ESTABLISHING COMMUNICATION
SKILLS IN THE DISABLED CHILD
Compiled and presented by
Lakshmi
Venkatesh
This
presentation is an adaptation based on the Handbook for people working
with children with communication difficulties, compiled and issued under
the heading, "Let's Communicate" - Section 3 - Goal Planning", by the United
Nations Children's Fund, the Rehabilitation Unit of the World Health Organization,
Geneva and the Rehabilitation Unit of the Ministry of Health, Zimbabwe.
Our adaptation is designed to bring the benefit of their excellent compilation
to the disabled millions of India and their mothers (and trainers) in all
the local languages of the country, through the Internet. It is therefore
fully in keeping with the humanitarian objectives of these agencies.
The starting point for a mother
or a teacher for training a child with any
disability is to establish communication skills
in the child. Communication skills develop slowly from birth over time
and they develop in association with, never in isolation from, one another,
with strengths and weaknesses often offsetting each other. We may liken
the process of building these skills to building a house as in the diagram
below, where the skills are like the different materials that are needed
to build the house.
The capacity for ATTENTION
is like the foundation, on which LISTENING,
IMITATION, TAKING TURNS, and PLAY
are like the bricks of the walls, while UNDERSTANDING
and GESTURE
form the roof. SPEECH
forms the final coat of paint with which the house is completed. It is
to be noted that the the building of skills, as in the case of the house,
has largely to proceed in the same order. We may now consider this process
in fuller working detail, by clicking on the links below.
(Please note
that in the illustrations, the words of the mother/trainer are given in
red, and the
words of the child in green.)
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