Webinar 2 - Interview with Guido Lichtert

About

Interview with Guido Lichtert

6th May 2015 - Moderators: Tobias Busch & Cristina Palmero

Topic : Adult and Child interaction, Early intervention and Home-based guidance in the context of Hearing Impaired Children

Questions

Part 1:Counseling for parents with hearing impaired children

1. What age arethe children that you work with in counseling?
(When (and by whom) do they get referred to KOCA? Whatis the youngest age? How many years/sessions do you acompany these families?)
2. You areregularly facing parents who just learned, that their child is deaf or hearingimpaired. What is the first thing they ask you as an expert?
(What are their most burning questions about theirchild’s deafness? What are their fears? How do you react? What do you talkabout in the first meeting with the parents?)
3. Whichreactions do parents have, when they get told that their child is deaf?
(Do parents differ in the way they react? Is it hardfor parents to accept they have a deaf child? Do people from different culturesreact differently?)
4. How doparents react when they consider cochlear implants as an option for theirchild?
(Which preconceptions, fears and hopes do parent haveabout CIs?)
5. You haveworked with families with HI children for quite some time now. How has the parents’ reaction to their child’simpairment changed over the years?
(What societal changes might be responsible for this?How has the public image of deafness changed? What role does the earlierdiagnosis play here?)
6. Do you alsomake suggestion relating to the environment of their child?
(What do you tell them about room acoustics, smallclasses, turning off background noise, etc.?)

Part 2: Parent-child interaction

7. The centralpoint of the home guidance counselling is to improve the communication betweenparents and children. What is wrong with their style of communication?
(Why is the parent’sintuitive style of communication insufficient? Are there families that have agood communication style with their HI child without any help? What is therelation between the quality of the interaction and language development?)
8. Parents arenot the only people interacting with the child. Who else do you give advice to?
(What do you tell thesiblings, classmates, teachers of HI children? Are teachers generally wellprepared to deal with them?)
9. What are theroles of other caregivers (e.g. teachers) in the child’s language development?
(What language learningexperiences are teachers providing that parents can’t provide? How well areparents and teachers coordinating their work with the child?)
10. What wouldyou like everyone to know about communicating with HI children?
(How should one (e.g. aniCare ESR) generally approach communication with HI children? Which are themain differences between communication with normal hearing children andchildren with hearing impairment? Does the hearing aid or degree of hearingloss matter?)
11. What doesthe ideal parent-child communication style look like for HI children? Whatimportant differences can be observed between a high quality interaction and alow quality interaction?
(Which communication style(directive, assertive, supportive…) is the best and what are the maincharacteristics of it? (What is the main difference to other styles? Why isthis one the most optimal for HI children? Which aspects, e.g. in terms of responsiveness, sensitivity,emotional support, involvement, are the most important for a good interactionand what do they look like in a conversation? What behavior qualifies a goodparent-child interaction?)

Part 3: The impact of changes in science and society

12. There aredifferent approaches to improve the situation of HI children. From yourpersonal point of view: Which new developments are you most excited about?
(Which upcoming changes aremost likely to affect your day-to-day work with families with HI children?)
13. What do youthink of automatic language and interaction assessment tools, like LENA, andCristina’s video analysis project at Noldus?
(How can they be used incounselling? In which cases might they even replace counselling? Are youintegrating such tools into your work?)