Mothers of children with cleft palate undergoing speech intervention change communicative interaction

Introduction: Natural learning must include language learning relationships that provide natural support for communication and language learning. Obje ctive: To find out if including the mother as an active participant during speech therapy sessions would improve the communicative style and mode of t he interaction of the mothers with their cleft palate children. Materials a nd methods: Fifty-nine children with cleft palate and their mothers were in cluded in the study group. The patients were divided into two groups random ly. Patients received the same treatment. Twenty-eight of the children were included in the control group. They participated in small working groups c omprising the speech pathologist and two children. Thirty-one of the childr en were included in the experimental group. In this case, the mothers of th e children were also included as active participants. The mothers of the pa tients from the two groups were assessed at the beginning and end of the sp eech therapy period to find out their style and mode of interaction. Pre- a nd post-data of the mothers from both groups were compared. Results: Eighty -nine per cent of the mothers of the experimental group modified their patt erns of interaction. In contrast, only 19% of the mothers of the control gr oup modified their style and mode of interaction. A Fisher exact test demon strated that the frequency of mothers from the experimental group that modi fied their style and mode of interaction was significantly greater as compa red to the number of mothers from the control group that were able to modif y their style and mode of interaction. Conclusions: Mothers of children wit h cleft palate and accompanying language delay modify their communicative s tyle and mode of interaction through active participation in speech therapy . (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.