10-Minute Speech Practice That Doesn't Require Sitting Still

Last updated 2026-07-11

Why do so many kids only learn to request?

Requesting works immediately. A child says "juice" or points at the iPad and something good happens. That's a clean, fast reward loop, and kids learn it quickly. Comments don't have that payoff. If your child says "bus!" while looking out the window, nothing tangible appears. The only reward is your reaction, your face lighting up, your voice matching their excitement, the back-and-forth that follows. For kids who are less tuned into social rewards, or who haven't yet noticed that other people's reactions feel good, that payoff just doesn't register the same way.

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) describes two broad categories of early communicative functions: instrumental (getting needs met) and social/interactional (sharing experience with another person) ^[1]. Most early intervention programs, and most parent instincts, naturally load up on the instrumental side. We celebrate requests because they're obvious evidence that language is working. Commenting is quieter and harder to notice. It's also the gateway to richer language.

Research on joint attention, the shared looking-at-something-together that underlies commenting, shows it's one of the strongest early predictors of later vocabulary size ^[2]. A child who points to a dog just to share the dog with you is practicing a fundamentally different skill than one who points because they want to pet it. Both matter. But if requesting is the only thing being practiced and rewarded, commenting can stay underdeveloped for a long time.

What is commenting, exactly, and how is it different from requesting?

A request is communication aimed at getting something: food, help, an object, a person's attention as a means to an end. A comment is communication aimed at sharing an experience or observation, with no expected outcome except connection.

Here's a simple comparison:

Comments can be single words, gestures, vocalizations, or AAC symbols. The form matters less than the function. A child pushes a toy car, says "vroom," and glances at you to see if you noticed? That's a comment. A child signs "bird" when one lands nearby, not because they want the bird, but because they saw it? Comment.

Speech-language pathologists often track the ratio of requesting to commenting in a child's communication. A heavy skew toward requests is a clinical signal worth attention, especially in children with autism, where differences in joint attention and social motivation can make commenting harder to learn on its own ^[3].

At what age should kids start commenting, and when is the ratio a concern?

Protodeclarative pointing, the gesture of pointing to share something interesting rather than to request it, typically emerges around 12 months ^[2]. By 18 months, most children use a mix of gestures, words, and vocalizations for both requests and comments. By 24 months, commenting should make up a meaningful portion of communication, though nobody has a perfectly clean threshold here. Typical development runs wide.

The concern flag isn't a specific age. It's a pattern. If a 2-year-old or 3-year-old uses language only to get things, never to share observations, never to narrate play, never to react to something surprising with a sound or word directed at you, that's worth bringing to a speech-language pathologist. It doesn't mean something is definitively wrong. It means the commenting side needs deliberate support.

For children with autism, limited protodeclarative pointing and reduced joint attention are among the earliest documented markers, sometimes visible before 12 months in retrospective video studies ^[3]. The 2020 AAP guidelines on developmental surveillance note that loss of social communication skills or absence of pointing by 12 months are red flags warranting immediate evaluation ^[4]. If your child hasn't been evaluated and you're reading this because something feels off, early intervention is the right next step, not a wait-and-see approach.

For late talkers without autism, commenting delays are common and often respond well to parent-implemented strategies at home, especially alongside speech therapy.

How do you actually teach a child to comment?

The core technique is modeling without pressure. You narrate interesting things in the environment, react to events with real enthusiasm, and pause to let your child respond. You're not drilling. You're showing them that noticing things out loud is a natural, rewarding thing people do.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

Sabotage routines to create comment opportunities. Drop a toy off the table and say "uh oh!" Look expectantly at your child. Blow bubbles and let one pop, then react. Wind up a toy, let it fall over, pause. These are engineered moments of shared surprise. You're not asking a question or prompting a request. You're making something worth commenting on and then waiting.

Match and expand. If your child says "dog," you say "yeah, big dog!" or "dog running!" You're modeling that observations can grow. This is called expansion or extension in the SLP literature ^[5], and it works because you're not correcting, just showing what more can look like.

Comment yourself constantly, about what you notice, not what you need. "Oh look, the leaves are moving." "Whoa, that's a loud truck." "Hm, the block fell down." You're the model. Aim for comments about 70% of the time and requests or instructions about 30%, roughly the reverse of what most adult-child talk looks like.

Respond to comments like they're gold. When your child makes any spontaneous observation, your reaction is the reward. Put down what you're doing. Make eye contact. Match their energy. Say something back that keeps the exchange going. Never let a comment go unacknowledged. A comment ignored teaches a child that requesting is what gets results.

Use parallel play narration. Sit near your child during play and narrate what you're doing with your own toys, without directing them. "My car is going fast. Oops, it crashed!" You're showing them how to talk about what they're experiencing, not what they want.

