I read the book years ago when my son was diagnosed and it was helpful. I got to actually do the program last year ( for my daughter also ASD) and it was very useful.We did about 8 classes and two home 3 home visits. 2 visits were recorded to use in class. We had children that were at all different levels of communication. From those eho have no language, to those who use pecs or label like your daughter Allegra, to those who can useone or two words to those who speeak in sentances. Its all about working at your childs level, understand how your child communicates and comprehends, Part of the hanen program is looking at how your child communicates, working out what level they were at. I think Hanen is great because it empowers the parent in that it shows you how to interact and comunicate with your child. You cant just leave this to therapists, this is your childs life and you need to be involved, giving them a way to understand you and you to understand them in every day life Snoopywomen, what you did doesnt sound anything like how I have heard Hanen taught, maybe they weren't doing it right? All right I'll get off my soap box now. Liz
a question, is it good for kids who are verbal but still in the labeling phase
with no functional language?
We have done this training. Our training was 8 sessions of 3 hours classes. We had also several (3 or 4) home visits and our son was taped and then the video was discussed in the class. For us it was free and we benefited a lot from this program. I think Hanen is one of the best programs available. Its main target is communication in general and language in particular. It has many in common with floor time I believe.
Daddy
Perhaps it wasn't done right in our town. But we paid 0 for 6 sessions for them to have us interact with our kids for 20 minutes, go into the parents' room for 20 minutes to have a lecture (which mostly consisted of how to get your child to talk and my child is extremely verbal) and then we had snack and circle time. Ds was wound beyond belief and HATED going to these classes. I hated it too and never went back. To me, I wanted the kids to be learning how to interac (this was billed as a SOCIAL SKILLS class!) as I am pretty well aware of how to interact with my son! So, lesson learned for me.
However, this was the first time this group did it (although I heard it didn't get much better after a year or so) and they may have been doing it totally wrong or differently. It did not work for us. But, my ds has tons of language and most of it appropriate. So perhaps it is something that would not work as well for kids who are highly verbal and/or very high-functioning. Or again, maybe they were doing it totally wrong here!
I am doing the Hanen program in a few weeks, I'd like to hear what people think too. I know of one family who did this training...I think they thought the training was worthwhile, but the area they lived in had zero resources for them. They ended up moving. Sorry that's all I know.I need to choose my activities wisely since I am involved in quite a few things--all good but can't do everything!
Have any of you done this and it was worthwhile--I believe it is an 8 week commitment and two home visits....weekly classes....without the children...
I did the Hanen program and I found it very beneficial....but V was almost totally non-verbal when we did it (he was 3yrs old)...so, looking back, as Snoopywoman said, maybe it's not designed with HFA or highly verbal in mind...maybe it also depends on age of child as well?
It does have some floortime type components to it, but was pitched to me mostly as a communication building strategy...
It was offered for free except for the cost of the book, but I don't know that I would have felt I got my money's worth if they were actually charging 0 for the sessions...?
The way it was set up for ours was there were 8 sessions, once a week for 3 hours, and you had homework exercises to do with your child before and after every class where you filled out worksheets and documented the results of the different techniques...and they did several in home visits where they taped to...it was interesting to watch my interaction with my child as well as those of the other members of the class and get feedback from the instructors and other group members....gives you some perspective.
Yeah - after reading the posts I think they weren't doing it right. And I don't think most of the parents found it very helpful. Some who had kids that were not very verbal found it a little helpful - but it was so basic that really, a little amount of research on the Internet would have gotten you the same stuff.
Well, don't mind me then! They did say they took their info from "More than Words" (is that the name of the book - it was something like that!). And the person in charge had done training with the Hanen program. But we had no home visits or taping on anything like that. So, I'll just shut up now!
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