The early skill that comes before words, and how to practice it at breakfast

A free article for families, derived from Special Learning's course "Social Skills Part 1: Toddler to Preschool Social Skills" (presented by Michele LaMarche, BCBA).

If your toddler has just been diagnosed, you have probably been handed a list of things to work on: words, pointing, eye contact, sitting still. It is a long list and it arrives all at once.

There is one skill on it that the research keeps putting first, and it is not the one most families expect. It is called joint attention, and it is simply this: two people paying attention to the same thing on purpose, and both knowing they are doing it together.

A child sees a dog, looks at the dog, then looks back at you, then back at the dog. That loop is joint attention. Nothing is being asked for. The child is not requesting the dog. They are sharing it.

Why this one and not the others

Because it comes before the words, and in the research it keeps turning up alongside them.

Children who do not develop joint attention early tend to show fewer language skills later than children who do. The course puts it plainly: studies that focused on increasing joint attention also increased children's overall communication. It is not that pointing is impressive on its own. It is that a child who has learned sharing an experience is worth doing has a reason to talk, and a child who has not learned that is being taught vocabulary with no use for it.

That is why it is described as a predictor of later outcomes rather than a milestone to tick.

The two halves, and why the difference matters at home

Joint attention comes in two directions, and they are not the same skill.

Responding to joint attention is when you point at something and your child follows your point, looks, and comes back to you. It develops alongside understanding that other people have intentions of their own, and it tracks closely with language.

Initiating joint attention is when your child starts it. They find something and bring it to you, with their eyes or a point or a noise, for no reason except that you should see it too.

The second one is harder and it is tied to social motivation, not to how long a child can concentrate on an object. The course is specific about this: a child who can attend to a toy for a very long time is not, by that fact, a child who will share it with you. Those turned out to be separate things.

This matters at home because it changes what "good attention" looks like. A child playing intently alone for forty minutes is not practicing the skill. A child who looks up at you twice in five minutes is.

How it is actually taught, and it is not a drill

The approach the course describes is the opposite of a worksheet: follow the child's motivation in the moment, then build on it.

You do not choose the thing. The child chooses the thing, and you make yourself part of it.

That is the whole logic behind pivotal response training, and it is the reason these sessions look like playing rather than teaching. If your child is fixed on the washing machine, the washing machine is the curriculum that morning. You get down next to it, you watch it with them, and you wait for the look.

When the look comes, that is the moment. Respond to it like it was a sentence, because it was.

Why the kitchen matters more than the clinic

This is the part the course is most insistent about, and it is the part families are best placed to act on.

Skills that only ever happen in a structured session tend to stay there. The course's phrasing is that if we cannot move a skill into the natural environment, and if we are not identifying what is already available in the natural environment, it is unlikely to be maintained there without an adult intervening every time.

Read that as an instruction to look around your own house. What already happens every day that involves two people and one interesting thing? Pouring cereal. Opening the curtains. A truck going by. A dog outside the window.

Those are not substitutes for therapy. They are where the therapy has to end up, and you are the person who is there for all of them.

One practical thing to try this week

Pick one moment that already happens daily and change only your position in it.

Sit where your child can see your face without turning around. When they look at the thing, look at the thing. When they look at you, respond immediately and with obvious pleasure: a word, a sound, a smile, whatever is natural to you. Then look back at the thing together.

You are not teaching them to look at you. You are teaching them that looking at you does something.

Do it for a week before you judge it, and count the looks rather than the words. The looks are the skill you are working on; progress from there looks different for every child.

What this article does not tell you

It does not tell you where your child is, or what to prioritize for them specifically. Joint attention is one skill in a sequence, and the course covers imitation, play skills and early rule-following alongside it, with assessment tools for working out what a particular child actually needs first.

That is a conversation for the people who know your child. If you are working with a behavior analyst or a speech therapist, this is a good thing to ask them about by name.

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This article is derived from the full course, which is one of the sessions in Special Learning's Video CE Library. The library is written for professionals and carries continuing education hours; the ideas in it are not proprietary and families are welcome to them, which is why this article is free.

Special Learning is an ACE Provider (OP-14-2437). The BACB does not endorse or approve any provider's individual courses; ACE Provider status means we are authorized to offer continuing education, not that the BACB has reviewed this content.