None of these need special training. They do need consistency, which is genuinely hard when you're managing daily life. Aiming for 15 to 20 minutes of intentional commenting-focused play per day is realistic and, based on parent-implemented intervention studies, meaningful ^[6].

Does AAC help with teaching commenting?

Yes, a lot. One of the sticky myths about AAC devices and apps is that they're only for requesting. Many are programmed that way by default, with pages built around wants and needs. That setup quietly reinforces the same requesting-only pattern you're trying to break.

When you set up or use AAC devices, including high-tech speech generating devices and lower-tech picture boards, make sure comment-function words are easy to reach and get modeled. Words like "look," "wow," "funny," "big," "hot," "broken," "again" are comment-friendly. They don't request an object. They describe an experience.

Modeling AAC use yourself, sometimes called aided language stimulation or partner-augmented input, means pointing to symbols on the device as you speak, so the child sees comments being made through the system ^[7]. Research on this approach in children with complex communication needs shows increases in both the frequency and the variety of communication functions over time ^[7].

If your child uses AAC and their device has a "quick request" page but no way to say "yuck" or "uh oh," raise it with their SLP. How the vocabulary is organized decides which communication functions actually get practiced.

What about kids who use echolalia instead of commenting?

Echolalia, the repetition of phrases heard elsewhere, is very common in autistic children and some late talkers ^[8]. A child might echo a line from a show when they see something surprising, or repeat a phrase they've heard during a routine. This gets dismissed as "not real language," and that framing is both wrong and unhelpful.

Echolalia can function as a comment. If a child watches something fall and says "oh no, Dora!" (a line from their favorite show), they're doing something communicatively intentional even though the form is borrowed. The goal isn't to stop the echolalia. It's to recognize the intent behind it and, over time, help new spontaneous forms grow up alongside it.

You can read more in our piece on echolalia and the related question of what echolalia means as a communication function. The short version: treat echolalia as a starting point, respond to its apparent function, and model alternative forms without pressuring the child to drop the echoed phrase.

How do you create more opportunities for commenting at home?

You don't need a therapy room. Comments happen in the ordinary texture of the day. You already move through dozens of high-comment-potential moments every morning before 9am.

During breakfast: React to things. "Ooh, cold milk." "That cereal is crunchy, listen." Pause. If your child vocalizes or looks at you, respond like it was the most interesting thing you've heard all week.

During bath time: Water pouring, bubbles, a cup floating. All inherently interesting. "Whoa, it sank!" Look at your child. Wait three to five full seconds before saying anything else. That pause is where comments can emerge.

Outside: Animals, vehicles, unexpected things in the environment are comment gold. Slow down. Skip the running educational commentary. Say one thing, then stop and wait.

During books: Read a little less than you normally would. Point at pictures and wait before naming them. If your child points at something in the picture, respond to that as a comment: "yeah, bird! Flying bird!"

During play: Follow their lead. Go where their attention goes. When something happens in their play, react to it. If they crash two cars together, your "whoa, crash!" is a comment model, not a question they have to answer.

The research term for this responsive, child-led interaction is "responsive interaction" or "naturalistic developmental behavioral intervention." A 2019 systematic review found that naturalistic approaches produce meaningful communication gains for children with autism and language delays, particularly when caregivers are coached to run them ^[6]. You don't have to call it anything. You just slow down and pay attention to what your child is paying attention to.

How do speech therapists work on commenting in sessions?

A good SLP working on communicative functions spends real time in child-led play, setting up situations where comments are more likely than requests and then responding with enthusiasm to any spontaneous observation. They might track commenting frequency across sessions as a measurable outcome.

In more structured work, some clinicians deliberately create surprising events, something falls, something doesn't work as expected, something unexpected appears, and watch whether the child's first communication is a request, a comment, or neither. This is called the "communication temptation" procedure, developed by Amy Wetherby and Barry Prizant in the 1980s and still used as an assessment tool ^[9].

For children with autism, approaches like JASPER (Joint Attention, Symbolic Play, Engagement, and Regulation) target joint attention and social communication, including commenting, as primary goals rather than treating them as leftovers from behavior or requesting work ^[10]. JASPER has randomized controlled trial evidence behind it, which is still relatively rare in speech therapy intervention research.

If you're working with an SLP and commenting isn't on the goal sheet, ask about it directly. Try: "We've noticed he mostly communicates to get things. Can we work on commenting and joint attention?" A good therapist will welcome the specificity.

For families who can't get to in-person therapy, online speech therapy has grown a lot, and some telehealth SLPs specialize in coaching parents to run these naturalistic strategies at home.

How long does it take to see progress with commenting?

Honest answer: it varies a lot, and nobody has clean population-level data on this specific outcome. The closest evidence comes from studies on joint attention interventions and naturalistic language approaches, which generally show measurable changes in joint attention and commenting frequency within 8 to 16 weeks of consistent work, in children getting a few hours per week of targeted intervention ^[6][10].

