Families
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- About hearing impairment
- Tips for parents
- Hearing Aids
- Cochlear implants
- FMs
- Auditory Verbal Therapy
- Seminars
About hearing impairment
Empowering parents is an important part of the process in assisting children with hearing impairment. Often parents feel overwhelmed and confused when confronted by the diagnosis. Coming to terms with the diagnosis and understanding how to move forward is a difficult process.
The resources area of this website is designed to assist parents and give them the knowledge to make informed decisions as well as to show them the possibilities that exist for them and their child.
Tips for parents
Coming soon
Hearing Aids
Coming soon
Cochlear implants
Coming soon
FMs
Coming soon
Auditory Verbal Therapy
Auditory Verbal Therapy (AVT) is an approach to teaching children who are deaf or hearing impaired to understand and develop spoken language through listening. This is possible because modern hearing aids and Cochlear Implants are powerful enough to be able to give almost all children enough access to sound to develop spoken language.
Why Auditory Verbal-Therapy?
Doreen Pollack was one of the foremost pioneers of AVT in the 1950s. She said, “I learned that one could not simply hang a hearing aid on children and expect them to develop hearing perceptions normally. Instead the children continued to act as if they were deaf. Sound was meaningless. When the children were encouraged to use lip-reading or signing they continued to be visual learners and ignored sound. I came to realize that one did not have to teach deaf children to look but instead one had to teach them to listen. A hearing aid gave more hearing, but listening had to be learned. I had to make sound an important and meaningful part of everything the children were experiencing”
The goal of AVT is to allow children who are deaf or hearing impaired to integrate and participate into the hearing world. Therapists use individualized therapy sessions with a child to teach the parents or carers how to find opportunities throughout the day to develop auditory learning in their children.
Principles of Auditory-Verbal Practice (Adapted from the principles developed by Doreen Pollack, 1970)
- Promote early diagnosis of hearing loss in newborns, infants, toddlers and children, followed by immediate audiological management and Auditory-Verbal Therapy.
- Recommend immediate assessment and use of appropriate, state-of-the-art hearing technology to obtain maximum benefits of auditory stimulation.
- Guide and coach parents to help their child use hearing as the primary sensory modality in developing spoken language without the use of sign language or emphasis on lipreading.
- Guide and coach parents to become the primary facilitators of their child’s listening and spoken language development through active, consistent participation in individualised Auditory-Verbal therapy.
- Guide and coach parents to create environments that support listening for the acquisition of spoken language throughout the child’s daily activities.
- Guide and coach parents to help their child integrate listening and spoken language into all aspects of the child’s life.
- Guide and coach parents to use natural developmental patterns of audition, speech, language, cognition and communication.
- Guide and coach parents to help their child self-monitor spoken language through listening.
- Administer ongoing formal and informal diagnostic assessments to develop individualised Auditory-Verbal treatment plans, to monitor progress and to evaluate the effectiveness of the plans for the child and their family.
- Promote educations in regular classrooms with typical hearing peers and with appropriate support services from early childhood onward
Not only Auditory-Verbal Therapy
At RIDBC Matilda Rose Centre we work with children who have disabilities in addition to hearing impairment. Because the communication needs of our children are more complex than for children who only have hearing impairment, we work with the principles of AVT, but modify them when appropriate to incorporate Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) strategies.
Examples:
- a child with hearing impairment and Cerebral Palsy may learn to understand spoken language through listening, but may not be able to develop speech. In this case he or she may need a picture communication system to express his needs and wants and ideas, or may need to learn to use a speech generating device.
- children with hearing loss and Down Syndrome may benefit from the use of keyword signing as a bridge to developing spoken words, in the same way that normal hearing children with Down Syndrome do.
- a child with hearing loss and autistic traits may need visuals to assist with learning new routines and to assist with behaviour management.
Seminars
One of RIDBC Matilda Rose Centre’s aims is to allow other professionals to benefit from our experiences and learning. We have earned a well respected reputation and a proven methodology that is esteemed worldwide. We have been invited to share this knowledge in conferences held in Thailand, Italy, Denmark, Indonesia, the UK, the US and Australia wide.
The Centre also carries out professional development workshops each year, and allows some of its research to be accessed by third parties. Seminar dates will be publicized on this web page closer to the time.