Early Messages: Facilitating Language Development and Communication

This video opens with an overview of language development and communication during infancy. Starting at birth, infants actively build connections between sounds, gestures, and meaning. As infants grow, their biologically built-in potential to learn language unfolds. The video underscores that this development is rooted in the child's family and culture. Through rich examples of infant-caregiver communication and infants' early language, it illustrates ten strategies caregivers can use to enhance communication and language development. These strategies include being responsive when infants initiate communication, engaging in nonverbal communication, using child-directed language, helping children expand language, supporting bilingual development, attending to individual development and needs, and engaging infants with books and stories. Also included with this DVD is a DVD Booklet.