Friday 11 May 2018

Facts About Functional Communication Training For Parents

By Douglas Myers


Communication skills and channels for children take time to develop. This is evident from the raw emotions they express, words and gestures that focus on how they feel and what they want. Even for a parent, these raw messages are challenging to understand. It gets worse if the milestone is delayed. Functional communication training for parents helps in simplifying interactions and helping the guardians to understand the messages being passed.

Functional communication training is very important for all parents because it helps in strengthening the bond between them. However, it remains crucially important for parents or guardians of children with special needs like autism and ADHD. Such children try to voice their needs but cannot be easily understood. This is why special attention is required.

Children also need to be taught to communicate functionally. This is only possible to a small group of children considering their ages and ability to understand. However, a parent can slowly impart this knowledge to their children, albeit with a lot of patience. By teaching these children about this way of communicating, you provide them with an alternative way of making their needs and demands known. They will also be saved from frustration that arises from inability to achieve mutual understanding.

It is speech therapists that handle children facing challenges communicating. The role of the parent is to alert the pathologist who will evaluate your child and recommend the best solution. The evaluation is important because each child is unique and therefore requires personalized approach. Different children face very unique challenges communicating. Once the challenges have been identified, unique solutions can be provided.

The natural modes of communicating for human beings are gestures, words and body language. When there is a delay in development of communication, challenges are not spread on all avenues. With this in mind, the pathologist identifies the channel that has developed better than others. He will develop a hierarchy detailing the levels of development and areas where learning can lead to improvements.

The means available for children to communicate include gestures and body language. The child will indicate what he wants and his feelings about a particular subject. It is manifested as the child reaches out or points at objects. A child will also communicate displeasure when you want to pick something he or she does not want. Sign language is an option alongside the use of picture exchange and voice output devices.

The guardian or parent training the kid should look for easy words to train his child. Preference for parents and guardians is because they have the trust of children and spend a lot of time together. Use a mix of gestures, voice and body language to pass the message. Tempt the learning child to use the words or gestures by presenting a situation. Such practical moments also help you to evaluate your teaching skills.

It takes a great deal of patience for children to begin to communicate fluently. Try different words and scenarios to avoid frustrating your child. Each child has a unique ability to understand. Be alert to such uniqueness and find a way of going round it to achieve desired results. By trying severally, you will eventually communicate at one level or the other.




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