YouTube:  Click HERE

📘 Download Erin’s free guide: 10 Essential Skills Before Talking

💬 Learn about parent coaching or schedule a Clarity Call:
CLICK HERE TO CONNECT

🌿 Visit Hyer Learning:
www.HyerLearning.com

Educational and coaching information only. This episode is not a substitute for an individual speech-language, developmental, behavioral, or medical evaluation.

You've been narrating everything. Labeling. Reading. Filling the room with language. 

And nothing seems to be sticking.

That's because your words only land when your child's attention and yours are on the same thing, in the same moment. 

It's called shared attention — and you're already doing it without knowing how much it matters.

In this episode I unpack what shared attention actually looks like between 12 and 24 months, the difference between a request and a shared moment, the connection to autism screening, and the one shift that makes your words actually land. Plus the discipline of the wait — counting to five so your child's brain has room to respond.

One skill. One shift. Two minutes a day.

Helpful links:

▶ Watch Talking Toddlers on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@HyerLearning

📘 Download Erin’s free guide:
https://hyerlearning.myflodesk.com/skillsfortalking

💬 Learn about parent coaching or schedule a Clarity Call:
CLICK HERE TO CONNECT

🌿 Visit Hyer Learning:
www.HyerLearning.com

Educational and coaching information only. This episode is not a substitute for an individual speech-language, developmental, behavioral, or medical evaluation.

Why does your toddler hit, bite, or throw things—even when you are trying to parent calmly and consistently? Toddler hitting and biting may look like a discipline problem, but for many young children, it begins as a communication gap.

Your toddler is not necessarily choosing to be “bad.” He may be using his body because the language, regulation, and impulse-control skills that should replace the hitting have not developed yet.

In this episode of Talking Toddlers, Erin Hyer, licensed speech-language pathologist with nearly four decades of clinical and real-life experience, explains why consequences alone cannot teach a skill that has not yet been built.

You’ll learn:

•  why hitting can function as communication 
•  what may be happening before the moment of impact 
•  why repeated correction often fails 
•  how presence and prevention help build the missing skill 
•  what parents can begin doing instead of simply saying, “Don’t hit” 

The goal is not to excuse the behavior. The goal is to understand it well enough to teach your toddler a safer, more effective way to communicate.

Because you cannot correct your way to a skill that has not been installed.

Helpful links:

▶ Watch Talking Toddlers on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@HyerLearning

📘 Download Erin’s free guide:
https://hyerlearning.myflodesk.com/skillsfortalking

💬 Learn about parent coaching or schedule a Clarity Call:
CLICK HERE TO CONNECT

🌿 Visit Hyer Learning:
www.HyerLearning.com

Educational and coaching information only. This episode is not a substitute for an individual speech-language, developmental, behavioral, or medical evaluation.

Your toddler isn't talking yet — or at least not as much as you think he should be. And every piece of advice you've found tells you to do more or wait it out. 

Neither one is the answer.

There's a sequence to how talking develops. It doesn't start with words — it ends with them. And if nobody's handed you that sequence, you're either frozen or doing everything at once with no idea what's actually moving the needle.

In this episode, Erin walks you through the staircase that leads to talking — from connection at the bottom to words at the top — and gives you a clear, honest way to figure out exactly where your child is standing today.

This is the third episode in the Cluster 1 series. Episode 158 covered serve and return. Episode 159 covered why waiting doesn't work. This one is the payoff: what to actually build, and where to start.

👉🏻 Link to Episode 158 Click Here

🧡 Link to Episode 159 Click Here

Share this with the mom who's been told to relax — and can't shake the feeling that now is the time to pay attention.

📘 FREE GUIDE — The 10 Things That Come Before Talking: CLICK HERE 

📞 Book a Clarity Call with Erin — Click here and let's talk. 

📩 Join the INSIDERS list — Screen-Free Summer Activities 

Talking Toddlers | Erin Hyer, M.S. CCC-SLP Early intervention. 

Prevention over remediation. Real information for the first three years.

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DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: [email protected]
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

Everyone keeps telling you not to worry. "He'll talk when he's ready." 

You smile, you nod — but somewhere underneath, your gut isn't buying it.

Trust that. Because "ready" is the wrong word — and "wait and see" is not the gentle, neutral choice it pretends to be.

After almost forty years with toddlers and the families raising them, Erin Hyer, speech language pathologist, takes on the second big myth worried parents are handed: that talking just shows up on its own, once a child decides he's ready. 

It doesn't. Children don't talk when they're ready — they talk when they're built for it.

In this episode, Erin unpacks why waiting feels like the kind, patient thing to do — and what it quietly costs. She walks through the difference between "ready" and "built," the honest truth about which late talkers really catch up (and why no test can tell you which group your child is in), the third option between panic and waiting, and how to find where your child is on the path right now.

You'll walk away understanding: → Why "he'll talk when he's ready" sounds kind — but isn't neutral → "Ready" vs. "built": what actually comes first → The third option between panic and doing nothing → The real story on "catching up" — and why it can't be predicted → What to watch for, and where your child is right now → The one thing waiting spends that you can never get back

Share this with the mom who's been told to relax — and can't shake the feeling that now is the time to pay attention.

📘 FREE GUIDE — The 10 Things That Come Before Talking: CLICK HERE 

📞 Book a Clarity Call with Erin — Click here and let's talk. 

📩 Join the INSIDERS list — Screen-Free Summer Activities 

Talking Toddlers | Erin Hyer, M.S. CCC-SLP Early intervention. 

Prevention over remediation. Real information for the first three years.

─────────────────────────────

DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: [email protected]
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com

You talk to your toddler all day long. You narrate everything. 

And still — he's not talking, or not very much. 

So you do what everyone tells you: talk to him even more.

After almost forty years with toddlers and the families raising them, here's what Erin Hyer, speech-language pathologist, can tell you: talking more isn't the fix.

Language isn't built by the number of words you pour in during the day — it's built by the back-and-forth between you and your child.

In this episode, Erin unpacks why "just talk more" is the advice every worried parent hears, where it came from, and why it quietly misses what actually matters.

She breaks down the famous "thirty-million-word gap" and what the research that followed really found, why screens can't build language no matter how "educational" they look, and the one small shift you can start today.

You'll walk away understanding: 

→ Why talking AT your child isn't the same as talking WITH him 

→ The "thirty-million-word gap" — and what came after it 

→ Why screens and apps don't build talking 

→ What "serve and return" is — and how to start it at breakfast, bath, and bedtime stories 

→ The one shift that does more than a thousand more words

Share this with every mom wondering why her little one isn't talking yet.

 📘 FREE GUIDE — The 10 Things That Come Before Talking: CLICK HERE 

📞 Book a Clarity Call with Erin — Click here and let's talk. 

📩 Join the INSIDERS list — Screen-Free Summer Activities ─────────────────────────────

Talking Toddlers | Erin Hyer, M.S. CCC-SLP Early intervention. Prevention over remediation. Real information for the first three years.

DISCLAIMER:

This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your pediatrician or a qualified health provider with questions about your child’s development or health. The views shared are based on Erin Hyer’s professional experience and are intended to support informed parenting, not to replace individual consultation or care. Every child and family is unique — please use your discretion and consult trusted professionals when making decisions for your child.

📩 Questions: [email protected]
 🌐 www.HyerLearning.com