TalkAbility is a family-focussed program for parents of high-functioning verbal children with social communication challenges, including children who have a diagnosis of ASD. As a parent, you can see firsthand how your child’s social communication difficulties make it challenging for him to connect with others and have meaningful conversations. The TA Program gives you a variety of practical and powerful tools to help your child ‘tune-in’ to the feelings and thoughts of others – which is where successful conversations begin. By helping your child see things from another person’s perspective, you’ll enable him to have more effective conversations and make friends more easily.
What will you learn in the TA Program?
The TalkAbility Program is the right fit for you and your child if you answer ‘yes’ to more than one of the following questions:
- Does your child find it difficult to hold a conversation with others?
- Does your child get along better with adults than children?
- Does your child insist on talking to other children about things they aren’t interested in?
- Does your child get upset if his or her routines change?
What Parents Learn in the TalkAbility Program.
In a TalkAbility Program, you will learn practical strategies that you can easily build into your child’s everyday life. You will use these strategies to:
- Help your child have more effective back-and-forth conversations
- Encourage your child to pay attention to the social messages people send non-verbally
- Model the language your child needs in order to talk about his feelings and those of other people
Help your child interact with other children and make friends