VERVE Child Interaction for parents
Children who present with speech and language difficulties may send out different signals and present with challenging behaviours. Parents may well find their child’s communication signals hard to read and their behaviour exhausting, they can feel that they have caused their child’s difficulty and that someone else can do a better job e.g a therapist or teacher. This is untrue. What the child needs is the parent to feel confident in their skills and to be given the opportunity to participate in the analysis of their child’s communication and learning development.
VERVE Child Interaction is a therapeutic approach that allows the parent and therapist to become research partners.
It assumes that:
- Therapy is a process that should take place within the child’s own interaction relationships.
- Every parent is effectively using inherent skills to support each child’s communication development.
- Every child is using inherent skills to communicate and is looking for support in how to extend and shape these.
- The role of the therapist is to highlight how and what each adult does that facilitates a child, to provide observations of the child’s communication skills and where they are currently at in their development. To provide information about rate of change and prognosis and to identify additional support, networks and systems to further increase the child’s rate of development
- Communication development is achieved through trial, feedback and fun. It is not about learning linguistics but is based on intuitive interaction.
VERVE Child Interaction therapy is a time limited course for parents. It targets the speech and language needs of their child and is not ongoing individual therapy.