Does your child love to watch YouTube? Are they working on building their own social skills? Why not try to incorporate some language learning during their screen time and use YouTube videos to improve your child’s social language. Here are a few Speech-Language Pathologist approved YouTube videos that can help your child increase their social language skills.
This funny video shows a donkey who does not want to listen to his handler and prefers to do his job his own way. Eventually, a bit of fun music and trying the task in a new way helps Mariza overcome his fears. This video is great for demonstrating the idea of flexible thinking and trying new things.
A big bird joins a group of little birds and does not pick up on their social cues. Talk about how the big bird could have joined the group more appropriately and used perspective-taking skills to figure out how they felt. You can also discuss how the little birds could have solved the problem in a kind way and been more accepting of a new bird.
This scene from the classic Pixar movie, Up, is a comical way to review conversation skills with your child. Dug the dog does not demonstrate the best conversation skills when meeting new people. He frequently interrupts, does not appropriately greet them, goes off-topic, and does not take conversational turns with others. While watching this clip, have your child give Dug tips for how he could have had a better conversation when meeting his new friends.
Inside Out: Empathetic Listening
This clip from the movie Inside Out is a perfect example to teach your child the concept of empathy and appropriately listening to others. In this scene, Bing Bong is dealing with a problem that makes him feel very upset. The character Joy thinks she is helping him, however, it is the character Sadness who steps in to show true empathy. Have your child explain the differences between the conversations with Joy and Sadness and how Sadness made her friend feel better.
Runaway is funny clip showing a fridge that thinks he is broken and that his human friend is trying to replace him. Your child can work on perspective taking and trying to identify feelings. This clip can also teach your child how to be a flexible thinker, problem-solve, and show kindness to others.
This is a series of short wordless videos about a man and his pet cat. All of these videos are great for working on a wide variety of skills including perspective-taking, identifying problems/solutions, identifying feelings, and predicting what will happen next. This is also great to have your child try to sequence and describe the events of the video. Kids love this hilarious cat and his daily adventures!
Hopefully, you will find these videos fun, motivating, and helpful for your child! The most important thing to remember is to watch these videos with your child so you can talk about what you watched together. Your child will love learning social language skills while getting to have some fun screen time.
If you’re looking for more language-building activities, check out our other speech and language blogs here!
Written by Melanie Krupowicz, M.S., CCC-SLP