3 Tips for Encouraging Speech at Home | www.agentsofspeech.com/micro

Hello, guys. Welcome to this live video of three tips to encourage your child to start talking to you more at home. So to encourage the use of, like, speech and language and communication. So the first tip I want to share with you is to use a reward, okay? I know that there are people out there who say that, oh, it's not natural. It's like what they call aba. It creates what they call a post traumatic whatever that is ptsd. And using a reward, is it natural or is it not natural? I think that it is unnatural, right? If we keep on doing it, then it's not good. But in the short run, I think it's good enough. And the reason why is because, hey, we're all motivated by external rewards. We're all motivated by external reinforcement, okay? And just to say it out loud, right, it just means that, do you work for money? If yes, then yeah, then you are rewarded for your behavior somehow, somewhat, okay? So therefore, using a reward to teach your child to encourage them to communicate with you is actually the best thing ever, okay? In the beginning, okay? You know why? Because the children don't understand why they should imitate you or copy you, okay? So that's why when you give a reward or you use withhold something in front of them, it creates a sense of, what should I do next? How do I get this? It changes the thing in the child's mind to think, okay, how can I get this? And then when you teach, it makes a lot more sense. All right? So use rewards. But the caveat here is that you have to be careful that you're slowly decreasing the reward you're giving your child. Because for us, talking is internally motivated, right? We want to, from our hearts to connect with people, to talk to people. Whilst this might be a, what we call a neurotypical thing, meaning that children who are neurodiverse, especially those are who are on the spectrum, will argue that, hey, all this socializing or whatever is basically. Is basically something that us neurotypical people made up, right? So I would say that most of all, even for the children, the students who I teach on the spectrum, they still yearn, they still want to communicate, okay? So that's why the rewards needs to be cut down slowly and decreased until it becomes natural for the child to speak out of their own, you know, decree, right? Okay? So that's the first tip. Use rewards, okay? And slowly fade it out and teach them with rewards and slowly. Just don't use it as much, you know, as they learn how to. How to use language better with you. Okay? Tip number two is to stop repeating, okay? And you know, here on Agents of Speech, we always say that repetition is the best thing ever. You know, you need to keep on repeating, repeating. But at the same time, if you repeat something that you're not gonna. Someone who doesn't like talk to you and you keep on repeating, that's not going to help, right? So the reason why rep. Repeating your question and your command and repeating over and over in front of a child is not a good thing is because when you repeat a question, something that your child needs to respond to over and over again, you're teaching your child to ignore you, right? So therefore, my advice to you is not to repeat any questions or any commands. If you repeat, make sure those repetitions are language that is easily understood by your child. And number two is that you're not looking for a response, all right? If you're not looking for a response, go crazy. Do as much as you want, spam them. You know, just keep on talking, talking, talking. But if you want a response, right, you think about this in an adult or, you know, or maybe in our society, someone who spams you, who keeps on asking questions and trying to get a response from you. Those people are. Those are the people who are trying to get something from you, right? And it doesn't feel very nice to talk to those people. And children can get that vibe off you as well. So I don't think this is the best way to build up a relationship with a child or anyone. So repeat only selflessly, but don't repeat in order just to hear your child respond back to you, okay? Because that repetition is teaching your child to ignore you. All right? So Nandini asks, can you provide one on one therapy? Yeah, Well, I cannot do one on one therapy anymore physically, right, because of COVID and I don't know where you are in the world. I do not do zoom one on one because it's very difficult to teach a child over the Internet. Over zoom. Like if a child was watching me. I don't know how to manage a kid over the Internet, man. Right? So that's why we have Agents of speech, which is a course, all right? We teach people how to. How to do it at home themselves. And a lot of parents are seeing a lot of good progress. Okay? So Nandini, I'm not sure. Oh, you're in Australia. That's cool. So I'm not sure where. If you've been through any of our courses or anything or you want more support, just let me know. But Basically, if you haven't, you should go join agents of Speech.com micro. Right, so we'll talk about that later. Let me finish my tips. Right, okay, let me put this away. Okay, so the third tip I want to talk about is this, to teach play. And I know this is a very broad thing, you know, it's just like a, you know, if you ask someone for advice for money, and then they'll say, I'll just save more or just, just, just earn more or something. It's a very, you know, fail safe kind of advice. Right. So you would say, oh, how do I teach my child to, to learn more speech and language? Ah, you teach them play skills, you know, whatever you need to do imaginative play, you know, go buy those, I don't know, early intervention toys or whatever and stuff. Right. So when I say teach more how to play, what I mean is you have to be very intentional about it. Okay. And you have to know the steps where your child is and what toys. Toys are appropriate. So in this short video, it's very hard to tell you, but what you should always start off with, and I'll just give a general guideline, if your child is not speaking yet, then you should look for what we call cause, effect toys or means end, as they call. All right? And what those do is basically it teaches the child to press a button, something happens. And to some extent talking is also like that. I say something, I get something. Right. It's a means, and it's a means to an end. Okay. If your child is speaking a little bit like one, one word at a time, then what I would encourage you to do is to get those semi imaginative toys that look very, that are fun and there's a lot of sound and stuff. Right. So for instance, like a microwave would work a lot because it's moving, there's sounds and it's, it's realistic. Right. And anything like that will work as well. Okay. If you're talking about two to three word sound sentences, a child who is talking and. Right. Then what I would say is that you should invest in something like a cook set, get something like a dollhouse or something to start teaching longer sentences like that. And if your child is speaking in sentences but not well formed, then obviously teach them how to play. Not obviously. If it was obvious, I wouldn't have to. Don't need to talk about it. Right. If your child is talking in sentences but not well formed and cannot answer questions like why and how and so on, then it's time to teach them Some board games and some very simple card games like Uno and stuff. Okay. So that's a very general guideline. And how to teach it is basically, you need to make it fun. Okay. At the end of the day, you need to make it fun. And this ties back to the tip number one. If you are having trouble teaching a certain thing, you need to think about how you're selling the toy, number one. Number two is, do you have a reward that goes with the whole thing? Is it internally motivating? Does the toy at the end or during of which the child is having fun? Right, so that's the problem here. Okay, cool. So let's see what some. Some questions are or whatever it is, or comments. So someone says, hi, Ming. My child doesn't even try speaking at all. I'm trying to follow tips in my course. You can speak few words and talk to your wrist while tv, but nothing when we try to talk. Right. So we're not trying to. If your child is speaking a few words and talks gibberish, obviously, inside the cost. Not obviously. Sorry. I always use this word for some reason it's not obvious, is that you should be teaching the bunch of gestures that should go in front. Right? So we always don't try to teach a child to talk first because we cannot pry their mouths open. So try to do the gestures first. Don't even care about the sounds yet. Okay? So go do that first. All right. Do the gestures. Trust me, I've been talking about this a lot. I've been using this a lot. And, you know, for the whole. Whole of my career, gestures has been the best thing that anyone can do. Okay. All righty. Let's talk. Let's see. Yes. Laura and Sean. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for doing the course and thank you for endorsing it. I'm very happy about that. Cool. So, Kuyen. Hey, what's up? Kuyen says spiritual motivation. Good. Very good. Good. Boy can remain as is it. Well, yeah, the thing is, you're thinking about different things. Okay, so, for instance, that's not spiritual motivation. That's a very Chinese way to say it. Right. So what it is is praise, right? It's praise and what we call positive feedback. So you need to understand that reward and positive feedback is different. It's different. Okay. I can, you know, if. If you do a job, let's say you. You know, you work in the HR department, right? You do a whole day of work, and then you say, ah, good job. Right. Then you feel good. Oh, yeah, I get recognized. I Get acknowledged. But what if instead of giving you what wouldn't would made you want to work work in the first place, which was the money, at the end of the month, the boss just says, hey, man, good job. You know, there you go. And that's it. No money. Well, how would you feel? Right? Then you're pairing something bad, which is the lack of a reward, a materialistic one to you, actually praising. And that's a bad thing. All right, so all these praisings and what you call spiritual motivation is very important, but it cannot take away the power of having a materialistic reward. All right? And slowly, slowly, slowly. When children, you get why I'm talking about this, right? Is because talking for a child is very difficult. So therefore, you need a high reward for a high skill level thing for a difficult thing. So if you tell me, hey, you gotta write a 10,000 word article, right? And I will give you $2,000, let's say. And I'll say, okay, I'll do it. But if you tell me 10k and a word of praise, I'm not gonna do it. Are you crazy? So if one day writing becomes so easy to me that it's just like me talking here for free, then I'll do it for free with praises and stuff. Because, you guys, there are praises coming in here, right? So therefore, I would tell you when your child is ready and talking is easy for them, you don't need materialistic rewards because it's easy for them. But when talking is hard and they don't understand, use rewards. It makes a lot of sense because as I said, if I tell you to do something really hard and I don't give you a reward, then why would you be motivated in doing it? Why would you even try? Just initiating would be difficulty. All right. I hope you understand where I'm coming from, Kuyen. Okay, cool. So, Nabil. Hey, Nabil says right now I'm using household objects and helping my daughter to speak five sentences about that object. Wow, that's really crazy, Nabil. I think that's too much. Why would she want to speak five sentences? I think at this point in time, Nabil, if you want her to say that many things, you gotta have a strong context. Meaning, you know, it might be like play. It might be board games, card games, whatever. Right? And you also do role play. Role play is good. Role play is great. Okay, so, Joey, Joey, what's up? Joey's been. We've been talking over email. Nice to have you here. The hardest thing is to teach play. My son Always too excited to the toy. He would grab snatch before I can teach the context of the rush. Faster to grab back the toy. Yeah, you shouldn't have. You shouldn't have the toy in front of him. Right. You need a. It's about how you control the environment. Right. So you put it in front, but closer to you. And you're always putting the hands down. Right. Whenever, like, if you allow him to move his hands around, you're always in a mode of trying to save fire, if you get what I mean. So stuff happens, you try to correct it. Stuff happens, you try to correct it. How about you prevent it from the beginning? Put his hands like this on the table. Oh, sorry. Scare my cat like this on the table. And then just use one hand to press on it and then show him the context a few times. All right. Let him play. And then that's it. And use toys that have a separate tool. Let's say like a piggy bank. I think your child is at the level of, you know, using a piggy bank and using. Not a vending machine, though. You know, like, I'm thinking not ball drop. That's too easy, though. You know, like we're talking about. So, Joey, tell me what toys you're doing. Maybe that will give me some idea about what to tell you. So, Koyan. Yes, yes. No problem. Yeah. Can you suggest how to make gesture for papa, mama. Verbs like going, coming, Right. Papa, mama. You don't need gestures. Just tap will do or point will do. Right. Because they're nouns. And it's in the real. It's in a real world situation. So, like, it's a real thing and a real person in the. In the real world. So we don't need to do a gesture for it. Like, we don't need to sign that out because it's more communicative just to point it or tap it. Right. So you just need to teach your child doing to do that. All right. And come and go. You don't need to ask me. Just go on Google and just search like, we talk about this in the course. So. So all you need to do is just search on Google. Like gesture for go and come or ASL sign language for go and come. And obviously there are sign language for sign languages for different countries. So you have to make sure that you're using the one that's most appropriate, too. And whatever natural is also. Okay. All right. Okay, cool. So let's keep on going. I don't know who this is actually. Maybe this is. Or something. Okay. Cool. So if a 3 year old can repeat words with me, but she can't speak them in sentences, sometimes she can do two words at a time. Does she consider speech delay? Yeah, I think so. That is considered a speech should be a language delay. So is it yao Mei or is it Mei chin? I'm not sure. So you should go get language assessment. Okay. Three year olds should be speaking in around three to four word sentences. I mean you would know if you're com. See, you know, children of the same, around the same age counterparts, right? Nandini, enhanced for you. Making small sentences but talking only when he wants something. Yeah, Nandini, there's a course that we have that talks a lot about that. It's called Word combiners. Go to agentsofspeech.com check it out. For a four year old making small sentences but only talk when he wants something. I think you're not even at the point where we can do board games yet. I would think. I think we need to do more pretend play. Yeah, yeah. Pop the pig is great for Joey. For Joey's kid, Kuyan. Very good. Today I'm teaching him cooking using microwave washing, fruits in the sink. That's the first time you saw toys? Maybe too excited. Yeah. Well, do it one at a time, right? Do it. Remember, I remember you joining the course like we're combiners. I think if that's the case, if it's too excited, then all you need to do is to do it one at a time and only teach one verb and one, one sentence structure. Okay. So because there's too much stuff on the table, maybe so take it one at a time and make sure you control everything. Alrighty. Alrighty. You guys liking this? You like, you guys liking this kind of interaction? I like it. So if you are new here, welcome here, and if you haven't, go to agents of Speech.com Microsoft to, to join us. It's, it's a crash course for parents. All right. And because how, how sensitive the topics here are and because I don't like Facebook and a lot of people don't like Facebook, we are making, we are, we have a membership on Agents of Speech and we're considering moving to a private app platform and we can do a lot of this kind of conferencing over there, maybe even on Zoom where, you know, we can be even more private. So let me know if you like this and if you guys use Apple, then hallelujah, you know, and that would be a good place for us to, to make the app. So let's keep on going. My 3 year old daughter can finally interact with me instead of screen time and give her toys and play together. Yeah. I'm so happy. Silent viewer. Oh well, you're not silent anymore, right, Criselle Chrisielle. Sorry if I made a mistake. Yeah, that's great. More toys, less screen. Okay. Birdie says when my daughter comes to me for something and I do tapping and gestures, she looks elsewhere and sometimes she's getting angry and walk away. Thanks, miss. Oh, well, Birdie, the thing is she doesn't need to look at you when you're doing it. That's the whole point of tapping and gestures, right? The reason why we don't teach speech right away is because most of the time it needs. A child needs to look at you to really see your mouth shape and see how it works and so on. Right? So when I, when I teach you guys to use tapping and gestures, if they look somewhere, it doesn't matter. And if sometimes she gets angry and walks away, it's because it's too long. So I would say that you can delete some of the gestures and only teach one first. So the only one that I always talk about or a lot of therapists talk about, but they never teach the parents, right. Is the open palm gesture. Like this. Right that. This one. Remember? Like. Like that. If I know Birdie, you're in the course, so when you do that, it changes the childhood weight for you. So obviously if you're doing tap, tap, open and then like that, it's taking too long. So children only get angry when they're asking for something or when they want something from you or just in general they're playing with you. It's because you're taking too long and they don't know what's going on. So yeah, simplify the gestures. Choose one or two and do it quickly. After you help him, help her, then instantly give the thing you were supposed to give her. Okay, Kuyan, About games for kids about how. What about jumping jack? Catch it. Jumping jack it. Catch the fox. What is that? Let me take a look. Jump back. Catch the fault. Okay. Yeah, I think it's around the same thing. If I can share my screen about people who don't know what Huyan is referring to. I guess is this right? So catch the fox. You press it and it comes up this one. The whole thing pops up. If you put the carrots in or something, you're guessing Catch the fox. Let's see. Okay, so it's similar to pop the pig. It's very similar. So let me stop sharing. Yeah, it's very similar. It's fine. It's totally fine. But you know, pop the pig is just fun, you know, so you can use it. I totally agree with you. But don't use the dice for your child, for instance, Kuyen, because she's too young. He might eat the dice and so on. You don't need that. Just simplify the toy. Maybe just the fun part for the young child might be just to press on the pig or just to put stuff inside of the pig or. And for your, the, the two toys you talk about, it might be just seeing the thing launch and stuff, right? So make sure that you are, make sure you're, you're. You're simplifying for your kid because he's young. All right? So someone asks, someone is saying, can speech delay or language delay be outgrown? Well, the thing is, you never know, right? You never know. That's the problem here. You really never know. So that's why we have all this kind of resources out there. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. And there are studies going out there saying like, okay, so if, for instance, your speech or language delay is because of. Or not because of, is related to preterm, you know, like premature, you know, giving birth to a, to a, to a child, then, you know, studies are coming out saying because it's been a long time studying this kind of, kind of cases is that they don't even. Children are less likely to catch up by primary school and sometimes it will extend to secondary school. Okay? And we're not even talking about, like, yeah, so delay, this word is less used nowadays because it tells parents, it gives like a impression to parents that there is a chance of catching up. Right? And it will do. It will work, it will catch up. If it is truly a delay, all right? But if it's a disorder, then you have to be careful because it's not something that can be outgrown and needs to be managed. So my answer to you is probably yes, but I don't know when, right? And I really don't know when. Thanks, Nandini. See this? These are not a reward, but, you know, it's a. It's a praise just to, you know, talk about what we're talking about just now. Okay, well, really long thing. Here, let me read it. So Rean Jaz says, I'm so torn because I'm losing daytime with my baby because I need to work. By the time I finish, he is about to sleep. I Have little time to teach and play with him. Other family members are not as concerned as I am. They think he's just a late talker. I've applied some things about playing and that I learned through your videos. Somehow he knows to say broom, broom, and car for car. Not much, but it's great start for me. Thank you for doing these episodes and. No problem. So I think that it doesn't matter if you're losing daytime for now. Obviously, it sucks. Obviously, it's best if you can, you know, have all the time in the world with your child. But at the same time, you know, you don't need a lot of. You don't need 100% of that time to. To do so much. You know, you just need, like 10 to 15 minutes every day. Right. So it's not. Somehow he knows it's because you've been playing cars with him and broom, broom, car, and so on. Right? So maybe if you have, you can get a slide or even just a board or a book and lean up to make a slide. Sorry, I'll just make it. So make it. Make a slide or something and then slide it down and teach 1, 2, 3, go or something. Or. Yeah, just 1, 2, 3, go, you know, and teach them more routines surrounding the car. Maybe, you know, sliding is the only thing you can do with the car. Or you could roll the car all over the child's body. There's not much you can do. All right. But at the same time, you need to create a routine. Okay. Since he's already talking, he's obviously more than capable if he can say, boom, broom. Right. Think about that. It's pretty hard, so it should be fine as long as he understands how to use more language. When you create those routines with those, like, 15 to 20 minutes or 10 to 15 minutes that you have. So, Bertie, the open palm tester, we're not bad yet she accepts it. But after two weeks following you and your teachings, I noticed some slight movement. Not on speech itself, but playing quality. And she's looking more for attention, calling us. Can I call it a movement? Yeah, you can call it a movement, right? So obviously doing this kind of stuff will make the. The child feel like. Will make the child feel like, oh, there's something I understand about it, right? I understand how this works. Because maybe dad or mom, before, they keep on, like, repeating over and over again and so on. And therefore, now if you stop repeating and you're very, you know, you're very direct with what you want from her. Just an open Palm or whatever, and she accepts it. Then it's obviously she's gonna feel like, oh, it's safer to talk to you. Right, so about the open palm. Right. The problem here is. What, what is it actually, Bertie? What, what, what do you mean by, you know, you're not bad. Tell me more. Right, so Vivi says you have the same problem. What as Bertie. What. What kind of problem are you talking about, man? Are you talking about that from here? That gets angry after a while. I did talk about that just now. If you rewind back a little bit, then you would know. Right? Okay, so thanks for all the questions, guys. And I just want to say I'm very happy. And this is what I'm trying to do with Agents of Speech. Just as a parting message, because it's already been 30 minutes. I don't want to stretch this. Right. Okay. So before we leave, I want to talk about. And I'll answer this question right after. Okay. Don't worry. So the thing is, we will have courses for each level of the child. For instance, we have micro and the full. And the full introduction course. It's just for training your mindset. Right. And then we have the zero to words, which is more of a teaching your child how to. How to. How to speak from zero ground up. And it's very technical, right? It's like do this, do this, do this. And then we have word combiners, which is very technical as well, which is do this, do that, do this, do that. Right. And also we have two more courses coming up, which is going to take a lot of time. Okay. And then it's basically about verbal reasoning and also storytelling, those two. And at the same time, at the back of everything, we have the membership, which is where it's not open right now, is where you can upload videos to me. And we go through it together on Zoom. And it's been going pretty well so far. Everyone is saying good things about it other than it's laggy. So we need to do something to deal with it. All right? So. And at the same time, for the membership, we're building out a new communication platform which is like a forum or something that's not on Facebook. So that's keeps it clean and very private. Okay. You know Facebook nowadays with a lot of privacy issues and so on. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'll link to join the course that enhanced four year old child skills. You also refused to ask questions and. And says I don't like it. Okay. I'm not totally sure about which course to Actually recommend to you. But if he can talk and he hasn't been talking in full sentences like can he do, can he do. Say mommy is eating the banana or something, mommy's eating the apple, that kind of stuff. If he can then you know, go to this, this link I just put inside. Okay. All right. Yes, thank you, thank you. Thank you for hanging out with me, guys. Thank you. All right, so this is the last question I'm gonna answer. Oh wait, I missed one. Most toys you suggest or in most courses are not available easily in India. How can we try finding alternatives pertaining to words we want to focus on? Right? So I. I'm not sure my friend. How like Ankita. Right. I'm not sure what level is your child at? Okay. It doesn't need to be exactly the same toys. Right? It doesn't need to be. I'm, I'm in Indonesia. There's most of the time I don't get the stuff that I used to use a lot. So you know, it's not something like I'm not sure how to help you with that. You know, it's about find something that does something similar and just going with it. Okay. Yeah. If you can, you can do that then you can't really. That course wouldn't be very helpful to you, I believe. If, if I were you, I would start reading more books, more storybooks. All right. Okay. So may sin, I guess silent. Hi Ming. My four year old doctor currently says I want. I suspect not really understand proper way to say I want. Especially I'm doing gestures and encourage her to say open candy. But she came on I want. Oh yeah. Well you need to teach the gesture only. Don't care about the I want at all. Right. Because if she's stuck at I want then she has I want has no particular meaning. To be honest. There's really no particular meaning. I've talked about this many times. Right. Don't care about it. Just focus on her doing the gestures. Right. Okay. Really, really last question. Okay. Mild ASD child try to repeat everything just started but some are not. But when once something she pulls my hand saying mama. And after I ask so what should I do to make her speak with that prompt? Yeah, it's in the asd happens a lot is that this prompting cycle just keeps on going round and round. Right. They're waiting for you to prompt them in order to say something. So if you're not inside of the micro course minkey, go check it out. Basically you just teach her to use a gesture instead of a sound because whenever you're prompting her to say mama, you're always using your voice. So how do you get rid of your voice to prompt her to say mama? You can't. So you must use a gesture first. Right. Okay, cool. That. That's all for tonight, guys. And Nandini, for you. The membership will be a good option for you later on if we. We're going to open this month. I'm sorry, this week. And you can submit videos to me and we can have a chat on Zoom. It's very private and we can all learn from each other. All right, cool stuff. Yes. I want is a very ABA thing. And before. Sorry, I keep on saying I'm gonna leave, but, you know, your questions and comments are very good. So, yeah, the aba. I want whatever. I want this, I want that. I used to do ABA myself. I would say that it's because we didn't. You didn't explore other words and other functions of language. Right. The problem is that it's always about rewarding. Rewarding, rewarding. Right? So that's the problem there. Okay, so if you guys really want to join, like Nandini here, make sure that you have. You are subscribed to my email newsletter. Just go to agents of. Speech.com will be. We'll talk about that. There's first. Okay. Inside of the emails. All right, so that's it, guys. And I will talk to you next week on Monday as well. And stay safe, especially if you're in Southeast Asia like myself. Just stay safe, guys, and we'll speak soon. Bye. Bye.