Auditory Verbal Therapy is about guiding and coaching parents. Let’s look at a few of those those principles of AVT.
Guide and coach parents to:
3. help their child use hearing to develop listening and spoken language (LSL).
4. become primary facilitators of their child's LSL development by participating in AVT
5. create daily listening activities in environments that support LSL
6. help their child integrate LSL into all aspects of life
7. use natural developmental patterns of audition, speech & language
8. help their child self-monitor language via listening
Guiding and coaching parents while they are in their own home is effective and, not surprisingly, extremely efficient. Sessions take place with all their family toys/games, and all of the people that are present in their lives from day to day, and in the environment that means the most to them - HOME.
During the pandemic there are some added bonuses too:
Masks - there are no masks involved here. Kids with hearing loss, even the AVT stars who are listening geniuses, need to see your face sometimes.
Germs - there are no germs involved, unless you never wipe down your own keyboard.
Family Centeredness of AVT - This type of therapy is designed to guide and coach the parent to be the primary teacher in their child’s life. You don’t need to be in-person to do this.
Siblings - Sibs don’t need to be shuffled to appointments and miss out on what they need to do. (Although most siblings still want to join in on the games during an online AVT session. It’s too fun to sit out!)
Life - life doesn’t seem as hectic when you are not fighting rush hour traffic to get to and from afterschool appointments.
It’s in the home - and your goals are for “in the home.” So the transition from AVT session to real life is zero. It’s all happening in real time.
I have grown to absolutely LOVE online Auditory Verbal Therapy and I think you will too.