Best Way to Teach Turn Taking | www.agentsofspeech.com/micro
Ming explains why poor turn taking can signal language delay or autism, then walks through how to teach it: break it into tiny steps, control toy access with a container, practice taking and giving separately, make sure the child accepts touch first, then move to games and real situations. Behavioral approaches work best for kids who struggle.
Chapters
Hello, everyone. We're live here on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. So good, good night. Good evening, everyone who was in Southeast Asia. And good morning to those who are in America. And probably, I don't know if it's afternoon or midnight in Europe, but anyways, thank you for joining, guys. And a lot, a lot more people from Australia are joining us. So I'm pretty, I'm pretty psyched about it. Okay, so let's talk about turn taking. Okay, so turn taking is something that is, is what they call a red flag for, you know, either language delay or autism. All right? And why is that? People call it a red flag, right? So in the coming weeks, every week on Monday nights for me, I will talk about red flags a little bit more. And it's because a lot of parents are just asking, hey, is this a red flag? What should I do? If this is the. If this is it, then does it mean that your child. My child has autism? So I get a lot of these questions and I just want to get it through slowly, one by one. And obviously the best way is to join the micro course first to answer some of your questions. So the micro course for everyone who hasn't joined yet is agents of speech.com micro. Micro as in small, meaning it's just a small course for you to digest and learn a little bit. Okay, so let's talk about turn taking. So turn taking. Yes. Is a red flag. And why it's a red flag is because it's a social activity. So let's say I'm talking to you right now. It's a single way, communication. There's no way, there's no need for any turn taking involved. Right? So I'm talking to you, I'm doing a monologue, I'm only talking. But what if we're interacting? What if we're talking? Then obviously there is a turn taking. I say one thing, you say one thing, right? And that's why children on the spectrum, if they are what we call high function nowadays, right? Not Asperger's or anything, just children who are like, just maybe people who have autism, they don't know the dynamics of like, social dynamics. Therefore they might speak over you, they might don't. They might not know how to maintain a conversation without saying certain things that they shouldn't. Right? These are all turn taking, but a lot higher level. Okay, so turn taking by itself isn't really a problem. Is the problem that they cannot understand that everyone has their turn? Okay, so when is it going to be a problem? Number One is that, you know, when they go into a school setting, for instance, in a kindergarten, they have to line up to use the toilet, so on, then that's going to be a problem because if they cannot wait for their turn, like some of the students that I have, what happens is that they will actually just skip the line or pull others or, you know, worst case scenario, like one of my students, in the very beginning, he would headbutt the other kid in front just like that, right? And it's very funny because my other student in front didn't find it intrusive or didn't find it anything, and he just started laughing because he just got headbutt. So the whole thing was very, very funny in a weird way. So that's why it's a red flag, you see. So if a child cannot wait for their own turn, this stuff will happen. And how we're gonna tackle turn taking is to do what we do, as always in therapy or in teaching or when I'm talking to you, right? We will distill to the smallest possible fragment of skill to teach. Okay? So we've talked about a lot of stuff on this channel, on this. Not a lot on Instagram, not a huge Instagram person, but we talk a lot, a lot about making the child not to fail. Okay? So making it, making them understand by doing the smallest possible thing. So for instance, if someone doesn't know how to jump, we will start by teaching them how to sit up and stand up, right? So that's the type of granular level you have to get to to teach a child something, okay? And if a child doesn't understand, it's our fault. Okay? So how we do it is basically we have to have a strong routine, as we always say, a very strong routine. And it might be that you're playing with just a piggy bank, okay? A piggy bank. You know, the one with music and so on. Oh, mine is downstairs. I forgot to bring it up. So anyways, when you have that, you have a routine of, oh, I put a coin and then something happens. You put a coin and then something happens. Right. The next step is to introduce the concept of playing together. All right? So for instance, it might be puzzles, it might be piggy bank, it might be anything, to be honest. It might be like, you know those ball drop things for babies? You know, you put the ball and it goes like that and it's rattling and everything. That stuff can also work. Also the, the hoops, you know, the hoops on the stick thing that can Work as well. And these toys are targeted for children at around like two to three. Okay? Maximum three and a half. Other than that, like after three and a half, don't use those because I think it's a little bit too babyish for everyone. Okay? So, by the way, guys, thanks for. I just want to say thank you for watching. If you are watching until here, just say hi and let me know where you're watching from. It means a lot to me just to see who's watching and so on. And let's just talk about how we do it. So we put all the. All the loose items. So if you're using like a vending machine that we talk about here a lot, or you're talking about like a piggy bank or the ball drop or the throwing hoop thing, then you want all the loose items like the hoops, the coins, the whatever, the balls, the puzzles, the puzzle pieces, sorry, inside of a little container, like a physical container. And what I see the biggest problem when parents or teachers are teaching with these tools is that they just lay on the floor or put it very. They just like to put it around, right? And what happens is that the child's going to snatch it. And this is not a good thing because if you allow children to snatch things, they will learn that, oh, actually I can get this from you. Then there's no need to talk to you or there's no need to do anything. The first step is always to put it in a container. In a small container, just this big doesn't matter. Sometimes we even use plates. It doesn't matter as long as you put everything in. And then you use it as a way to control where they get those. Those loose items, right? So what you do next is that you pass it to him to let him put the coin in. So let's say there's a. There's a whole plate of. Of coins. You hand it to him, he receives it, and then he puts it in, right? And then afterwards, when he wants to put another coin in, he's like. Like that. You stop him, you hold both of his hands, bring his hand over and. And hold on to the plate, and then give it to yourself, right? Give it to yourself. And afterwards, when he still wants to put a hand on him and then take one, you put it in. And then you take two hands and you give it to your child. So it might be a very long process, right? But basically what this is is doing the three parts of. Of turn, taking number one, taking the turn, actually doing the thing. Second of all, giving the turn, right? Giving it away. And then third of all, receiving the turn, okay? So these three things they have to do, turn taking, 1, 2, 3. Okay, so why is this important is because this is just a very small building block towards later when they talk. And why it's important because later on when we talk, it's like if we were in a group discussion, right? If now we were, we had a bunch of people and decided to have a group discussion, what it would be is that, oh, it's nearly my turn to talk. Oh, no, I mean, I think about something. Oh, I turn, I talk, and then I point to someone else to allow them to say something, and that's giving the turn. So I take my turn to talk, right? And then I give my turn to someone else. And then I will anticipate and receive the turn back in order to talk. All right? So that's the lowest level a child can do for turn taking is playing with those toys, okay? And you'll see a lot of the problem with a lot of turn taking activities on the Internet or when therapists tell you is that you don't have the skill to do so. Like for instance, for instance, you know, like if, if you just type turn taking children, whatever activities on Google, okay? Search it or Bing or Yahoo, whatever you use, right? What you will see is that, oh, you use a ball, you roll it to the kid and then they roll it back to you. And that's turn taking, right? So the problem is the most of the children that I teach and you, you encounter, or it's your child, is that you roll them a ball and it disappears. They go play with them themselves, right? You roll them car and then they start like throwing it and stuff. So it becomes like, yeah, it is a turn taking activity, but you haven't taught them to take a turn, right? So that's why put everything in a container so that they cannot take those things without your consent and then may allow them to put it over, right? Allow them to come over and give it to you. So that is turn taking. But there's a huge caveat to it, okay? For first of all, your child should be okay with you touching his or her hands and arm and manipulate him and so on, okay? Because if you cannot, then what happens is that when they're trying to grab that thing they want inside the container, be it, I don't know, be it like a snack or like a, like a burger that you play. What's that called the piggy thing I showed you guys Last time, don't mind me. It's just another of those, you know, put stuff in a, in a toy, that kind of activity, right? So it doesn't matter if they try to get it and then you prompt them to take the container and give it to you or give it to someone else. What happens is that they start to struggle and they don't like it and that becomes a bad experience. And next time, whenever you, you have stuff like you create the setting of, ah, we're gonna play together, they're gonna run off, right? So therefore, before you try this, you should always have your child and under what we call instructional command at the very least, right? And this is where it's a lot of soft skills. It's not about what to do, what gestures to target, because we talk about gestures here a lot. It's about knowing your child and being able to at the very least control them to a certain extent. And I don't mean this in a way that is super like aba, meaning Applied Behavioral Therapy, not trying to make them, oh, you listen to me and only to me. And then after you do this, you get a reward, not that kind of thing. But it needs to be at least that your child understands that, oh, mom or dad can also teach me. I need a listen, right? That's the basis of it. All right? If your child is still like hand pulling you or hand leading or hand guiding, whatever you call it in any part of the world, then the biggest problem here is that they don't really understand how to communicate with you. So we need to start with that. All right? So after they are able to like wait for you and copy you and allow you to touch his hand and so on and copy some of the actions you tell him to do, then afterwards you can, you can start doing this kind of turn taking activities. All right, so to learn that, just go to agents of Speech.com micro or if you don't want to, you can just watch all the videos we have on Facebook, on YouTube and learn that way. That's also fine with me. Okay? And the next thing, after what we do, after using those toys, we try to what we call generalization, okay? This is very important. So whenever child learns something or you learn something or I learned something, we need to know how to generalize it to different contexts, different toys, different whatever, right? So after playing those really easy, you know, ball drop, car slide, what else, piggy bank puzzles, those kind of stuff, then you have to move on to harder stuff that is, that has some kind of rules to it, right? So maybe it's like a very simple game where you roll the dice, that kind of board game. Or it might be a vending machine that has a few more actions to it. Or it might be just one of those, you know. Have you guys heard of the game called Xingo, right? Zingo. And then within that company that made single, they also have something called Smash, which is very good. A smash. Sorry, Smash. So it's like a matching game with like a thing in the middle that you press. Okay. And it's pretty fun. And for a child to learn how to take turns, it really, it requires quite some time, right. And then what else you can do after those is some kind of role playing games where they have to start to take turns. And if we're talking about like children who we teach around five to six years old, we can teach them to do a lot of role playing where they have to take turns. For instance, I'm the doctor and then he's the patient, that kind, or I am the, what's that called? Waiter. And the other person is the customer. Right. And then you can have four children on the spectrum or not on the spectrum. You should start off with like scripts, right? So whoever comes in will have a script such as, oh, hello, how. How many people? I don't know, I'm coming up with it on the fly, right? So you can say something like, oh, how many people are with you today? Or something. And then ah, one. Okay, please sit here. And then can I have the menu please? Yes. So on, so forth, right? It doesn't matter. You adjust to the child's level of language competence. Okay. Ask your therapist if you don't. Not sure. And if your child has a turn taking problem outside of these things that you want to teach. For instance, what we were talking about just now, like lining up, waiting for the turn in the game. You know, one time, one of my kids. Not my kids, my students. You know, one of those like when you go to a store and you can play Xbox or PS4 or whatever games for free, but then you have to, you have to keep on, you have to keep on like giving up, return and so on, right? So one of those, one of my students who were around like 15. Actually, no, he was 13 and he couldn't wait and he punched that guy in front and he said, give it to me. But he didn't mean it in a way that, that he didn't want to. He didn't understand the rules, is that he just couldn't wait. It's just he thought that the thing was his, right? And how we teach it is by a behavioral method. All right? And turn taking, it can go up to all these social. Because there's so much stuff going on. Like for instance, if I teach the child to turn take during a board game, it's so easy, right? But if we try to teach them to line up at McDonald's, wait for the turn for Xbox PS4 so on PS5 now, right? Or wait for the turn to get food in general is very difficult. So therefore you need to have some sort of behavioral therapy for that. And I would highly recommend you guys to check out if you are inside of a country that has Autism Partnership. So I believe that Indonesia doesn't have one. Singapore has one, I believe. Malaysia, I'm not sure. USA for sure because it's from usa. And that's where I learned a lot of those things, right? And when, when you know these, when, when you can go to a nice ABA place such as Autism Partnership, then you can learn about like you can allow them to help you with these behavioral approaches. So for instance, back then we did something called teaching interactions, right? So we teach them how to interact, we role play a few times and teach them how to take their turn for specific things, right? So, alrighty, guys, that's about all I want to talk to you about in a short span of 30 minutes. I want to give you as much knowledge as I can give you at the same time. Doesn't mean you can do it right off the bat. It only means that you're listening to me and you're trying to absorb it and you're learning something new, right? So if you haven't, you should go to agents of Speech.com micro. So learn more. Go take a look at the course there. It's very short and sweet and to the point and it will probably answer most of your questions from the beginning if you have already taken it. Guys, the membership is open. Okay, so I see Joey's here. What's up, Joey? Joey's in our membership. Very happy for that. Vivi. What's up, Vivi? Loy. What's up? How. How are you? And sorry if I pronounce your name wrong. Is it soggy? So guy. I don't know. Anyways, and you said that tuning, Tuning in from the U.S. oh, very nice. Excellent. So that's it for tonight's live video. If you have any questions, do put it in the comment section. And if you're on Instagram, follow. Feel free to dm me. And I will try my best to get back to you guys as we are getting more and more these kind of inquiries. So I'm very happy about it. And let's see how we can help each other in the future. Okay, that's it. And see you guys next week. Bye. Bye.
