Overview

It Takes Two to Talk® — The Hanen Program® for Parents is a well-known model of family-focused early language intervention for young children with expressive and/or receptive language delays. The goal of It Takes Two to Talk is to enable parents to become their child’s primary language facilitator, thereby maximizing the child’s opportunities for communication development in everyday situations. It Takes Two to Talk is designed for toddlers and preschool-age children with specific language impairment, as well as for children with cognitive and developmental delays under age five.

It Takes Two to Talk has three objectives: parent education; early language intervention and social support.

Parent Education

Parents learn basic concepts about communication and language that are essential in helping their child’s communication develop.  They learn about:

• the development of communication (with an emphasis on nonverbal communication)
• the differences between expressive and receptive language
• the importance of a child’s active participation in frequent, extended turn-taking interactions in order to set the stage for language learning
• how and why their child communicates
• their child’s stage of communication development which facilitates the setting of realistic communication goals.  It also enhances parents’ responsiveness to their children’s communicative attempts.

Early Language Intervention

Parents learn to apply language facilitation strategies flexibly across contexts so that intervention becomes a natural part of their daily interactions with their child.  Strategies highlighted by the SLP for individual parents are specific to supporting their child’s communication goals.  These goals are developed collaboratively with the parents and modified over the course of the program. Since effective and consistent strategy use by parents is critical to the child’s progress, video feedback sessions play a major role in helping parents see and modify their interactive behaviour with their child.

Social Support

In It Takes Two to Talk, parents gain both formal and informal social support. The SLP, whose multi-faceted role includes that of group leader, interventionist, coach and counsellor provides more formal support. The parent group itself provides informal support through the sharing of experiences with individuals in similar situations.  Parents report that this constitutes a vitally important component of the program.