The Intervention Programme starts once the child has been fitted with a Hearing Aid. The Programme two components which must be emphasised and implemented simultaneously.
| 1.Make the child aware of sounds which he/she may not have registered before. Make the child aware of the speech of people, the noises of birds, animals, vehicles, splashing water, falling vessels, and squeaky toys, indeed every noise that is present in the environment. |
| 2. Squeaky toys help to associate noises with objects, which is the central objective of this stage. Once the child starts associating noise or a voice with the object or person it comes from, the process of such association must be consciously promoted at every opportunity. |
| 3. Now the child must be taught to discriminate between sounds to identify what souce they come from - the telephone, the doorbell, the radio etc. |
| 4. The stage is now set for comprehension of what is heard. Auditory memory has to be built up so that the child comprehends a word even without seeing the speaker's face. |
| 1.Everyone around the child must talk a lot, without thought to the possibility that the child may not be hearing or understanding everthing. Everyone must show willingness to repeat when necessary. Constant input of talk is critical for the buildup of the child's language skills. Everyone, especially the mother, must turn every event or situation of everyday life into a language input context. |
| 2. Babbling of the child must bew encouraged as much as possible. Babbling constitutes the child's first exercises in voice training for acquiring the complex muscular controls of the vocal tract that ultimately will produce intelligent speech. Disinterest in the child's babbling can be very discouraging and harmful to the progress of voice development. |
| 3. The child must be constantly included in al activities occurring in his/her presence. Such participation provides constant opportunities for added auditory and language experience |
| 4. In other words, the emphasis must be on constant inclusion. Exclusion will only deepen the disability and exclude the possibility of integration into the mainstream of normal activity. |
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| Discriminating
sounds from a drum, rattle, cymbals etc
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Mother explaining household objects like a plate |
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| Playing with push toys - associating related words | Even small babies can be drawn into language skills through play |
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| Playing with shapes | Playing with dolls and learning words for parts of the body |
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| Manipulating shapes | Exercising association skills through cue cards |