A Hanen Program for parents/caregivers with children, newborn-5 years of age, who are at risk for or have a diagnosed expressive and/or receptive language delay. The goal of It Takes Two to Talk is to enable parents to become their child’s primary teacher, thereby maximizing the child’s opportunities for communication development in everyday situations.
Program Components
It Takes Two to Talk has three objectives: parent education, early language intervention and social support.
Parent Education
Parents/caregivers learn basic concepts about communication and language that are essential in helping their child’s communication develop:
Early Language Intervention
Parents/caregivers learn to apply strategies so that intervention becomes a natural part of their daily interactions with their child. Strategies highlighted by the speech-language pathologist (SLP) for individual parents are specific to supporting their child’s communication goals. These goals are developed collaboratively with the parents and modified over the course of the program. Since effective and consistent strategy use by parents is critical to the child’s progress, video feedback sessions play a major role in helping parents see and modify their interactive behaviour with their child.
Social Support
Parents/caregivers gain both formal and informal social support. The SLP, whose role includes that of group leader, interventionist, coach and counsellor provides more formal support. The parent group itself provides informal support through the sharing of experiences with individuals in similar situations. Parents report that this constitutes a vitally important component of the program.