At home, without formal therapy, progress is slower and harder to track. A reasonable sign that things are moving: your child starts making more eye contact during interesting events, even before new words appear. Or they start vocalizing or pointing at things without being prompted, even if you can't always tell what they mean. That shift from "I communicate to get things" to "I communicate to share things" often shows up as nonverbal joint attention before words catch up.

Keep an informal log. Once a week, spend 10 minutes in play and just count: how many times did your child communicate to get something, and how many times to share something? If that second number is growing, even slowly, the work is happening.

If you've been at this three or four months with no movement and your child is 2 or older, get an SLP evaluation if you haven't had one, and talk to your pediatrician about early intervention services, which are free under IDEA Part C for children under 3 in the United States ^[4].

What about kids with apraxia? Does motor speech difficulty change the approach?

Children with apraxia of speech or childhood apraxia of speech have a motor planning difficulty that makes it hard to produce speech even when they know exactly what they want to say. The communicative function goals, including commenting, don't change. But the way a child expresses a comment might.

For a child with apraxia who has limited reliable speech, AAC becomes especially important as a way to make comments. A child can touch the "wow" symbol or the "look" symbol even if they can't say those words yet. The commenting function can develop while speech motor skills get worked on separately.

One practical note: don't wait for clear speech to accept comments. A vocalization, a gesture, a point, an AAC activation, all of these count. If you hold out for clean verbal comments before responding with enthusiasm, you'll lose the window. Accept the approximation. Respond to the intent.

Some families using the Little Words app have found it useful for exactly this, as a low-pressure way to model comment-function words alongside a child during play, without requiring the child to speak. That kind of low-stakes, repeated exposure to comment vocabulary fits naturally into the naturalistic approaches above.

What mistakes do parents make when trying to teach commenting?

The biggest one: turning every moment into a test. "What's that? What color is it? What is the dog doing?" Questions feel productive, but they turn the interaction from shared experience into performance. A child who is constantly quizzed learns to wait for prompts instead of initiating comments on their own. Commenting is inherently spontaneous. It can't be prompted into existence the way a label can.

Second mistake: only responding to words. If you only light up when your child says something verbally, you miss and slowly extinguish the nonverbal comments, the points, the looks, the vocalizations, that are the building blocks of verbal commenting. Respond to the function, not the form.

Third: narrating too much yourself. There's a difference between modeling comments and delivering a running commentary that fills every silence. Silence and pauses are where children find room to comment. Over-talking crowds out the opportunity. Talk less than you think you should, and pause longer than feels comfortable.

Fourth: inconsistency. A week of intensive commenting focus followed by three weeks of normal life doesn't build a habit in a child who needs more repetitions than average to learn a communication function. Pick two or three daily routines and be very consistent with commenting strategies there. That beats trying to do everything perfectly all the time.

Frequently asked questions

What age should a child start commenting?

Protodeclarative pointing, pointing to share something rather than request it, typically appears around 12 months. By 18 months, most children use a mix of words, sounds, and gestures to share observations. If your child is past 18 months and communicates almost exclusively to get things, that pattern is worth discussing with a speech-language pathologist, though 'almost exclusively' is the key phrase. Some imbalance is normal.

Can a nonverbal child learn to comment?

Yes. Commenting is a communicative function, not a verbal one. Nonverbal children can comment through pointing, eye gaze, facial expression, body orientation, and AAC. The goal is the intent to share an observation with another person, and that intent can be expressed without speech. Building nonverbal commenting is often the foundation for verbal comments emerging later.

Is it normal for autistic children to mostly request?

It's common, and it makes sense given differences in social motivation and joint attention that are typical in autism. But common doesn't mean fixed. Research on joint attention interventions, including JASPER, shows autistic children can learn commenting and joint attention behaviors with targeted support. The approach needs to be naturalistic and play-based rather than drill-based to work.

What is the difference between joint attention and commenting?

Joint attention is the shared focus between two people on the same thing at the same time. Commenting is one way joint attention gets expressed in language. When a child says 'dog!' while looking at you and then at the dog, they're both establishing joint attention and making a comment. Joint attention is the underlying social behavior; commenting is one verbal expression of it.

My child only says words to get food or toys. What should I try first?

Start with engineered surprise during play. Drop something, let something break unexpectedly, blow bubbles and let one pop. React yourself with a short comment or sound, then look at your child and wait five seconds without prompting. Whatever they do, respond like it was interesting. Do this 10 minutes a day for two weeks before expecting a pattern change. Consistency matters more than technique here.

How do I get my child to say 'look' or 'wow' spontaneously?

Model those words during genuinely surprising moments, not rehearsed ones. Say 'wow' when something actually surprises you, 'look' when you want to show them something. Over hundreds of exposures in real contexts, children take these words on as tools. You can also put 'wow,' 'look,' and 'uh oh' on an AAC device and model them yourself during play. Drilling these words in isolation almost never produces spontaneous use.

