3 Reasons Why Your Child Can't Answer Your Questions

Hello. Hi. Hello everyone. Today's topic is called three reasons why your child can't answer questions. And the reason why we're doing this live today is because it's Monday and at 9pm my time, we go online and we answer questions that I've been collecting throughout the week and to compile them in live and just let everyone know about it. Okay? So if you have any questions, of course you can comment below, you can join our Facebook group. If you're watching on our Facebook group already, that's great. Okay, you can ask me, you can email me. My email address is mingagensofspeech.com and first of all, I want to say that if you are right now asking your child a lot of questions and you're not getting anything in return, well, there are three reasons that I think are the most important ones to talk about. Okay? So number one is that your child isn't verbal yet. Right? That's the obvious reason. If your child isn't able to speak in verbal language yet, how do you expect your child to be able to answer your questions? So there are two reasons. It's a little generalized, but there are two reasons why your child is. Okay. Number one is that it's a language issue, meaning that he or she hasn't been able to learn the language needed required to start talking. Okay. And there are many, many, many, many prerequisite skills, what we call pre link pre linguistic skills before a child can talk. So that's on the language side, of course. If you have any questions about pre linguistic skills, you can ask me about it. And the other side of it is that your child has a lack of speech abilities. Okay. And this is a little more tricky. All right? So there are many reasons why a child cannot use their. They cannot produce speech sounds. And the most common one that you might, you know, when you go to a speech therapy is that is articulation issue. All right? And what that really means is just that your child is physically unable to, to produce those, those sounds. Okay. Maybe it's a cleft palate. Maybe it's just that they don't know where to put the tongue or you know, their range of motion, meaning how they move their mouth is restricted. And that's why some therapists would do like oral motor. If your child is non verbal. Right. And it's not like I'm against it, but I have a whole other video about like oral motor exercises and whatnot. So go check that out. You can go, you know, Google it or something. And other Than articulation. There might be other problems. Okay. I don't know what the problem. What happened. Right. But there are a lot of. Actually quite a handful of clients of mine who have. What's that called? Apraxia of speech. And a lot of parents ask me, hey, does my child have apraxia of speech? Hey, I don't know. I really don't know. If I can't see your child, like, face to face, and it takes, you know, if I can, like, perform some sort of assessment, then I can tell you. Right. But it's pretty difficult to diagnose for apraxis of speech. So that's one of them. Okay, that's another one. So that for speech sounds, there's a whole load of different reasons to why your child cannot make a sound correctly or let alone just make a sound at all. Okay? And on the language side, there's a lot of reasons as well. So for children who have a genetic disorder, I have like two. I've seen two or three children who are like that who have a genetic disorder and they cannot talk, they cannot answer questions. Right. Or it might be intellect, intellectual disorder. Right. Which is getting less and less nowadays. And that's because of, you know, parents being more vigilant, being more like, they take more precautions before they actually have a child. They do an audit on their DNA and their genetics or whatever. I don't know. I'm not an expert, but it's getting less and less. Like down syndrome is getting less and less in this world. Okay? And these, all these syndromes, whatever. I don't want to, like, make anyone confused. Creates a child who is. Create is the wrong word. Okay? There is a chance that your child will be non verbal and therefore cannot answer a question. So these are one of the things that. One of the big reasons why your child cannot answer your question is because they're non verbal. So the reason why I'm saying such an obvious thing to you is because I've seen that parents will ask a whole load of questions or teachers or actually even therapists will ask a whole lot of questions to that specific child who is non verbal. A lot of questions like, is this okay for you? Let's go there. All right? Or I think these are still okay because, you know, it's basically like ask a permission, right? But sometimes they say, like, why do you not understand? Why didn't you say this? These why questions really make it very difficult for me to digest. I mean, like, how are you supposed to. How are you supposed to talk to A nonverbal child with these kind of questions. Right. It's like asking someone. It's like asking someone who doesn't speak your language a whole bunch of questions, and you expect something back. That's impossible. All right, so I have a question here, and I. Let's see. He or she says, I can't see the name because it's from the Facebook group, but it's okay when a child sings most of the time or talking to self and don't talk. Yeah. I think this was one of the things I was talking about a lot for the past previous week, about a child being able to talk but won't communicate two ways. Right. And I think it's the same person. She says, how can I encourage my child to talk? I just show it. I can't see that. It's just a Facebook user. Right. It doesn't matter. How can I encourage my student to talk? What are the activities to encourage my student to talk? Thanks. I guess this person is a teacher, and she's asking, okay, how can he or she laugh? Right. How to encourage students to talk? Okay. Given this circumstances, what you should usually should do is to find the activity that he or she enjoys. Okay. And then after playing it a whole lot, many times, and they can anticipate what comes next, and then you can teach some sort of language. You cannot just go on and force a child to talk like that. You must have a context. And we did talk about this in the previous video that I already recorded, and it's on Facebook and YouTube. So basically what you do is to create a game, an activity. Right. And you ask me what activities? I don't know, to be honest. It depends on the kid. And most children. Most children, food would work. And why I always talk about food here, it's not because I'm like some ABA guy or like, I really love using food and snacks. No. It's because most of the time, I don't get to see the child. Right. And the person who does it is you, not me. So I can only tell you try food because it's universally okay. Right. Or I would say that, hey, you can try. You can try to get. You can try other toys, like car slides. Right? Different. Different types of different. Different. Different types of toys that you can try until you find something that sticks with them. All right? So this is something that you have to try yourself. I really don't know what kind of activities your child loves. All right. So I actually went to Facebook. I know. It's actually Russell asking this Question. That's cool. And yeah, you really have to. So, Russell, you have to find something that your child likes. Is it cars? Is it transportation? Is it animals? Is it puzzles? Is it. Is it, like, water related? Like, you know, can you play, like, water balloons? Is it, like, food? And then when you find something that they like, and then you create a routine. Let me give you an example, okay? I mean, some of the people here would have heard me talk about this over and over again, but I'm going to tell you here again. Okay? So for instance, if. For instance, if they like to play like a water balloon, right? First of all, you have to, like, take the balloon out and then stuff it into, like, the water, the tap, right? And then you need to add the water in. So once the water is in, you have to take it out and tie a knot. And afterwards you can throw. Okay, let's say you don't tie a knot. You just squirt the water out. That's a routine, right? Take the. Take the balloon, put the balloon on the tap, turn on the tap, fill it with water, and then let go of the balloon and go start again. So after your child can anticipate what to do with this, you can add the language. Okay. It might be very simple. It's not even words. Maybe it's just gestures. Right? So maybe get the balloon is like that. Get. Okay. And then put is like that. I don't know. It's up to you. All right, so that is something I would look into, right? Try different toys and stuff and then see what activities you can do. All right? And I see that, you know, this. This question was actually from Priyanka. So Priyanka want to change. Okay. Sings most of the time or talking to self and don't talk. And she asks how to stop the singing. Okay. So I guess because you joined our group a little later, so I'll just really quickly tell you my view on that. Okay? So your child who sings words but won't talk in words, that's actually fine. And actually, it's your responsibility to make him talk to you. Okay. And the singing. What that singing is is that he's bored, man. I mean, he might be like, do you sing in the shower? I bet you do. I mean, I do. I don't know about you, actually. So if you sing in the shower, what is that? You're. You're entertaining yourself, right? There's no audience or whatever. You're entertaining yourself, same as your son or daughter. I don't know if it's A guy or girl. But what I'm telling you is you're not supposed to stop it because if you stop it, another behavior will come out. Okay, so what do you do? You find a replacement. And the replacement for singing might be playing with toys, might be listening to new music, might be like singing together. All right. It's just that by what how you see seems inappropriate. Okay. But it really isn't. This is what we call, like, verbal stimming, Right? If you sing over and over for no particular reason. Yeah. So my advice to you, Priyanka, is that you have to think about. Okay, you don't like it, right? But what else can your child do? What else can he do? Have you given him a different thing to do? Right. So this is something you have to think about. Okay? So we're going to keep on answering questions before going on, because I can talk about that all day anyways, but questions can only come in now. Okay? So. Hey. Hey. I really. Is there an easier way to say your name? So Mandalena, Mandalena, really good parent, by the way, keeps on asking me a lot of questions and getting stuff done. Real cool. So she says, my kid currently likes to play with Play doh. So I try to create some animals and ask him, I want elephant. I want an elephant. All right, so, yeah, that's good. So she's updating me here on the live. That's excellent, Mandalena. So. Well, you have to be careful. Okay. So I wouldn't. It works. Yeah, it works. Yeah, it's cool. It's good. So what I would be careful here how I would improve it since it's working already. Hallelujah. What I would do here is expand on the. On the verb. So whenever you're doing like I want an elephant, the I want doesn't really have much of a meaning. It just means they're requesting. Right. Is there something else? Some other verb that you can use for elephant? Maybe it's like mommy, make elephant. Right? Right. Make elephant out of the. I don't know, the play D'oh. Something like that. Or make yellow elephant. Because different colors in Play doh. So remember, the activity works. Right? We Mandalena, me, Me and her, we've been thinking about how to create nice activities for the child. So maybe. Maybe Russell can think about this as well. Right? If you're still watching Russell, you can think about. Okay, so you can use Play doh. It depends on the kid. Right. I cannot just tell you, oh, do this doesn't work. Do that. You have to keep on trying. So Mandalena says play Doh. Yeah, I would. You know, I don't know much Indonesian, so other than like mao or minta or whatever, elephant, maybe you can say like, oh, make a yellow elephant. I don't know. So that there's more like different words when you're, when you're talking. Because most of the time when you use I want or I, I want, or I don't know, give me or whatever, these, these are what we call frozen phrases, right? Because they're stuck in one place as a carrier phrase. What we call carrier is like, you know, like a truck in front and then the container at the back. The truck head is always I want. The container is different stuff. So if you keep on doing like I want whatever I want whatever, it gets stuck there. All right? And children who are speech and language delayed, they love certain structures because they can lean on it and just use it forever. So make sure that you change it up. Okay, Mandelina? Right. Hope hopefully you get what I'm saying. And I haven't talked too fast, okay? But I'm really, really happy because, you know, most of the time when I talk here, you know, I wish that I can speak in Cantonese, you know, it's so much easier and everyone understands that. But no, I have to speak English. And most of the time, not everyone in the world can understand English 100%. Okay? And I'm very happy that you guys are sticking around and listening to me, despite sometimes I talk a little too fast. Okay? So great job, Mandelina. It's working. It's good. And to the other two parents, you know, try out, try things out, try it out, make activities, have fun with your child. You know, if you're not smiling and having fun with you, you're doing something wrong. Okay. It's not your fault though. All right? Okay. So let's go back to the three reasons. So the first reason obviously is non verbal, okay? So if you have a non verbal student or a child, try not to ask so many questions because you are actually stressing them out, all right? They might understand the format of a sentence. They might understand a lot of commands because, you know, you do a lot of pointing and your eyes tell a lot of, you know, cues and the time of day also help them out a lot. You know, it's going to. Let me give you an example. Okay? Let's say I am quite nonverbal in terms of speaking Indonesian, but I will know when the Muslim, like, you know, there are Muslim people who are starting to pray and I Know when to be respectful, right? Because I can hear the music, I can see that they're washing their feet, you know, So I understand the context. I don't understand what they say. I'm like, if they come to me and say, oh, I need to pray, I would never understand that. But I understand the context. So remember, non verbal children understand the context most of the time, but if you ask them a question, they probably won't understand. So cut them some slack and use more gestures and more single words at the moment, okay? Because you have no idea how much they can hear. Okay? So the second reason to why your child can't answer a question is it just comes down to simple language comprehension. Okay? And some of the times parents will ask me, like for the past week, they would ask, hey, how come my child can't answer my question? I, you know, he can do this, do that. He can use the iPad, he can watch videos and laugh and like suddenly ask out nowhere. Like pretending to a YouTuber like, oh, hey guys, or hi guys. And then like, ask, oh, what's inside? Or where's the whatever. Like pretending to be in the YouTube. He can ask certain questions, but he cannot answer questions at all. Seems like a mismatch. Well, not really, because, you know, if they can recite stuff from YouTube, it just means that they have a script mind, right? They remember the script, that's all. Okay? That's all they remember. All right. And so when it's a language comprehension problem, what you need to think about as to how to teach them to answer a certain question. Okay, so let me go through. I mean, I've said this quite a few times already, right? So for questions, it always starts off with what questions? That's the easiest type of question. What questions? Like if you hold up something like what's this? It's a watch, right? Yeah, that's a what question. All right. And that's what a lot of parents keep on asking anyways, right? Like, what's this? What's that? What's over there? What's here? What's that? Like that? Yeah. So when you ask these questions, your child will know how to answer. Okay? And then you can have like two more questions that are like, easy, but at the same time, a lot of children get mixed up with it. And what's that? That's yes and no and also choices. At this point in time, I have a student who, like I'm seeing tomorrow, who isn't able to actually answer yes or no questions nicely despite being able to answer, like who and where. Crazy, right? So this is why it's called a disorder, because it's out of order, right? So if your child can speak in a whole load of sentences but cannot answer a question, that's called a language disorder because they can do some things out of order in the language. All right. All righty. So this user. Let me see. So it's actually Fanny. Fanny says, I played bubbles with my son this morning, and I can see that because he loves doing, he starts saying, blow more and popping. So, yes, I agree with you, Ming. Yeah, yeah. See, blow more and popping is exactly what we were talking about before, right? Find an activity that a child likes to do and then add the language context to it. Make sure they know what happens next. Like, you will know it. Like this cat over here, she knows whenever I take out a can of her wet food, if I have it, she would know for me to open it, right? And therefore, she just sits in front of me and starts meowing. Right? And sometimes this little one, this one called Slate, by the way, this one, she likes to go out a lot. She's an outdoor cat. So what happens is that whenever I take the key, it becomes a cue. And when I put the key inside the door, she meows like crazy. Okay? So she knows. This little cat knows the routine of when I'm going to open the door. Same as Fanny, her son knows the routine when she's going to take the bubble and then when it's supposed to open, when it's supposed to, like, take it out, when it's supposed to blow and when it's supposed to pop. And when you have that context, you can teach the language. Right? Obviously, I can't teach this cat to talk physically, like non verbal, like I was saying, as the first reason. Right? All right, so that's something you have to think about. All right, so let's go back to language comprehension. All right, Language comprehension is something that you can work on, okay? But sometimes you have to be mindful about how far your child can go. So how do you teach questions to children who can talk but they won't answer? Okay, so first of all, you have to have some sort of context, right? We did talk about this in another video. You can search it. How to teach. Yes. No questions. That's great. But what I'm about to say is that a lot of children are stuck on, like, what questions? Okay. Same as Mandalena. This is what I wanted to talk to you about on the next step on teaching your style of teaching your child, okay? It's not. Yeah, we're teaching more vocabs. Right. But at the same time, what we want to do is to teach more different categories. Okay? So for instance, what I would do is I would do who and where questions whilst I'm teaching, like, places and people. Yeah. So I would keep on bombarding them with that question through, like, flashcards or, like, like, figurines or, I don't know, videos. I would say, who's this? Who's this? Who is it? Who is it? And then I'll change the places. Where is this? Where is this? Who's this? Where's this? Right. And then afterwards, I would put them into two piles. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. So be careful. Okay? So if you have flashcards or some sort of toys that have, like, different categories, Right. I would ask, hey, put this with where. Okay. I would have, like, a sheet of paper. This is very aba, by the way. This is, like, very far off from speech therapy. But what I would do is, like, I would get him or her to, like, sort it out. Like, which are the places? Which are the people? Where are who. Where's. Like, where do you put the who's. Where do you put the where's? Right. It takes a lot of, like, brains to actually figure it out. So make sure that your child is already able to speak and already understands a bunch of vocabs, and then you can try that. All right, So I would do who and where, and then I would do yes and no and no. And I would, like. It depends on the kids. Sometimes I would do yes and no first, but they already know yes and no, but not in all contexts. So I'm sure if your child doesn't like something, they will say, no, no, no, no, and run away. Okay. Even if they're, like, they don't speak a lot. Okay. No is super easy to teach and learn. So. But can they do it for certain aspects? Like, this is wrong. Like yes or no. Is this correct? Yes or no, Is this like a cup or is it a cup? Yes or no. Right? Do you want that? Yes or no? These ones you have to teach slowly. And sometimes what we do is like, we. We give a choice. Like, we say, hey, yes or no. But most of the time, it's better off if you cue with a gesture that gives them the answer right away. But there's also a hard gesture to actually get rid of. So, for instance, if you say, hey, is this a cat? And you go. And that's yes. Right. But how do you get Rid of that gesture only by moving slightly. Right. So some of the times, yes or no, it requires them to think and judge whether something is right or wrong, which is harder. That's why yes or no is hard. Also because of choices like, sorry. Also, choices are hard because they have to make a choice between the two, which they don't know how to yet. They only know how to actually follow you and copy. So for these two yes and no and binary questions, what we call choice questions. Binary, like one or zero, like two choices. Binary, like bicycle. Bicycle means two, right? Tricycle means three. So binary means like two choices. But anyways, so when you're teaching that kind of stuff, it needs to have a strong context, just as you're teaching words. Needs to make sure that they don't want a certain outcome so that you can teach. No, they want a certain outcome. They can teach yes. They want something over another thing, therefore they can make a choice. These things you have to keep in mind. Okay? So if they don't have a choice, they don't care and they don't answer you. Okay, which brings me to the last, very, very last point. Okay, but before that, let me tell you a little bit about what I would do after who and where. And Madeleina, you should listen up. Okay? After who and where I'm going to teach, like why and what function. So I'll talk about what function. I can't talk today. So what function first, because it's something that you probably haven't heard of before. So for inst. What is the use of a cup? What function is it? Drinking. This is the type of question you have to ask, what's this for? Drinking. What's this for? To tell the time. Most of the time, children already know. How can we know? First of all, let's see if they have any gestures that come out. If you ask them, what's this for? Do they do that? Or if they look at a hammer and ask you what's that for? Do they do that? Or if you ask, hey, what's a knife for? Do they do. I don't know. I don't know. It depends on if they already know the content, the real thing behind it. All they need is the vocabulary. So if that's the case, it's very easy to teach. So way how I teach what function is actually number one, at the end of the day, it's already very easy. So we can already use flashcards to do it. A lot of therapists use it. I don't really use flashcards. A lot. But what I like to do is I tell them like a sequence play. And then I say, oh, now it's for cutting. Okay, which one's for cutting? Oh, knife. Okay, here. And then they have to say, knife. Okay, cool. What's the knife for? And I do the gesture. Cutting. Good. Here we go. Something like that. So you have to have a routine that has tools that helps you with certain things. A good way to teach is through, like, dinner time, right? You can give them the wrong tool. So, like, if they drinking soup, you give them a fork and you're like, oh, what. What's a spoon for? Oh, for scooping. And you scoop one. One. What's that called? One scoop of a soup. And then give it to them. And then you give them a fork again. And then they say, oh, I want some soup. Okay. You give them a fork and say, no. What do you mean? Oh, right. Fork is for piercing. Right. Or whatever language you're using. Indonesian, Tusuk. Right. And you can say, oh, you want the spoon? Oh, what's the spoon for? Oh, for scooping. Oh, here you go again. Right. So Madalina asked, can she start teaching the function from body part? Yeah, you can. You can, definitely. So in one of my videos, I talk about. What's that called again? Oh, yeah, Mr. Potato Head. Mr. Potato Head is great for that. What I usually do for functions of body part is that I give props. I make different Items for the Mr. Potato Head. For instance, I might have a book. Then I show the Mr. Potato Head a book, and then I take. I pretend that Mr. Potato Head was walking and he fell down. And then his eyes came off. Right? And then so I asked, hey, can Mr. Potato Head read the book? And then he said, no. And you can ask why? Because he has no eyes. Eyes are for reading, Right. So you can try that out, Madalina, if you have a Mr. Potato Head. Okay. But other than that, you can use other ways to teach as well. You can use stickers. You can. Your. Your son's super good with flashcards and. And coloring books, so you can use that as well. Okay, so for why questions you can talk about. Then you can use the one I was talking about just now. Okay, so after why is a how question, and the last one is when so how question is like you need to use board games. That's how I teach. Um, I'm still learning to be honest. Like, how questions is difficult. Some people say, oh, it needs to be like a sequence. You know, they. They have to be able to Say like, oh, first they have to do this, then they have to do that and last, whatever. How is like a very open ended question and that's why, why and how super open ended is hard to actually answer. So give them some time, play with, play with them a little more, okay? Play some board games with them, find some games that are fun and find some things that they have to explain to someone else. That's the most important. That's why we talk about how. Because right now I'm talking about how to you, because it's something you want to know and I'm explaining to you, right? So you have to find something. I cannot tell you what because I don't know what your child is like or what he likes or what he likes to talk about. So how is something. So one of the things that I like to ask about how in primary school is if the child has some sort of, if they like some sort of games on the mobile phone or whatever or they have some particular interest. For instance, one of my, the primary school students, they really love buses, okay. So I would ask them, okay, so how would you, how do you drive a bus? Right? How do you pay on the bus? How do you get off the bus? How does the root look like? These are the questions you can ask. And you know that for sure that they know. They just don't have the language for it. And therefore it's pretty easy to teach because all you have to do is to write it out, draw it out, tell them once, model it, and because they like it, they will learn it. Right? Another kid who loves the mobile game called Clash Royale, actually he made me play that game as well. It was pretty funny. It's kind of cool game but at the end of the day it's pretty repetitive. So I would ask him, okay, how do you use, how do you play this game? First of all, how do you use a certain character? How do you use this guy? I don't get it. And then you play in front of him and then you make a whole mess. You know, put the, even if you know, you put the people at the wrong places and it's like, well, what do you mean? Well, I don't understand. How do you do it? All right. Oh, you have to put this character here because he's a long range. How you use it is that you put it at that corner so that you know, it blocks certain things. So you need to have an interest for them to answer how. Okay? And I'm going to talk about the last thing I'M going to talk about today. The last reason why your child isn't answering you. Okay. The biggest reason why your child isn't answering you is because they have no reason to. Yeah, they literally do not care what you have to ask. Okay. I've talked about this in a previous video. I've been saying this a lot, right? But anyways, sometimes I repeat myself because one topic I can talk about something very similar, and it's the same reason. So the reason why your child isn't, like, answering question is basically because they don't care. And why do I say they don't care? Right. First of all, you don't have a lot of reward after answering it. Number two is sometimes I'm not saying you, but we even. I ask some very stupid questions, very redundant questions. So for instance, I caught myself actually asking this question. You would say, like, what are you doing? Oh, are you playing with the Lego? Like, are you. Whatever. Like, are you doing that? Are you doing this? Hey, I mean, what. Why would you ask that question? What's the. What's the goal of your child answering that? Right? It'd be crazy for someone to answer you if you keep on asking because it becomes annoying, right? If you ask, hey, are you doing a live right now? If someone walked through that door behind me and asked me, I are you doing alive right now? I mean, what. What's going on, man? Like, yeah, you're disturbing me. Thank you. Right. Next time I would ignore her or him. I don't know. There's only me and my wife here, so that's probably her. So you have to remember, sometimes these questions are redundant and useless. Right? Don't ask those questions. Don't ask like, oh, what are you doing? Oh, are you doing that? Are you having fun? Are you Whatever. Those things don't matter. Don't ask those. If you keep on asking a question over and over again, you're asking to be ignored. What do you expect, right? If your child is on the spectrum, especially they're so rigid if they can ignore you once they think it's the rule to keep on ignoring you. So you have to remember that. Don't make it a habit for them to ignore you. All right, let's talk about the next thing. The rewarding part, when they answer a question. Actually, for the past month, right, There were a few parents who say, oh, ming last time. That's what they say in Southeast Asia. For before, before, my son would actually answer to his name, answer to whatever. But after, he's like two and A bit nearly three. He stopped answering me. What's going on? And I'm like, okay, so what's the point of you asking for his attention? What do you do afterwards? And then the mom would say, oh, yeah, I'm just asking him. Let's say the name is David, right? She would say, like, david, David, David. And then David would be like. Like, look at mom. And then the mom would say, like that. So what's the point of that if you just, like, nod your head and go like. Like that, right? What is the point? Okay. There's no reward. There's no wonder he started to ignore you. It's not about whether he's a speech delay or disorder, Right? I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about that parent that consulted me before, and I told her about that, and she was like, oh, I didn't think about it that way. Yeah, sometimes you have to treat your child like a normal human being, you know, which they are, and you should respect them. Okay, so when giving reward, what I mean is that there needs to be a consequence. Is there something that they learn from answering a question? Is there something that they can get something right and have a sense of, like, fulfillment? So let me give you an example, right? So back to using Mr. Potato Head. If they are able to answer, what's the thing is for? Like, what are the eyes for? Oh, it's for reading. And then I will allow them to put the eyes back on. There's a consequence. It makes sense. Oh, if I answer ming, then I can do whatever, right? Or if we're reading a book. If we're reading a book, and then it's like a book like that. And I keep on reading, and then I ask the question, hey, oh, where are they going? And I say, oh, to the cave. And then when they answer me, there might be, you know, those books with those flaps that move around? I will do that. And then they go, oh, yeah, it's in the cave, something like that. Or I will allow them to flip the page, which is also a consequence. So you have to remember whenever they answer a question, it needs to be kind of fun for them or else it needs to be kind of fun for them, or else it's not going to be rewarding to answer you. Because every time you. Now that I have a cat, actually, three, there's one here. Um, it becomes, you know, you call the name a thousand times, and then when they look, you have nothing to give them, and you're like, yeah, that's right. I was just asking for your attention. That's kind of selfish for me as well. Right. So I would say, you know, whenever you're calling, you're asking a question. Have a reason behind it. Don't just ask for asking sake. Don't just quiz your child because talking to a child one on one, especially children on the spectrum, or if your child is language delayed, you're not supposed to quiz them because it's going to stress them out as we were talking about. So be careful. If you ask a question, make sure there's a reason behind it. Maybe it's that you want to teach them about something within the game. Maybe it's so that you can advance, like you can keep on telling the story. Maybe it's because that when you're playing with a toy, it helps them clarify and use the correct tools. Right? So an example would be you're playing with the car tracks, right? The car slides that I was talking about before. And you know, you put something too big that can't slide in and then you would ask, is this right or wrong or does it fit or what happened? Something like any question you want, if they answer correctly, they can use something else. Right. Or if they answer correctly, they can like try to stuff it in. Right. So there needs to be some sort of reason or consequence behind it or else your child can't see why they're supposed to ask. Okay, so I'm gonna stay here. That's all I wanted to share for this week. That's what I learned from the parents who were asking me. If you have any questions, you can put them in the comments right now. I'll be here for another minute just waiting for you guys to see if any questions. If not, I'm going to end the live right now so that, you know, when people watch afterwards, it won't be too long, you know, okay, just gonna take a sip of water and just wait to see if anyone has any questions. It. All right, so there shouldn't be any questions for now. But if you have any questions, you can always just comment in the same video. Okay. Or you can just like private message me. And how I usually do these videos is that, you know, after a whole week of answering questions and stuff, I make a video here to talk about what I feel like it would be helpful for a lot of parents and teachers and therapists. And then, you know, I can share it here and you can ask any questions that you want to through my email as well. Okay. My email is mingagentsofspeech.com. if you haven't, you should go to agentsofspeech.com. it's a really cool website. They've got a lot of blog posts there. You can read it all over there. Cool. So that's going to be the end of today's live video. And please tell me what kind of things you're struggling with, because it's nearly 221, and it's the same. It hasn't moved at all. I mean, I'm not gonna open anytime soon either, you know, so, you know, so be careful, guys. Oh, we have one question. So I'm gonna finish answering this, and that's it. Okay, so you can't see this, right? So Marion says, how can I make my son interested in talking? He find it easier to gesture. Yeah, if your son finds it easier to gesture, make the talking easier. All right? What I mean is, chop up the syllables and allow your kid to talk in approximates. Meaning, for instance, if he wants paper, let's say he wants paper, okay? Don't argue with me. You can try to say pay instead or pa. All right? If he wants water, allow him to say wa instead. And you should check if he has any articulation problems or speech problems, because if he can gesture well and not speak well, that's a sign that it's a speech problem more than a language problem. So you have to go check it out. Doesn't have to be me, or I can only do it through online. So find someone who can, like, look at your son, all right, Marion, and then see how. What. What's the problem? All right, See, what's the problem about his talking? So if you get interested in talking is to. By making the talking easier, allow him to say, approximates, make easier sound. See if he can follow. Right? If you can follow, like, even if it's a vowel sound, even it's like, ah. At least he's using speech, right? Yeah, no problem, Marion. So that's all for tonight, guys. I'll see you guys next week. Don't forget to put it in your calendar, because I do it every week now, and it's a lot less than before. Right. So let me know, and I'll see you guys next week. Bye.