Helping Families Change a Child’s Communication at Home with It Takes Two to Talk - The Hanen Program® for Parents

This past spring, we launched our first Hanen parent training program, It Takes Two to Talk - The Hanen Program®, at Bridges to Communication. The group is offered in partnership with Support for Families, a non-profit organization in San Francisco. Four families took part in a 12-week odyssey that consisted of a pre-program consultation, eight parent training classes and three individual visits in the child’s home. Funding for the program was provided by the Golden Gate Regional Center. Support for Families offered childcare during the parent training classes to make the class more accessible to families.

At the beginning of the program, many of the parents expressed how difficult it is to interpret their child’s communication. “When he points to food items in the kitchen,” one parent explained to me, "I spend several minutes opening cupboards and inevitably he bursts into tears.” Other families reported that they struggled because their child used the same word to ask for almost everything. It can be frustrating for the family members when a child is having difficulty communicating. One mom lamented that it is hard to keep her son engaged during play.

What makes the Hanen program so different from individual speech therapy programs is that the parent is given more of a direct opportunity to learn how to help the child communicate. Parents learn about their child’s interaction style and how this plays a role in how the child picks up language. They discover ways to change the interactions at home both by watching video clips of other parents playing with children and through dynamic discussions. 

Parents learn how to determine what strategies to use based on understanding the level of their child’s communication. Hands-on exercises in class prepare the parent to try out the strategies at home.  During individual visits, the child is videotaped so that the parent has an opportunity to observe the child’s communication in action and the therapist can provide guided feedback about how to stimulate the child’s communication. The combination of the class discussions and home practice sessions are what bring the Hanen techniques to life. 

By the end of the program, parents learn, for example, that when they give their child extra time to communicate, their child initiates communication or when they use a gesture and pause more frequently while reading a book, their child is more likely to give a response. Most importantly though, parents learn how they can influence change by making adjustments to their own communication. Many times, as therapists, we try to explain to parents why a certain strategy works or we give a quick solution to a problem. The Hanen program allows family members to discover for themselves how and why a strategy works.

How to Use Toys to Encourage Communication

The following are four play-based tips for how you can use toys at home to help encourage your child’s communication:

Strategy #1: Organize your child’s toys by category of what the item is in a ziplock bag or plastic container (example: cars with cars, puzzles with puzzles, food with food).

Why?: It makes it easier for your child to play. It also provides an opportunity for your child to learn how to separate and categorize.

Tip: Consider labeling the box or bag with words and/or a picture of what it is. Many toys come in boxes that have pictures of the item that can easily be cut out and taped to a container.

Strategy #2: Keep some of your childʼs favorite toys visible but out of reach (on a high shelf or in a container that is hard to open).

Why?: It gives your child a reason to communicate so that language happens more frequently.

Strategy #3: When playing with toys with your child, try to have duplicates (example: two phones, two race cars, two puppets).

Why?: It allows you to model language for your child and results in more immediate imitation. It also promotes interactive play.

Tip: If you don’t have duplicates of toys, try introducing turn-taking instead to help promote both interaction and imitation (example: Daddy’s turn and then (child’s name)ʼs turn to talk on the phone).

Strategy #4: Think less about finding (or buying) a new toy/activity and more about adding props (sometimes even just things you have around the house) to expand a play theme or activity.

Why?: This can help enrich your childʼs language and play within an activity that is already in your child’s repertoire. Adding too many new toys sometimes results in less language and play because the child has to work harder to figure out how to put it all together.

Example A: If your child loves the birthday cake theme, consider adding props such as a pretend present, balloons, party blowers and puppets to expand the language your child uses within this activity.  Example B: If your child is in love with cars, make an elaborate ramp out of a long, thin cardboard box to encourage passing the car back and forth or talking about how the car is moving.