6 Tips for Communicating with Your Child While Wearing a Mask

Well, I’ve been off on maternity leave since February.  Did I miss anything??

Since I’ve been on maternity leave, the world has become a very different place!  I am now preparing to re-enter a very different working world than the one I left 8 months ago! 

Part of that new reality is that many of us are spending huge chunks of our days wearing masks (a very necessary measure for fighting COVID-19). While I am 100% for mask-wearing, my SLP brain can’t help but worry about all of the rich communicative information that’s being lost with our mouths covered.  I particularly worry about our youngest communicators and those who were already struggling with their speech and language development.  While the need to wear masks likely isn’t going away anytime soon, here are some tips on how to better communicate with your little ones while wearing a mask:

1)      Make sure you have their attention.  This is a very important first step.  Because wearing a mask can make it harder to tell whether you are talking, make sure that you’ve captured your child’s full attention by calling their name turning them to face you before you start to share information. 

2)      Get down to their level.  This is always a good idea, mask or not.  Bending down to speak with your child allows them to benefit more from the information conveyed through your eyes and also allows them to hear what you’re saying more clearly.  It’s also easier for you to gauge whether they’re following along with what you’re saying, and helps your child know that you are talking to them.

3)      Speak up.  This one’s pretty intuitive, but most masks muffle the sound of your voice.  Make sure to up your volume a little bit when trying to get your point across to your child.

4)      Slow down.  Reducing your rate of speech gives your child’s brain more time to take in the information you’re conveying.  That extra processing time is often necessary as they try to compensate for the lack of visual information.

5)      Use non-speech cues.  Use everything at your disposal to communicate.  Pointing to objects you’re discussing and being creative with your gestures may feel a bit silly, but can go a long way toward getting your point across.

6)      Tell your child how your face looks behind your mask.  One of the big things that children are missing when they’re communicating with people in masks is the emotional information conveyed on faces.  Instead, use your words to be clear about how you are feeling (e.g. Mummy has a frustrated face right now because I’ve asked you to please stay sitting in the cart).