Child Cannot Imitate Anything | www.agentsofspeech.com/membership
Ming explains why some children struggle to imitate: lack of motivation, unclear instructions, or inaccessible rewards. He recommends finding strong reinforcers, simplifying tasks, modeling language instead of asking questions, and adapting materials for accessibility.
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Hello, welcome to our month weekly. Sorry, Monday lives. So sorry, I haven't cut my hair in a very long time because of the pandemic. But anyways, this is not going to stop me from doing lives. Okay, so the first thing is that I want to talk about today is imitation. So, you know, we've been talking about imitation for, in a few videos in, in our channel, in our Facebook, in our group, whatever. And recently, today I just did a consultation with a parent and I don't want to spare too many details, but basically the child is above 10 years of age and she's been in therapy since 2 years old. But we only got to get her to master action imitation like two or three months ago. That happened when she started to work with me. I'm not saying that I'm doing a great job or tubing my horn or whatever, but I just wanted to share how we got there, number one and number two, why it is. Okay, so the first point is that how we got there is basically by teaching the child that there needs to be a reward system, okay? For the past. I don't know how many times is that the therapists or teachers would tell the kid to do it and just do it no matter what. Just, just do it. They don't care if the child is, is, you know, how to say, like refusing, protesting, lying on the floor, you know, fighting people, whatever, which she does still to this day. And, and she was never really rewarded. And I was talking to her therapist. I'm not saying that because I, I am in a different country from where I'm from, okay? I'm, I, I used to be, I am from Hong Kong and now I'm in, in Indonesia. So I'm not saying that the therapists here are not qualified or whatever. Just, just, just something I want to tell you. Even if you go to like anywhere, you will come across that therapists and the child, they do not sync up. They don't match. And for myself as well, even in Hong Kong, loads of parents left. You know, it's a hurt to my ego, obviously, but at the same time that's fine because you need to find a therapist who will be of a good match to your kid. And I cannot tell you that without seeing your kid, that, oh, I can teach your child everything. I can promise you whatever, okay? So I, I, I can never promise you anything. Okay? Parents always ask me, oh, does this work? Does this method work? Does your method whatever. I don't know. I really don't know. I cannot say it like that. Right. If you were coming to me for something else, Right. If you were asking me about how to run a clinic, how to do a business, I can promise you things because I know how to run this for a very long time. But when it's up to, like teaching special needs children, each of them are different. It's very difficult for me to promise you that, oh, yeah, they're going to talk in like two or three months or, you know, when parents ask me how long will. Will I see results in. You know what? I really don't know if I could. If someone could tell you you should run away. You know, like, that's what I always say, right? I mean, this is not. It's like, it's not like a diet plan. It's like, I know if you eat less and you move more and you get what you want, but teaching a kid is not like that. So back to that therapist, right? What was different when we were doing it was the rewards. Okay? Was the rewards. What was happening before was that she was forced. Okay, that. That's the correct word. When I saw the videos was that. And she said something to me. She said, yeah, why should I reward her for something that she should be doing already? So this really makes. Made me think about all the parents that I've been like, mentoring and teaching for the past. I don't know how long since I've started doing therapy. And I really don't think that's the correct mindset. Okay. If talking is something that your child cannot do, or like communicating or doing whatever is just something that your child cannot do, then why would you take it for granted and not reward or praise for that, given that it's already very, very hard for them to do whatever you're asking for them, to them to do, to perform, why would you do that? So we shook things around when the child was supposed to. When she was going about her daily activities. So when I talk about this child, this girl in particular, the background is that she is considered to be on the spectrum, number one. Number two is that her cognitive level is rather low. Number. She has an extra. I forgot what. What it was, and I don't want to share it with you. Okay. So it's basically something more biological, Right. Genetically, she's got some sort of, like, disorder or whatever, and it's a hard case. Okay. A matter of fact, if I see one, I will always say, this is a difficult case. This is an easy case, but I will never promise anything. So about this hard case, how we got to that place is that instead of just forcing her to do things, we would reward her and shape that behavior. Shaping and like