Does commenting help with vocabulary growth?

Yes, a lot. Joint attention and commenting are among the strongest early predictors of later vocabulary size, based on prospective studies of language development. Comments involve labeling, describing, and connecting words to shared experiences in a way requests don't. A child who comments learns words in a richer, more varied context than one who only requests, which supports both depth and breadth of vocabulary.

Should I use ABA therapy to teach commenting?

Traditional ABA with discrete trials and massed practice can teach commenting topography, the outward behavior of commenting. But spontaneous, socially motivated commenting is better supported by naturalistic approaches like JASPER or responsive interaction therapy, where the social reward is built into the context. Most modern ABA blends both. Ask any therapist working with your child whether spontaneous commenting is a measurable goal in their program.

How is commenting different from labeling?

Labeling is naming something, often in response to a question like 'what's that?' Commenting is spontaneously sharing an observation without a prompt. Both involve words, but commenting requires the child to initiate and to be motivated by shared attention rather than by getting an answer right. Children who label well when asked often still need specific work on spontaneous commenting, because the social motivation involved is different.

Can I teach commenting through books and reading?

Yes. Books are good commenting contexts because they're full of things worth pointing at. The trick is to read less and pause more. Point at something on the page without naming it and wait. If your child points or vocalizes, respond with enthusiasm. Then name it and add a comment: 'yeah, dog! Sleeping dog.' Over time, children start initiating points at book pictures before you prompt them, which is exactly the goal.

What words should I teach first for commenting?

Reaction words travel furthest fastest: 'uh oh,' 'wow,' 'oh no,' 'yuck,' 'more' (in a commenting sense), 'look,' 'again,' 'gone,' 'big,' 'stuck.' These are high-frequency in everyday life, emotionally charged enough to be worth saying, and easy to model in natural contexts. If your child uses AAC, these should be on the front page or a fast-access spot, not buried in category menus.

How do I know if my child is making progress on commenting?

Track it informally. Once a week, do a 10-minute play observation and count how many times your child communicates to share something versus to get something. Also watch for more pointing, more eye contact during interesting events, and new spontaneous words or sounds during play. Progress often shows up in nonverbal behaviors before new words appear, so don't only count words.

Is there a test or assessment for commenting ability?

SLPs use language samples and structured play assessments to evaluate communicative functions, including commenting frequency. The Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales (CSBS) by Wetherby and Prizant is one validated tool that looks at communicative functions including joint attention and commenting in children 6 months to 24 months. Ask your SLP whether communicative function analysis is part of their evaluation.

Sources

1. ASHA, Functional Communication: ASHA describes communicative functions including instrumental (requesting) and social/interactional (sharing experience) as distinct categories of early communication.
2. Mundy P et al., 'Joint attention and vocabulary development,' Child Development, 2007: Protodeclarative pointing emerges around 12 months and joint attention is among the strongest early predictors of later vocabulary size.
3. Zwaigenbaum L et al., 'Early identification of autism spectrum disorder,' Pediatrics, 2015: Limited protodeclarative pointing and reduced joint attention are among the earliest documented markers of autism, sometimes visible before 12 months in retrospective video studies.
4. American Academy of Pediatrics, Developmental Surveillance and Screening Policy: AAP 2020 guidelines note loss of social communication skills or absence of pointing by 12 months are red flags warranting immediate evaluation; IDEA Part C provides free early intervention services for children under 3.
5. ASHA, Language Intervention Approaches for Children: Expansion and extension are SLP-validated techniques where adults repeat and slightly extend a child's utterance to model more complete language forms.
6. Tiede G & Walton J, 'Meta-analysis of naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions,' Autism, 2019: A 2019 systematic review found naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions produce meaningful communication gains in children with autism and language delays, particularly with caregiver coaching.
7. Romski M & Sevcik R, 'Augmentative communication and early intervention myths and realities,' Infants and Young Children, 2005: Aided language stimulation (partner-augmented input), where partners model AAC use, increases frequency and variety of communication functions in children with complex communication needs.
8. Prizant B & Duchan J, 'The functions of immediate echolalia in autistic children,' Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 1981: Echolalia in autistic children and late talkers often serves communicative functions including commenting; it should be treated as a starting point rather than eliminated.
9. Wetherby A & Prizant B, Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales (CSBS), Paul H. Brookes Publishing: The communication temptation procedure and CSBS assess communicative functions including commenting and joint attention in children 6 to 24 months.
10. Kasari C et al., 'Joint attention and symbolic play in young children with autism,' Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2006: JASPER (Joint Attention, Symbolic Play, Engagement, and Regulation) has randomized controlled trial evidence showing gains in joint attention and social communication including commenting in autistic children.