Babble: Free Parent Coaching App for Communication

Beginning with Babble is a free app (Google app store or iTunes store) for parents of children birth to 4 years old. It’s a great app for EI and Preschool SLPs to recommend to families. It provides a daily reminder of the activities and interactions that parents can use to improve their interactions and language.

 “With written tips, audio prompts, and demonstrative videos, Beginning with Babble coaches caregivers to facilitate language-rich, back and forth interactions with their children.

Throughout the day, the Beginning with Babble mobile app will chime, sending notifications to the app’s user. Each notification will consist of a short, effective tip that shares a language activity. By entering the child’s birthday into the app, Beginning with Babble knows the approximate developmental stage of the child. As a child grows, the app will self-calculate the child’s age and adjust the tips accordingly!”

As early intervention therapists, we know that parent-child interactions are the key to successful language development. Parent coaching is one of my favorite aspects of my job but as a school SLP, I don’t get to see them weekly. EI therapists will also find this helpful because it reinforces their coaching  with a quick daily reminder.

“Beginning with Babble encourages caregivers to engage with their children in a meaningful, target-driven way that simultaneously builds pre-literacy skills and preschool readiness. LEAP’s goal is to facilitate meaningful, language-centered interactions over the first four years of a child’s life in order to build positive communication habits, not only in low-verbal, low-print households, but in all homes! This app has the potential to reach thousands of families across the country and build the foundation for success in preschool and beyond.”

I downloaded the app and put a few different age ranges in it. It’s super cute, but be prepared – the iPhone alert is a dog toy squeak, which makes me jump once per day! The recommendations have been really simple but on-point. I love it so much that I created a simple handout I can share with parents during weekly assessments.

You can download the handout in the resource library. Just sign up as an email subscriber and you’ll have access to the full resource library which includes many different handouts and clinical resources.