The Power of Offering Choices: How Visual Choice Boards Support Communication in Young Children
One of the most powerful communication tools that parents can use with their young children is the ability to make choices. For toddlers and preschool-aged children — especially those with limited verbal skills, delayed language and speech development, or emerging communication abilities — having the opportunity to make choices with picture supports throughout their day can significantly increase communication attempts, reduce frustrations, and build their independence. Simple visuals paired with your everyday home routines can help create meaningful communication opportunities for your child all day long.
Why Choices Matter
When adults consistently provide choices, children learn that their communication has POWER and that their preferences MATTER. They begin to understand that communication can help them get their wants and needs met and that words, gestures and pictures can be used with purpose and with communicative intent. Many young children understand far more language than they can verbally express. For children with limited verbal skills, visual supports can help make language learning more concrete and easier for them to process.
In addition to increasing a child’s communication skills at home, offering choices can also help a child develop skills for:
Joint attention
Vocabulary growth
Decision-making
Turn-taking
Early sentence development
Reduced behavioral frustration
What Is a Visual Choice Board?
A visual choice board is simply a set of pictures that allows a child to select between two or more visual options to indicate their wants/needs and preferences. When using a choice board, children may learn to select their choice through a variety of different ways (all of which count as communication), including:
· Eye gaze (looking towards a picture)
· Pointing
· Touching a picture
· Reaching towards a picture
· Vocalizing
· Using a gesture or sign
· Placing a hand over a picture
Remember – it’s important to acknowledge and accept all forms of communication when introducing choice boards! For nonspeaking children, spoken words often develop more easily once children first learn that communication can empower them to make choices and select their preferences. Once your child demonstrates the skills of reaching towards a desired picture to indicate their choice, you may then wish to consider teaching them the skill of pointing, which we recently featured in our blog.
Start Small:
When introducing choice boards, we recommend keeping your visuals simple and consistent. Start by offering just 2-3 choices of highly motivating and preferred items. As your child becomes more familiar with using pictures to select choices, you can gradually increase their choice options by adding 1-2 more choices. When first starting to use choice boards, we also recommend using real photos before transitioning to more abstract picture icons that represent a real object or action.
How to Use Choice Boards During Everyday Routines
The easiest way to begin using choice boards is during your regular, everyday routines. For example, at meal or snack times, playtime, bath and story time, getting dressed, choosing indoor or outdoor activities, and during transitions. The following are some simple examples for using picture choices during snack time and play time:
Snack Time
Instead of automatically giving your child a snack, try to offer two visual choices using pictures of the real food items that your child frequently eats (making sure that one of the choices is a preferred snack). Hold up the two pictures and pause expectantly. This creates a natural opportunity for communication.
You can then model simple language, such as:
“You choose.”
“Apple or crackers?”
If your child looks or reaches towards their desired food item (e.g. crackers), you can help model the phrase, “I want crackers” and hand them the picture before providing them with some crackers on their plate.
During Play
Play is one of the best times to build communication skills because children are naturally motivated. Try offering choices for favorite toys or play structures, such as:
Bubbles or cars
Blocks or Play-Doh
Swing or slide
How to Make Choice Boards at Home
Here are some simple ways you can make basic yet effective choice boards at home.
First, take pictures of your child’s:
Favorite foods and snack items
Toys
Family members
Places in and around the home (e.g. bathroom/toilet, kitchen table, play room, yard)
Your child performing preferred actions (e.g. your child eating, swinging, hugging, sleeping, playing, reading a book)
Once you have taken the pictures, you can choose to:
Print them
Save them in a photo album and upload them into a choice board app (see below)
Show them directly to your child from your phone or iPad
Remember - choice boards don’t always need to be printed pictures – you can also use choice boards ‘on the go’ by using simple drawings and screenshots on a phone or tablet.
3 Free Websites and Apps for Making Choice Boards
The following are some free websites and apps that are designed for parents to easily and quickly create simple choice boards using their own pictures:
1. Picto4Me
This is a free website that allows users to create simple visual communication boards online. The choice boards can then be viewed on phones, tablets or printed.
2. Boardlet App
This free app allows users to create basic choice boards on their iPhones and iPads using photos from your camera roll.
A free iPhone AAC app that has pre-made initial core vocabulary boards, phrase boards and customizable buttons. This app allows users to choose from picture symbols or use their camera/photo library to import images for a more customizable board. It also allows the user to record their own messages on picture tiles.
When to Seek Help:
***If your child is not yet using words to communicate by 15 months of age, early support can make a meaningful difference. Working with a pediatric speech-language pathologist through Early Intervention can help your child build foundational communication skills—whether that includes gestures like pointing, picture-based systems, or Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC).
ABOUT US:
Sunny Spot Speech provides private speech therapy services and evaluations for kids in home, online, at your child's preschool, daycare, private school, or at another community location throughout Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley. We have an incredible and growing team of bilingual (Spanish and English speaking) Los Angeles based Speech Language Pathologists who are knowledgeable in the assessment and treatment of a wide range of communicative disorders, including (but not limited to) children with Language Disorders and Developmental Delays, Hearing Loss, AAC users, Fluency disorders, Articulation and Phonological Disorders, Childhood Apraxia of Speech, and Gestalt Language Processors.
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