Your child’s improvement in language skills, combined with their increased attention span, makes extended conversation possible by age three. And the more conversations, the better. Your modeling of good language skills is more important than ever. So no matter how your child constructs a sentence or creates new words, try to answer with correct grammar and vocabulary.

With a three-year-old child, you can talk about anything and everything. You no longer need to be limited to talking about the immediate present. You can also now talk about the past, about the future, about things in the mind (of you or your child). In a word, one can speak not only about facts, but also about ideas.

However, your child needs you to have real conversations with him. When your preschooler starts talking at a mile a minute—stammering, stammering, and repeating his words over and over, struggling to find the right words—it might be tempting to just nod and say, “Uh-huh.” But if you do, your child will know that you are not really listening. Now that your child is three years old, conversation should be a two-way street.