Hanen More Than Words Program: Empowering Parents

Between October 2016 and February 2017, three families dedicated 12 Saturdays with Hanen-certified speech-language pathologists Yi Lien and Chihui Yong at LIH Olivia’s Place to complete the More Than Words ®: Hanen program for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder and other social communication problems.

Hanen’s More Than Words® is a program developed by speech therapists with expertise in the field of communication disorders and backed by extensive research. It empowers parents to help their child with social-communication difficulty or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) reach three goals:

1 Improved social communication and back-and-forth interactions
2 Improved play skills
3 Improved imitation skills

Through the program, parents reported the following improvements in their child:

 Increased joint-attention skills
 Improved response (to parents), increased interaction and imitation skills (verbal/actions)
 Improvement in play skills

With regards to the program’s approach, one Shanghai parent reported:

“训练者帮助我们分析、找出达到沟通、游戏目标的方法。他们提出反思的方式帮助我们思考。和其他项目的不同之处在于，他们不是给我们一个模板来复制，而是让我们能具备更好的设定策略能力，以帮助我们和孩子之间有更好的互动、沟通。”
“The trainers guide us to analyze and think of other ways to achieve the (communication/play) goals targeted. They used reflective questions to help us think. Unlike other programs, we were not given a template to copy, but were equipped with the strategies to help us interact/communicate better with our children.”

It was truly an exciting journey witnessing parents applying Hanen strategies to facilitate more back-and-forth interaction with their child, and hearing them generating their own creative ideas to communicate better with their child.

Due to the success of our workshop, we have decided to offer another it again. The workshop will be held in Mandarin Chinese. We would like to invite parents or teachers of children with social-communication difficulty or autism spectrum disorder to a free orientation session to learn more about the program.

Date : March 25th (Saturday)
Time : 2.30- 4.30pm
Venue : 41 YongJia Road, Office # 503
Contact Number : 021-5405-0058/59

For more information, please call LIH Olivia’s Place Shanghai or email us.