The Hanen Centre is a Canadian charitable organization with a global reach. Their mission is to enable parents and professionals to transform their daily interactions with young children to build the best possible lifelong social, language and literacy skills. This includes children with or at risk of language delays and those with developmental challenges such as Autism Spectrum Disorder
Any time is a good time to help your child learn language and literacy skills! Hanen Tips for Parents can help you turn any activity you do with your child into an opportunity to build his skills – and to have fun while you’re doing it!

Parents have the power to boost their children’s language and literacy development when they:

• Make it easy for their child to start conversations
• Respond with interest to whatever their child tells them, with or without words
• Talk frequently with their child about things of interest to the child
• Have conversations with their child that go back and forth a number of times
• Talk at a level that their child can understand and learn from (not too complex or too simple)
• Expose their child to print in a variety of ways, especially with books

Tips for parent’s of young children who communicate without words:

These tips are for parents of children who communicate using a combination of sounds, gestures (e.g. pointing, shaking head for “no”, waving “bye”) and eye gaze (looking at you and then at what he is “talking” about). These children are sending clear messages, just not with words.

Click here to find out more http://www.hanen.org/CMSPages/handler404.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/Helpful-Info/Parent-Tips.aspx%20%20/