Amina Grace Speech/Language Program
Mary Lee Walls, M.S., CCC-SLP
The Hanen It Takes Two to Talk® parent guidebook provides many practical ideas and strategies for supporting your child’s communication skills at each developmental stage, and for helping them progress to the next stage.
The Hanen stages are as follows: Discoverer Stage, Communicator Stage, First Word stage, and Combiner Stage. This month the focus is on the Discoverer Stage.
Discoverer Stage
Interpret your child’s looks, sounds, and actions
Interpreting your child is a powerful strategy to let them know that you are interested in what they are feeling or doing. When you interpret your child’s looks, sounds, and actions as if they are communicating something specific, it helps them understand that what they do has an effect on others. In time, your child will start to do these things on purpose and that’s the beginning of intentional communication.
How to Interpret:
- Step 1: Observe, Wait and Listen™ to see what your child is interested in or reacting to. Your child may react by moving their body, using facial expressions, looking around, reaching towards, and/or making sounds:
- Get face to face with your child, and observe what interests them – are they looking at the ceiling fan? Are they interested in the light coming from the window? By paying close attention to your child, you will see what has captured their attention.
- Wait to see if your child sends you a message – do they look at you? Smile? Move their arms? Treat any action, look, or facial expression as though they are trying to tell you something.
- Listen for any sounds your child makes – do they babble when they spot a favorite toy? Do they giggle when their big brother makes faces at them? Again, treat any sound as though they are trying to tell you something.
- Step 2: Think about what your child might be feeling and wanting to communicate. This may mean taking your best guess based on what you know about your child and the current situation.
- Step 3: Put into words what you think your child is trying to tell you. Use short, grammatically correct sentences, then wait to see your child’s reaction.
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