this is all behavioralism. You know, we use it in therapy all the time. Some people, you know, sometimes on YouTube, they will say, oh, Aba, whatever you're using, you're talking about is very behaviorless. I can't believe it. Whatever. It's not like I don't care about what they say. It's just that that's my job. That's what I learned. That's what I got my master's. And if you have any, any other, like, better ideas, feel free to share it with me instead of saying something negative like, tell me what else we can do, right? And then just to share a little bit more personal stuff with you. Sometimes I get comments saying, oh, I don't care. Like, I can't believe you're sharing something so unscientific about whatever, you know? And one of the comments said, I do read the comments sometimes. And then they said something like, oh, you don't. I can tell that you don't care about your students or whatever, or clients, whatever. Well, you know, like that. That's a personal attack for something that is rather like about scientific research. Why would you say that? I'm the person who's making videos about this stuff, taking my own sweet time out of my life to like talk about this. And I don't think if someone had a better idea, they should have. They should, or you, or what, whoever should, should go ahead and make more videos and teach the world and how to do it, right? So anyways, so whenever the child. Back to that case, right, Whenever the kid had to do like everyday activities before she was forced to do it, she would lie on the ground, she would bite people or hit people. What we were doing instead was to shape her, was to give her that reward in advance while she was performing it. So she was rewarded to continue her daily activities. We would never force her to do it or whatever. When she started to do it, we just played the music because that was her, her reinforcement, her reward, right? So that made her mood a lot easier to handle. Like a lot higher her mood. She's smiling everything. I just want when I tell her to sit down, when the parents tell her to sit down, it's much easier than before because she knows that she has something to look forward to, right? So when you are, you know, when you're talking, when you're teaching a child who has very, what we call like non verbal kid, right? When they are Stuck with imitation since two to, like 10 plus years. That's like eight years. All parents would be very, very beaten down, you know, at that point. At that point in time where they've tried everything and every. And whatever, and finally they see some sort of, like, progress, which we have. Of course we're going to do the same thing that is that. That we see is working, which is rewarding. Okay. And this is something that I want to tell you as a parent, is that if you want your kid to advance and you don't reward their behavior, you're just asking for it to go away. Okay. All right. So, Bella. I don't know how to say your name. I guess it's Bella. Bella. I'm not gonna. I'm not sure. Anyways, so Aba. I mean, you can just search on my YouTube channel, right? Agents of Speech. You're on YouTube, so you can just search Aba on our channel. There are a few videos there already. Okay. I'm not an ABA practitioner. I'm a speech therapist. But I've worked there before for. For less than a year, as a matter of fact. But at the same time, you know, I. I've had quite, quite a big exposure to it, given my working circumstances, which I'm very grateful for. So, you know, for what it's worth. Go, go. We'll talk about this later on when I finish talking. Okay. About what I want to share today about imitation. Okay. So the second point I want to talk about was why it didn't work before. So, you see, this parent was going through a lot of therapy, no matter if it was outside and in Europe. That's why I won't say that country, like in Europe. And then now she's in Indonesia trying to seek for therapy. What was the difference there? Well, the difference was that she had a goal in mind. Okay. Before, when she was like, the. The child was smart in a way. I wouldn't say her cognitive ability is on par with her, like, with the peers, obviously. But at the same time, what she could. She was doing was she was guessing what the. What we. You or the therapist wanted to do. So whenever the. The kid. When. I'm sorry, whenever the therapist asked her to do something in her therapist tone, right. What would happen was that she was already doing the thing without listening. So therefore, she's not processing any of the words or the what or the command or the whatever. She's just looking for a way out. She's just looking for a way to finish the task and get what she wants or get out of here. Right. For the past. She just want to get out of here. Okay. So that's something that was also happening. That's. First of all, she was guessing a lot. And how we got rid of it was that we would hold down her hand and don't let her give a response. And only after we say something, only after we say something, we let go and we let her know that there's a turn taking going on. Right. That's something that's very important when we're teaching non verbal children is that the command or instruction is very clear. It's like, do this, your turn, finish reward. Like that. Right. And