Communicative development involves children learning how to convey a message to another person and how to respond to it. This does not have to be only through spoken language, but can also be through gestures or facial expressions. Children do this from birth, when they interact with and respond to their parents. As children grow up, they develop various communicative functions through interaction with their environment, such as making eye contact, sharing experiences, asking for help, asking questions, answering questions, waiting their turn, greeting, empathising with others and listening to others. Above all, communicative conditions form the basis for communicative development.
The 5 communicative conditions are:

• Eye contact
• Turn behaviour
• Imitation
• Concentration/attention
• Listening

Eye contact
One of the most important prerequisites for smooth communication is eye contact. Even when you are not speaking, you can make it clear through eye contact that you are paying attention to the other person. Some children have difficulty making eye contact or do so only sporadically on their own initiative. Within therapy, we work playfully to improve this communicative condition.

Turn-taking
Taking your turn and giving another person their turn are skills you need to learn. These are important skills because, even when speaking, you need to understand that one person's turn comes first and that a response is then expected from the other. Children who still speak little can practise these skills in play at home and during treatments.

Imitation
Imitation is a particularly important form of learning. Offering words at the child's level allows a child to expand language through imitation and trial and error. Precursor to imitating language, within treatment, is often the imitation of actions. Even in children who do not 'dare' to speak much, actions can often be provoked by imitation in the beginning. Imitating words is then a step further.

Concentration/Attention
Concentration and shared attention are important prerequisites for learning and thus for developing language. By offering children certain stimuli and eliminating other distracting stimuli, the speech therapist practices these skills with the child during therapy.

Listening attitude
To learn language well, a good listening attitude is important. Some children need to be made more alert to the sounds and language around them. The speech therapist has exercises and tips for this too.

What does the speech therapist do?
The speech therapist observes in play and during speech therapy examinations how the basic conditions for communication are developed in a child and then makes a treatment plan to work on the conditions that can be improved. The speech therapist works playfully to improve communicative conditions.