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Hydranencephaly Resources in caring for a Child with Hydranencephaly Physical Care of a Child with Hydranencephaly Difficult Times
Pt. 1: Taking Care of You Book: Caring for Your Child With Hydranencephaly
Printed Materials |
It Takes Two To Talk The book, "It Takes Two to Talk" is an excellent resource for helping children learn how to communicate. The following are 2 excerpts from the book that may apply to a child with Hydranencephaly. The book can be found in Libraries or online. This material is presented here to give you some ideas on how to recognize how your child communicates and how to encourage them to build on to that. There are Hanen courses all over North America for children under the age of 5. You can go to: http://www.hanen.org/ Your child's Infant Development teacher or Speech Pathologist will know if there is a course in your area. I was offered this for Kayda but at the time her health was so fragile that it just wasn't a priority. Here are 2 basic principals taught in the Hanen Course: Chapter 1: Allow Your Child to Lead
Know Your Child Intimately Observe: As parents, our care and
concern for our children and the time we spend with them give us endless
opportunities to observe them carefully and get to know and understand them
better.
But sometimes our children’s facial expressions, actions and focus of attention are not clear enough to help us figure out what they are trying to tell us. · Observing the following subtle cues can be helpful: · State of alertness · Rate of breathing · The pitch, volume, and duration of their sounds. It takes time and determination to get to know the unique combination of body language and sounds that each child uses to communicate Wait
Waiting for our child to communicate
is hard to do! Taking over is a natural, even instinctive, reaction on our part. However, if we want to help our child learn, we must give him a chance to express himself in his own way. If we make everything simpler, easier, and faster for ourselves, we may find that we’re ignoring the feelings, needs, and curiosity of the child we care for and are concerned about. Waiting gives us the chance to get to know our child. We can watch for his focus of attention, look at the expression on his face, and listen to the sounds he makes. Listen
When we talk and our child doesn’t respond easily, our natural reaction is to fill in all the blanks, answer all the questions, and even comment without leaving a pause. We think we’re making things easier, but we’re actually involved in a form of loving sabotage. We don’t expect an answer, and our child usually fulfills our expectations by not communicating. If we listen attentively to our child, our undivided attention will give our child the security and encouragement to make his efforts worthwhile. If we listen attentively to our child, we will also understand him better and be able to respond more sensitively to him. It Takes Two To Talk, A Parent’s Guide to Helping Children Communicate, Ayala Manolson, Hanen Centre Publication, c 1992, pp 4-7
Chapter 2: Adapt To “Share the Moment”
When we are face-to-face, available and interested, some surprising things happen: We learn more about our children by being able to observe their facial expressions, focus, state of alertness and skin tone. Our Children learn more about us. They can see the way our mouth moves to form words and watch our eyes to find out what we’re looking at. They can also see and experience our acceptance of their attempts to communicate and our pleasure in “sharing the moment” with them. We talk with our children, not at our children. Being close together encourages the give and take of communication and puts us in a better position to allow the child to lead. We’ve all experienced how hard it is to have a conversation with someone taller or sorter than we are. It’s such an effort to make eye contact, and we soon move on to talk to someone we are more comfortable with---someone at our level. So rather than looming over our child, we can:
We can make it easier and more comfortable for our child to look into our eyes and have conversations with us by adapting our position so we are “face to face”.
Let Your Child Know You’re Listening Imitate One of the best ways to connect with
very young children who are just beginning to communicate is to imitate When in doubt, don’t hesitate….Imitate!
Interpret We get excited about the new sounds and gestures that come from our child. We are quick to interpret them and to assign them the words we think they mean.
When we interpret for our child, we say it as she would if she could. Interpreting a child who is difficult to understand demands a special kind of detective work. · Interpreting may mean guessing at what the child’s trying to say and putting it into works Even when we are wrong, our response let’s our child know that we are listening. · Repeat what our child says with a question in our voice encourages her to try again and, perhaps, she can be clearer. · Explaining that we can’t understand and asking our child to show us is another way of confirming our interest. When all else fails, a sincere expression of our desire to understand and to try again later will let our child know that we appreciate her efforts. Commenting on what we are doing when our child appears interested can be the start of sharing information and everyday activities-e.g., setting the table, washing up, sweeping the floor—and perhaps even getting some “help” in doing them. We also let our child know that we are interested in communicating with her when we comment on what she says or does and we don’t change the topic.
For a child beginning to communicate, a “turn” can be a look, a gesture or a sound. Or a child’s turn can even be as subtle as an intake of breath. It may not seem like much, but by recognizing and accepting our child’s way of taking part, we can keep the conversation going. “Conversation” sounds like such a formal adult word. But all it really is, is a series of turns. We take a turn, the child takes a turn, and then we take another turn. As our child matures, her turns in the conversation will progress to words, phrases and sentences. The natural give and take of daily life with our children gives us may opportunities to share experiences, take turns, exchange ideas, and have good conversations with them. In the beginning, these conversations help our children experience the joy of sharing what’s on their minds. Then they discover that these conversations can provide them with new and useful information about their world. Chapter 2: Adapt To Share The Moment, It Takes Two to Talk, A Parent’s guide to Helping Children Communicate, Ayala Manolson, A Hanen Centre Publication, c 1992. pp 17-19 Other pages in this section
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August 16, 2001- January 12, 2005 This website is funded in loving memory of Jason S. by his mother Kammy The information on this site is provided by families, caregivers, and professionals who are or have been caring for a child with Hydranencephaly. Please report any broken links or missing photos to angelbearmom@shaw.ca
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their sounds, actions, facial expressions and words. If a child puts his head to
one side and we dot he same, if he says “uh uh” and we say the same, he will
know that we’re interested in what he’s doing and what he’s saying. Chances are
we’ll make a connection that develops info a conversation. 
When
we interpret, it confirms that we’ve received our child’s message. It provides
our child with a language model to learn from. We usually think of interpreters
in terms of a foreign language, but when we interpret for our child, we’re
trying to help her speak our language.
