09 Feb All About Imitation
A few years ago, I completed the Hanen: More Than Words training when I was based in London, England. If you’re not familiar with it, it is an evidence-based programme developed to target social communication in children under 5 years with social communication/language delays and those with diagnoses of autism spectrum disorders. To this day, I use many of the strategies learned from the training. One of the strategies that I love utilising is imitation.
In therapy, imitation is often an early goal for little learners and for good reason, too. Imitation is an important foundation skill for all aspects of language learning. Autistic children or children with social communication difficulties tend to have difficulties with imitation. You may notice that they may not be aware of when you are trying to get their attention and may struggle with copying actions or words when you model it for them.
So what can we do to build their imitation? It’s really simple, we can imitate them. Look closely at what your child is doing and copy what they are doing. Imitate their actions, their play, their sounds, and their body movements. If your child is making a ‘hm’ sound, you make the ‘hm’ sound too. If they are placing toys into a line, you line toys up as well. If they are spinning around, you spin around with them. If they are banging a pillow like it’s a drum, you do the same thing!
What you'll need:
- A little persistence - at first, your child may not understand what you are doing, but don't give up! Try a few times on different occasions to see their reaction.
- 2 sets of the same toys - it is helpful to have 2 of the same play items if you are imitating their actions on toys so that you don't have to take away their toy to imitate the action, which may risk them becoming distressed or distracted.
When you start imitating your child, soon enough, your child will start to notice you. They may smile, look over at you or move their body closer to you… and when they do, that is a powerful moment. Your child may imitate an action and then look over to you to see if you’ve copied them. This back and forth exchange is the basis of communication. When this has happened, you can then add on sequences to whatever your child was doing and you may notice that your child may start to imitate you. From there you can model and teach speech sounds, new play sequences and motor actions.
Here's a video of little Phoenix. Phoenix is 7 months old. In this video, Phoenix was saying the 'mm' sound. His mom then copies him and he notices. Then, we see a beautiful back and forth exchange with joint attention, social smiling and imitation of sounds.
To sum it all up:
- Imitation is a very important foundation skill for speech and language development
- Imitating your child can be a useful strategy to advance their own ability to imitate
If you are interested in learning more about imitation and other aspects of the Hanen: More Than Words programme, let us know. We are trained to deliver the programme and are excited to share strategies with you!
http://www.hanen.org/Programs/
–Krysta Leong Poi-Lockhart
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