A short instructional video by Ming (Agents of Speech) describing stepwise strategies to teach non-verbal children to imitate, progressing from action imitation (e.g., open-palm requests during play like Mr. Potato Head) to mouth-shape modeling and finally simple vowel sound imitation (ah, e, oo). The presenter frames action imitation as an intermediate shaping step toward verbal imitation.
Once your child knows to do open palm, you do engage in a game, a toy, an activity, or with food, which is the easiest. So let's say you're playing Mr. Potato Head, and every time he just wants more body parts from you. Here you go. He's open palm again. Oh, hand, hand. Good. Go. Stick it up. And then he puts his hand out again. And you keep on doing that. Then you start increasing the demand. Meaning, what's one level lower than verbal imitation, which is action imitation? If your child is able to sign with you, these actions are shaping the behavior. To learn how to imitate from us later on, we can get rid of it. We don't need to treat the kid as a robot. It's just a step. When the child knows that they're supposed to imitate actions, then we move closer and we do some mouth shapes. After that, we increase our demand again and it becomes sounds which are easy, like ah, e, oo. Simple vowels are easy because there's a specific mouth shape. It's easy for the kid to start imitating like that.
