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What Can Families and Professionals Do to Help Reinforce Communication Skills?

Linda Mamer Listen to Linda Mamers’s advice on how families can support their child’s communication skills and what professionals should do to help parents reinforce those skills.

Transcript

Hello, I’m Linda Mamer, and currently, I am a provincial deaf-blind consultant in British Columbia, Canada.

What would you like to ask families to do at home and how do you see the educational staff’s role in working with the family on communications skills?

Well, I think the child’s educational team, which includes the family, needs to look at communication and develop strategies that are based on the real world of the child, both at school and at home. And as these strategies become a part of the child’s program, the family can learn to offer the communication in the same amount and manner when at home or out in the community. This may involve using object cues, calendar systems, sign language, picsims, whatever. I believe the team needs to develop the program that helps the family to learn what the child is doing at school. Then the family can reinforce this at home and in the community. This ensures that the child receives a consistent approach.