that's something that I guess the distinction between non verbal and pre verbal. I'll talk about how I think about it. Obviously there's a textbook definition of that. I don't have it here, I think anyways. But how I think about it is that if your child is below four or five or three and a half, I would guess, and they haven't spoken yet and they have signs of like, communication, whatever, I would say that's pre verbal. That they don't have enough. Like they're not using words yet. That's pre verbal. Not yet. Right. Non verbal is like if they're already four and they cannot use words or sounds to communicate, whereas maybe they are already using words for different, like different reasons other than being, you know, different reasons for not being able to use the words. Okay. So Mirella, zero motivation to do anything. Okay. This is similar to the case I'm talking about. Right. So the other thing is that. Let me finish first. Right. The other problem that was happening was that the therapist that was teaching the mom and coming over and doing stuff was that they gave. They asked the child to stick on something as a token. Okay. So if you're inside of our courses and seen us work. Right. You would know what a token board is. Basically it's just. Basically it's just how to say a way to get a reward. Okay. Maybe you can like get six stickers and you get a reward. Right. And then. Wait a minute. Okay, so the problem was that that Token board was 2D and it was very difficult for the. For the girl to like grasp and put because her fine motor isn't very good. So you also have to take that into consideration. Right. If even getting the reward and like trying to get it, it's hard for the kid to get it because of their like, inability or disability, so to say. Or like, like fine motor disabilities, then it's very difficult for them to continue to want to learn from you, right? It's like, if I tell you that you have to use. Let's say I'm Chinese, I use chopsticks, right? So if someone told me I had to use my left hand to. To get something I really like to eat, the whole experience would be really crap, you know, Like, I really want to eat that, but I can't, like, just hold the chopsticks as well as my right hand. And it's really pissing me off. It's the same as teaching a kid. So if you want your child to, like, be tip top and learn as fast as possible, your teaching materials have to be. It has to make sense for her or him. Okay? And when you're using cards, a very good tip is just to stick a piece of like, styrofoam or whatever to elevate it off the table, right? Elevate off the table. And then it's easier to grasp, okay. Or like, put like a piece of cardboard behind it or a small piece like, so that there's like an edge where that they can just like, grab instead of trying to, like, slip and whatever, and then it gets stuck on the table. Whatever. That is never cool. Because whatever you're doing there that is creating that situation is increasing the time where they can get their reward. And it's frustrating. Okay, so let's get to Mirella's case. All right, so the. The k. The. The key word is motivation. So if it's an autistic child who is already seven and they haven't tried anything new, the only weapon, so to speak, is that we need to find a reinforcer or reward that we can use on the kid. And I say this in a very mechanical and like, without any emotion that kind of way. I don't mean it like that. When I. You want to see me work with a kid, it's not like that, right? I'm like. I'm very natural, you know, like, sometimes I see myself evolve as a therapist is that I don't have that therapist voice anymore. I don't go like, hey, listen, like, say whatever. Like, a lot of people do that. So Morella says he is not interested in rewards, then it's very difficult for us to do anything. So your main objective now is not to. To teach them anything is to find more and more things that you can use as a reward within. All right? That's the first step. And. And that takes in many shapes and forms, right? Some choice, like, you gotta find it. There must be Something. If there isn't something, then it's super, super difficult. Right. I've seen children who are on the spectrum and what we call profound, which is even worse than severe, and all they do is just like lie on the bed. And I'm sure, maybe, I'm not sure, your son might be somewhat different. Yeah. There must be some sort of motivation that you can use. All right, I'll give you some examples, some extreme examples. So one of the kids that I've taught, her favorite was smelling hand sanitizer of a particular brand. One kid was. That was Blu Tack. Okay. One was just tape, one was just shoelaces. Okay. And you have to find it. There must be something. What does your child stim like? What does he use to self stimulate with? That's the reward already. Okay, I know it's hard. I know it's hard and you can't find it. And you know, if you go for therapy, that's literally the first thing I would do for a non verbal kid. Because why would he want to talk or why would he want to learn how to talk to me if there's nothing that he wants? Right. Don't tell me that maybe food isn't a strong reinforcer either. I'm not sure. But you have to think about what he has as free access that he enjoys doing. And