Conversation games for three-year-olds

Conversation play with a three-year-old is back-and-forth: ask, wait, and give back what your child says one step bigger. We picked ten games from the "serve and return" approach of Harvard's Center on the Developing Child and from research on dialogic reading and emotion coaching, and describe how to play them in everyday life with nothing to prepare.

Talking with a three-year-old is like table tennis

Your child serves with a word or a gesture; you catch it and send it back. That is all conversation play is. Harvard's Center on the Developing Child calls this "serve and return" and explains that relationships with responsive adults lay the foundation for healthy brain architecture.¹ The key is not talking more but catching more.

The Center describes five steps: notice what your child is focused on and share it, support and encourage, give it a name, take turns and wait, and practise endings and beginnings.¹ Every game below fits these five steps into a three-year-old's day.

Research suggests why back-and-forth matters. A team from MIT and Harvard reported that 4- to 6-year-olds who had more conversational turns with adults showed more activity in the brain areas that process language while listening to stories, regardless of how many words they had heard.² A study that followed 41 babies learning Korean to four and a half also found that turn-taking with their mothers around the first birthday was linked to vocabulary at 54 months.³ Both are observations of a link rather than proof of cause, but they point the same way.

Try talking beyond the here and now

From three, talk about things not in front of you is especially valuable. A study observing 50 mother–child pairs at 18, 30 and 42 months found that varied vocabulary in toddlerhood, and talk beyond the "here and now" in the preschool years, such as past events, explanations and stories, better explained later vocabulary.⁴ Yesterday, tomorrow and "what if" count.

• Yesterday game. "What did we do at Grandma's yesterday?" Wait while your child remembers. It is fine if the order comes out jumbled.
• Tomorrow game. "If it rains tomorrow, what shall we play?" Making plans is practice in talking about things that have not happened yet.
• What-if game. "What if our cat could talk? What would it say?" There is no right answer, so your child can say anything.
• Why game. "Why do you think the ice melted?" If your child's answer is not quite right, build on it instead of correcting: "So that's what you think. Then…"

Reading picture books as conversation

Picture books are the easiest stage for conversation play at three. Dialogic reading, where you ask questions, expand on your child's answers and praise them as you read, increased the words children used more than simply reading aloud did, and in an analysis of 16 studies the effect was largest for two- and three-year-olds.⁵ Five kinds of question are enough.

• What: "What's this?"
• Where: "Where is the rabbit hiding?"
• Why: "Why is the bear crying?"
• Remember: "What was the rabbit holding a moment ago?"
• Your own life: "You've been out in the rain too, haven't you? What was that like?"

Add fill-in-the-end. Say "The bear wanted some honey, so he climbed up the…" and pause, and your child fills it in: "Tree!" The U.S. Department of Education's research review body has also rated dialogic reading as having positive effects on young children's speaking and listening.⁶ One question per page is plenty, and if your child would rather stay on one picture for a long time than finish the book, follow their lead.

Games that put a name to feelings

Naming feelings and talking about why they happen is conversation play too. In an experiment that randomly assigned 216 parents of 4- to 5-year-olds, the children of parents who learned to name their child's feelings and talk about causes and consequences grew in emotional understanding and showed fewer behaviour problems.⁷ The effect came from what the parents learned.

This approach comes from research on "emotion coaching", which looks at parents noticing, naming and working through children's emotions together with them.⁸ With a three-year-old, keep it shorter and simpler. If your child cries because their block tower fell, name it first, "You're upset because your blocks fell down", and then move on: "Shall we build it again?"

You can make a game of it as well. Pull faces and guess each other's feelings, hold up a soft toy and ask "How do you think this bunny feels right now?", or talk about why a character in a picture book has that look on their face. The randomised experiment involved parents of 4- to 5-year-olds, so it does not promise the same size of effect at three.

Make up stories starring your child

A story starring your child is a good way to get them talking. In a small experiment with 18 children averaging three years ten months, children better knew the new words placed in the personalised parts of a single book.⁹ It does not prove a large effect, but it is reason enough to make up a bedtime story.

Take something that happened today and turn it into a story with your child's name in it. "Once upon a time there was a child called ___, and one day at the playground…" Then pause and ask, "So what did ___ do next?" If you make what your child says the next scene, listening to a story becomes making one together. The researcher behind this experiment is herself wary of personalisation being misused commercially,¹⁰ so here we only suggest stories that parents make up themselves.

