Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | NXg | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest |

Learn to listen

PHOTO: R.Shivaji Rao

SPEECH THERAPIST Sowmya Surendranathan

It isn’t enough if your speech-delayed child learns to talk; you have to learn how to listen too. That’s what the Hanen ‘It Takes Two to Talk’ programme conducted by the Five – Centre for Child Development is all about.

“The Hanen programme was developed in Canada in 1975, based on intensive research. It showed that providing speech therapy to children with delayed speech and language development was just half the battle,” says Sowmya Surendranathan, director, Services at Five. “Parents or care-givers had to be trained to understand how their children were developing in order to facilitate their progress.”

For instance, the OWL (Observe, Wait and Listen) approach in the programme teaches parents to observe and respond to cues from their child. “Often, parents are so enthusiastic about wanting to help their child that they keep talking without noticing if the child is responding to them or is in sync with them,” explains Sowmya.

That’s why the eight-week Hanen programme uses video-taping for visual feedback, allowing parents to take a step back and recognise what they’re doing right or wrong when interacting with their children. “It isn’t easy for parents to unlearn what they know or acknowledge that there may be gaps,” comments Sowmya. But this is a crucial first step, which is why parents are placed on the Hanen programme as soon as their child is identified as requiring speech therapy at Five. “It’s like setting the base. Then whatever speech or occupational therapy the child is put on, they can apply the Hanen methodology,” says Sowmya, one of only two certified Hanen speech and language therapists in India.

It was her own observations about the need for parent involvement while working at Five that prompted her to travel to London to obtain her certification earlier this year. “We noticed that children often worked beautifully with their therapists but then would go home and return to square one,” she remarks. “So at Five, we began to include parents in the children’s activities. Hanen is just a far more well-researched and systematic embodiment of the same principle.”

Today, she believes that the Hanen methodology can be applied by parents whose children aren’t speech or language delayed. “I have parents calling and saying, ‘My child just started talking and I want to make sure I’m doing the right things,’” she says. “Hanen is a great base for them as well. We all need a support system in parenthood sometimes.”

For more details on the programme, call 23744779, Chennai.

DIVYA KUMAR

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail