Back and Forth Conversation with Speech Delayed Children?

Hey, this is ming here from agentsofspeech.com today we'll talk about how to get your child to have a back and forth conversation with you. All right? So loads of parents tell me, oh, I want to have a back and forth conversation with a kid, but at the end of the day, can we define what a back and forth conversation is first? So in my books, at the very least, what is a back and forth conversation is that the child initiates to tell you something and then you respond back, they respond back. There was a few back and forth here, right? So let's say that your child is not able to even initiate a conversation with you, right? To comment on something, to ask for something, to play a game with you is very difficult. And parents, they have a different, like, especially if you're a mom and you have a lot of worries, you have a lot of expectations, and you see other children performing in a way that is different from a child, then it's very difficult for me to tell you that this is part of the journey, right? It's very difficult. So what I'm trying to say here is this. Look, a back and forth conversation is defined by you. Like, what do you mean by that, right? At what language level are you talking about? If it's a single word level, your child can only use one word. Just saying one word to you, you respond back, he says another word to you, is already back and forth conversation. That's at his language level already, right? So if a child is at two words and they can answer some questions, then, okay, then you might ask them a question, they might answer you back and it might go back and forth one or two times. That's already back and forth. If your child is non verbal, right? Just giving you something, showing you something, tapping you, giving you a gesture, and then you answer back and they smile at you and whatever. That's already back and forth. So I am not sure there's no dictionary term. Like, there's no. In our industry, we don't have a term called back and forth conversation, Right. There are only what we call language functions, right? So what currently, what language functions are we talking about? So in the next week's video, we'll talk about functional language and also need based language, which a lot of parents, they tell me about that, oh, my kid only talks to me when they want something, right? So at the end of the day, let me just tell you this, right? If I, I do like, I talk to you, like most 90% of people who watch this on Mothers we're going to talk about makeup, right? How long can I hold the conversation with you? Right. Can I even have a conversation with you? Probably not, right? Really? I really cannot. And if you were to have a conversation with me, my things that I like to talk about are video games, right? Are about teaching children about whatever. So when you have a conversation with me and I only talk about video games, is going to be hard for, for you to carry on the conversation? Yes. Okay, so I want you to think about this. What is the wants and what are the topics that your child would like to have a conversation with you? Loads of mom would say, what happened at school? How are you? How was your day? They can't answer. Well, first of all, the language level isn't up to there yet, right? You need to adjust to the language level in order to have a conversation. Like a back and forth, a communication. So what is it? What topic can you choose that will keep their interest? And also what language level are you adjusting to? Are you talking to a single word level child? Asking them like crazy questions like, why do you think Brian didn't like his lunch? Right. That's impossible for him to understand. Right. If you are in a, in, in a foreign country, someone talks to you and asks you that kind of question and they want to have a conversation with you, they would actually, someone with empathy would go down to your language level and start talking about other stuff and add gestures and whatnot. So therefore you should be doing that with your kid as well. Do not come from a place where I'm like, oh, yeah, I want to have a conversation with you, but I'm going to, like, I'm, I'm going to start talking in a way that I would talk to someone who has mastered language. That's very dangerous because you see if you remember back in, back in school, right? People who speak, like, I went to international school, okay? People who spoke a certain language, they hung up together, right? People who had similar interests, they hung out together, people who had similar levels of competency that they hung out together. All right, I'm not being, I'm not talking about like it or whatever. It's just different. Like sports competency, you know, like a video game competency did this kind of stuff, right? People do that usually. So I'm just bringing some common sense. If you're talking to your child and you want them to hang out with you and they want to have a good time and they want to have a conversation with you, you need to be interested in the stuff that they are interested in. Okay, let me give you an example. So a lot of times parents are very worried because, oh, they're not having a conversation with me. Are they autistic? Right. And let's say that they are. Okay, let's say go to the worst case scenario. If you go to autistic person, right? You go to autistic person and decide to go ahead and talk about things that they do not care about. What are they going to do? They're going to leave. So why would you do that? Right? What's happening is like, because, like what I see, like, teachers, parents, other therapists, me used to be as well. Oh, they can't talk to me. I'll bombard them. I'll bombard them with conversations just because I'm scared. They don't know how to. How to talk. So I'm going to talk more. So what's that going to do? That's going to actually annoy the child. All right, so let's give you a case study. I don't know, like, what you're doing. I'm not telling you what you should do, what you should not do. I'm telling you what worked before. Okay? So back then, a child who was a girl who was a. I think it was 12, she was on the spectrum. She would tell the mom to go away. Whenever the mom tried to talk to her, she was like, go upstairs, mama. And so when I started coaching the mom, right, I was saying how, look, you're coming from a place where you want to talk to her, but she doesn't want to talk to you. Because every time you talk to her, it feels like you're quizzing her. You're asking questions that she doesn't know. You're saying things that she doesn't care about. And, you know, like, even if she wasn't on the spectrum, right, she. She wouldn't like hanging out with you. It was just. Just because she respected you. But because she was on the spectrum, she doesn't understand the reason why she has to entertain you at all, right? Even if you're the mother. So what we did was that we started to play with the kid, right? We shoved a bunch of toys, even though she was 11, 12, like, went with her interest. Her interest a little bit, baby. More, baby. She was very verbal, but she liked to pretend play stuff, right? But that's fine. Like, if she likes pretend play, then we play with her. So in the beginning, I coached them up. I said, do not talk when she's playing. I just want you to sit there and just look at her without asking questions, without giving comments, and just be there, right? And slowly move closer, move closer, move closer, right? And then when you're very close with her, start touching some toys. If she allows, if she allows you to touch the toys, then yeah, okay, then do something else. Like start talking a little bit, right? See what she says. Okay, so slowly build it up, right? So it's the, it's. All these things are the same in human interaction. You like, let me give you an example. I mean, most of you watching are women. So I would say if a guy came up to you and kept on talking about last, last night's football game to get your interest, how would you feel? Now you might say I'm the mother. How can you compare? Like a stranger trying to, trying to flirt with me. Well, the, the differences are not that big. You see what I'm saying, right? If a speech delayed child, they're in a position where you're trying to grab their attention, trying to get them to a level where you want them to be. It's the same as a man who wants to get you to where they want you to be as well. You know what I'm saying? Like in a social dynamic, they're trying to put you there, whereas you don't want to go. It's the same as your child doesn't want to talk to you and play with you or whatever because you know that they have to do like this, that and whatever. They can feel that you're trying to get them to answer questions, get them to like do work, get them to talk, which is the most hardest thing that is in existence to them because it comes so naturally for that for us, but it's very hard for them. So where like speech delayed people or children, they would feel that you're trying to impose your values on them, right? So let's go back to that story where the mother slowly became a playmate to the, the daughter. And when the daughter was finally opening up, she started to share her toys. And then we started to teach the mom to provide more value to things that she cared about, right? Teach her new ways to play, right? Hold the camera for her so that she could be a semi youtuber and show like toys to, to the camera and slowly, slowly their, their, their relationship got so good that they were able to like start having conversations about it, right? Play games together, write scripts together, right? That's how you start it. Like if you want to have a back and forth conversation, it's up to your relationship with the kid, not the kid's language level. Right. I have had a kid who would hit the mom. Right. But with me, he would, like, smile, laugh, and pull my shirt. He's non verbal, but he would show me the stuff that he likes. Right. And he would teach me how to play. But when the mom went over, he just slapped. And you might say, oh, that job's not for me. Not for the mom, no. Well, if you really care about your child relationship with you, you got to do this first. You got to understand where they're coming from and be a good person to hang out with. All right, so that's it for today. Hopefully I didn't offend anyone, but if you haven't, please go to agents of peach.com checklist to grab a list of tools and toys that we recommend you get when you start home therapy. Okay, so that's it for this week. I'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.