Ten conversation games

All ten games need nothing, or only things you have at home. In each one, the most important moment is when the adult stops talking and waits. After a question, count to five in your head, and take a sound or gesture as an answer too. One or two games a day is plenty.

Game	You need	What you say	When to wait
Yesterday game	Nothing	"What was the most fun thing at the playground yesterday?"	While your child remembers
What-if game	Nothing	"If we were birds, where would we fly?"	While your child decides
Fill in the end	A picture book	"The bear wanted some honey, so he climbed up the…"	Until your child fills it in
Why game	Nothing	"Why do you think the ice cream melted?"	Until you build on any answer, even a wrong one
Guess the feeling	A soft toy or picture book	"How do you think this bunny feels right now?"	While your child studies the face
Shopping chat	A shopping bag	"What do we need today? Shall we find something red?"	While your child chooses
Cooking commentary	The kitchen	"What did we just put in? What goes in next?"	Your child's turn
Bath-time story	Bath toys	"Where did the duck swim off to?"	While your child moves it
Best bit of today	Nothing, at bedtime	"What was the funniest thing today?"	When the lights are off and it is quiet
Hero story	Nothing	"Once upon a time there was ___… so what did they do?"	When your child decides the next scene

When your child asks "Why?" first, try asking back once before you answer: "Why do you think?" That one question gives your child a turn.

How to handle screens

The World Health Organization advises no more than an hour of screen time a day for three- to four-year-olds and recommends that during sitting time, a caregiver reads and talks with them.¹¹ Follow-up research also suggests that conversation at home can drop while a screen is on.¹² When you watch, watch together, pause, ask, and talk about it again later.

The Korean Pediatric Society also advises watching together for under an hour a day after age two.¹³ A study that recorded 220 Australian families from 12 to 36 months found that more screen time went with fewer adult words, fewer child vocalisations and fewer back-and-forth exchanges.¹² The last of the five steps above, noticing endings and beginnings, works for screens too. Agree on "When this finishes, we turn it off" before you start, and switching off becomes a conversation rather than a fight.

If you use Bebe

Bebe makes books from what your child says, asks your child one question on each page, and leaves parents a line of something their child said today. It is designed around the "ask, wait, expand" of the games above, but those studies looked at conversation with people, so Bebe does not replace conversation with parents.

We suggest using it when a parent is nearby, as something extra to talk about. There is a set amount for each day, and Bebe tells children that it is an AI. About Alphabebe

Sources

1. Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. “Serve and Return” · “5 Steps for Brain-Building Serve and Return.” developingchild.harvard.edu
2. Romeo RR, Leonard JA, Robinson ST, West MR, Mackey AP, Rowe ML, Gabrieli JDE. 2018, Psychological Science 29(5):700–710. DOI 10.1177/0956797617742725
3. Mun J, Choi Y. 2025, Korean Journal of Developmental Psychology 38(2):1–18 (in Korean). DOI 10.35574/KJDP.2025.6.38.2.1
4. Rowe ML. 2012, Child Development 83(5):1762–1774. DOI 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2012.01805.x
5. Mol SE, Bus AG, de Jong MT, Smeets DJH. 2008, Early Education and Development 19(1):7–26. DOI 10.1080/10409280701838603
6. What Works Clearinghouse (Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education). “Dialogic Reading” evidence snapshot. ies.ed.gov/ncee/WWC/EvidenceSnapshot/135
7. Havighurst SS, Wilson KR, Harley AE, Prior MR, Kehoe C. 2010, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 51(12):1342–1350. DOI 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02303.x
8. Gottman JM, Katz LF, Hooven C. 1996, Journal of Family Psychology 10(3):243–268. DOI 10.1037/0893-3200.10.3.243
9. Kucirkova N, Messer D, Sheehy K. 2014, First Language 34(3):227–243. DOI 10.1177/0142723714534221
10. Kucirkova N, Zuckerman B. 2024, Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics. DOI 10.1097/DBP.0000000000001234
11. World Health Organization. “To grow up healthy, children need to sit less and play more.” 2019-04-24, who.int
12. Brushe ME, Haag DG, Melhuish EC, Reilly S, Gregory T. 2024, JAMA Pediatrics 178(4):369–375. DOI 10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.6790
13. Korean Pediatric Society, recommendations on digital media use for infants and young children (in Korean)

This article is not a diagnosis or a treatment. If you are worried, talk to your paediatrician.