RL.B Responding to Gestures and Simple Directions

In this sequence your child will learn to use her attending skills to follow simple directions. She will learn, in the first instance, by responding to gestures and words, and from there will go on to respond to words alone.

If your child lacks either the Fine Motor or the Gross Motor skills to follow these directions, you can delay this sequence until a little later, or if the physical problems are likely to persist, adapt the activities to include actions that your child can do. This may seem a daunting task, and certainly professional help would be valuable in such a case, but keep in mind that the main purpose of this group of skills is to teach your child the connection between words and objects, and between words and actions. What those words, actions and objects actually are is a secondary issue.

The skills in this sequence are all mastered in the first 18 months or so of normal development. This sequence forms a basis for the more complex and specific directions used in other Receptive Language Sequences.

As in Sequence RL.A, we do not usually distinguish here between teaching and practising in play and round-the-house situations. All the skills below can be taught in a variety of situations, and special teaching times should be set aside only when a child is not making progress.

Below we list all the skills in this sequence.