Children don’t have to be identified as having autism to have social communication challenges. There could be a few things present for your little one that educators or other relatives have talked about with you, but something to work on regardless! Whether your child is identified as neurodivergent or has some social communication challenges, you are probably asking yourself: “now what?”
Research suggests that parents with children under the age of 3 should definitely participate in parent training sessions. Why though? Here are 3 reasons to participate!
1. Gain connection
When you are coached on how to interact with your child, you will start to see the moments of engagement through smiles or reaching for you or even looking to see if you are playing with the same toy your child is. This kind of connection is something that we all crave and one that should be the basis for any parent training.
2. Build confidence in understanding your child’s behaviour
Behaviours of concern are part of every child’s life. A child with social communication challenges may exhibit longer, bigger, or more frequent behaviours of concern due to struggling to communicate with you. You and your coach work together to figure out what works for your child, you, and when to use each strategy.
3. Reduce stress
Working through how to play with your child and how to help them in times of trouble will improve your relationship and reduce stress for both you and your child.
Zwaigenbaum et al., (2015) detail the importance of parent involvement with just 1 therapy hour per week for 12 weeks, parents and children learned skills to increase the children's communication, initiations, imitative actions, and attention. This would be a huge benefit for your child as they engage with you the most throughout their week.
Now that we’ve discussed some of the benefits of participating on your child’s therapy team, let’s talk about some ways that you can participate in parent training at Kindred Kids.
1. Project ImPACT – this program is a 12- or 17-week course designed to coach you through how to interact and teach new skills to your child. The additional 5 sessions are used if your child has behaviours of concern that you would like to address. This program complements G-ESDM beautifully!
2. Parent session – at any time if you are in need of assistance, you can request that your session be switched to a parent session. Your ESDM Practitioner will help you establish a list of priorities and use the session to help you figure out a plan for the next week.
Is there something that you'd like more information about? Let us know below!
Full research:
Zwaigenbaum, L., Bauman, M. L., Stone, W. L., Yirmiya, N., Estes, A., Hansen, R. L., McPartland, J. C., Natowicz, M. R., Choueiri, R., Fein, D., & Kasari, C. (2015). Early Identification and Interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorder: Executive Summary. Pediatrics, 136(Supplement 1), S1-S9. doi: 10.1542/peds.2014-3667c
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