More Than Words 2020

Qi Creative is excited to offer More Than Words ® , an online program by the Hanen Centre!

Led by Coach MJ Jenkinson, Speech-Language Pathologist with Qi Creative, More Than Words ® is a customized parent training program designed to provide effective, evidence-based and research-validated tools that help children develop stronger social communication skills.

MJ sat down at the Qi Creative Headquarters to answer a few questions. This program will be offered in video conference format.

Click here to register your interest in the program.

So, introduce yourself!

Hi, I'm MJ Jenkinson, a Speech-Language Pathologist here at Qi Creative, and I'm here to tell give you some information about the More Than Words program.

What Makes More Than Words different from other programs?

Here at Qi Creative, we are a trans-disciplinary practice, which means that we focus on helping the whole child, not just one aspect or one skill.

We are also a parent coaching model practice, which is the model that Hanen uses for all of their programs.

This means we have lots of experience helping parents set goals for their children, working through the hard things they encounter.

We are also a company that firmly believes that everybody faces challenges, and that challenges are actually opportunities for us to grow and to change.

So here at Qi we pride ourselves on building resiliency and hope in the families we work with.

How will More Than Words benefit me?

The More Than Words program is designed to be generalizable. Which means that the skills we teach you can be used in multiple different ways.

So this means as your child becomes a stronger communicator, you can then adapt what you're doing to help them develop even more skills using the strategies that we've taught you.

One other thing that parents have also reported is that they find that they feel more joy when interacting with their children after doing More Than Words.

They also feel more confident teaching their children new skills. So we're hoping that these are benefits that you would also like to experience.

How much time should I expect to spend on More Than Words?

We tell parents to expect to spend around 3 hours a week for 12 weeks to do the More Than Words program. So I'll break that down for you.

Most of those 3 hours, so 2-1/2 hours a week, is spent at the group parent session where we'll be learning new skills, we'll be practicing how to make them work, and then we will help you plan an activity that you and your child can do together throughout the week.

The rest of the time during the week is spent reading the handbook or thinking about the activities that you planned and then practicing it with your child.

3 of our 12 weeks are spent doing video feedback sessions instead of group parent sessions. These are individualized coaching sessions where we work individually for about an hour and a half.

We'll take some video of you interacting with your child, we'll do some coaching on that and help you tweak what you're doing, so that you can provide the maximum benefit to you and your child.

The one other thing that we ask of you is we have have a pre-program consultation, which again, takes about an hour and a half, where one I will chat with you, we'll observe how you interact with your child, we'll do some video of how you guys interact and then we'll spend some time collaborating to set some goals that you want to achieve with your child over the 12 weeks.

Pre-program consultation
Group sessions
Individual video feedback sessions
Practicing on your own time

What will I learn from More Than Words?

The More Than Words program teaches parents and caregivers skills and strategies to help their children communicate more effectively. It's very individualized, very tailored to who you are as a family and as a dyad.

Also, people learn in More Than Words that they're not alone. So when they come to the parent groups, they discover other people who also facing the kinds of challenges that they are, and they provide support to one another.

What happens if I miss a class?

Hanen's policy is that all classes must be attended in order to receive the completion certificate. We understand that sometimes things happen, so our policy includes one missed class.

However, participants are expected to do any missed reading and they are also expected to stay connected to make sure that they are still up to speed before the next session.

We want to ensure that you get the most benefit out of this program and each week builds on the previous week's information, so we really don't want you to miss anything.