TalkAbility Guidebook
TalkAbility™ resources were specifically created for parents of children with high-functioning autism by Hanen’s expert speech-language pathologists, who are up-to-date with the most current research in the field of autism and who have years of experience working with children on the autism spectrum.
The TalkAbility guidebook provides parents with the practical knowledge and tools they need to:
- Help their child develop theory of mind skills
- Encourage their child to pay attention to the social messages people send non-verbally
- Help their child have extended, back-and-forth conversations
- Talk so their child can tune in to what others are thinking
- Help their child tell stories and play imaginatively
- Help their child make friends
TalkAbility’s naturalistic approach empowers parents make the most of the everyday activities they do with their child to improve his social communication skills. Practical strategies are explained in simple language that parents will understand, and each strategy is accompanied by beautifully illustrated real-life examples that make the book easy to understand, no matter what the parents’ reading level is.
The guidebook first helps parents zero in on their child’s particular needs, and then demonstrates how to use each strategy with those needs in mind.
Here’s an example of a powerful set of strategies from TalkAbility that help parents build their child’s conversational skills by following his lead, waiting for him to respond, and cueing him to take his turn: