Evaluation of the Effectiveness of a Guidance Program for Parents of Deaf Children

The purpose of this project is to evaluate the effectiveness of a parent guidance program on (1) the parent's communication skills, (2) the parent's sense of competence and (3) the child's language development. Concretely, 11 guidance sessions will be offered to parents by alternating two group sessions (in a common place) and one family session (at home). These sessions will be given every week and will last approximately 2 hours. The sessions will focus on working on and learning adult attitudes conducive to the development of communication and language in the child. These sessions will be interactive through questions (wooclap), exchanges, video illustrations, role playing, etc. A practical application will be proposed in daily life with the help of the video-feedback technique during the home sessions, individually with the parent. The effectiveness of this intervention will be evaluated via a pre- and post-test conducted in the families' homes. Episodes of parent-child interactions in a play situation will be filmed and coded in order to assess the parents' communication skills (receptivity, reactivity, language support strategies, etc.). The feeling of parental competence as well as the child's language will be estimated using parent questionnaires. The investigators hypothesize that parent guidance sessions will have an effect on the communication skills of parents of deaf children and will indirectly improve their sense of parenting competence as well as the child's language development. This study will therefore offer avenues for adapting the support of families of deaf children.