then what you do is that you don't allow him to have free access to that thing and use it as a reinforcement. Okay, Sorry, I'm really bad with names, man. I apologize for butchering your name. Anyways, what tips are to get language communication delayed to answer questions? There isn't any. There is like, like if, if you search on my YouTube, there, there is already some like tips about that. But most of the time is you need to look into why you're asking those questions and why your child has to answer you. Okay. If you're, if the, if you're asking because you're treating them as a typical developing child, then you know, like, you're going to be disappointed because most of the time if your child repeats or don't answer the question, it's because they don't understand it. So if you ask a question without helping your child, then you're setting them up to fail. Right. If you ask me in a different, in some sort of language I don't understand, you ask a question to me which I encounter a lot living in a foreign country, and the only thing you do is to repeat the question one more time to me. Then of course I'm Going to be dumbfounded. And I don't know what to say. Right. Even though I know that you're like, I'm better. I know that's the function is a question and I have to give an answer. So children who are delayed don't even know that. They don't even know the language form of a question. So that's why they just repeat it. Because whenever they repeat something, they get out of situations. Right. And you know, if you were in a foreign country, you would do the same. You would try to repeat the last few words and maybe you could get away and just get in somewhere. Right. Or go somewhere. I don't know. So, yeah, like you need to for this kind of like, why are you asking that? First of all, are you like, testing the kid? If you're testing the kid, then you don't have to. You don't have to test the kid that way. In fact, you should just teach them and just tell them the answer. That's the easy way. And the more you ask the question and you answer it for them, it doesn't create so much stress in the kid. Right. I've talked about this in a lot of videos, to be honest, but I know it's. It's quite a difficult task to go through so many videos as a mother. I know it's very busy. So I'm answering you right now. I'm telling you that all you have to do is to not ask those questions and instead give the target language form that you want the child to do. In plain English just means don't ask questions and just describe them how you would want your child to speak. Because if you don't model the language, how would you suppose the child be able to answer those questions and the desired format that you want? Right. So if you don't give a model answer, how does a child know how it's supposed to be? If your child were able. Were able to pick up language by themselves and understand how to answer questions naturally and pick up language and develop in a way that they have as the same as their peers, they wouldn't need that from you. Okay? So if you are asking questions just to test them, or maybe most of the time it's just because you're naturally. That's how you speak. Right. Then you have to change the way you speak to them because if they don't answer you over and over again and it's just the same old story every day that you know for sure if you ask that question, they won't answer you Then why do it in the first place? That's my thesis towards this. And I think that there are a lot of, like, speech therapy advice out there saying that, oh, yeah, you should not ask questions. That's totally right. But the explanation of. Of such. Right, the explanation. Explanation to it is that if you're doing this over and over and it's not working, stop doing it and do something else. That's what I mean. Right? So if you were to teach questions like who, what, where, then I would just ask the question and give the model answer right away. Okay? That's. First of all. Second of all, you need to have a good working relationship with your kid. And I cannot just give you, like, I can give you a what, like a how to, right? But if you cannot kind of say, if you cannot have a good working relationship with your kid, whatever you try is not going to work. You know what I'm saying? I can tell you, like, oh, yeah, you have to use this toy, like this, and then you. Whatever, right? But if you cannot get your child to sit down and explain the instruction clearly and tell them that, oh, after this, you can, like, the whole thing is fun or whatever, it's very hard for you to execute on it. So my biggest and fastest advice to you is to just model the language that you want to hear. Okay? All right. So at the end of the day, if your child is stuck at imitation or whatever, at skill for a very long time, which was what I encountered today, the best thing you can do is to sit down and evaluate which one. Which two of these that I always talk about, either your child doesn't want to, or a child doesn't know how to. So both of these you can control. Okay? You can control it. You can control what rewards entice them. Do it. As my first supervisor ever told me that I assessed a child incorrectly, that I thought the child was being a nuisance and a bad. A bad kid and wanted to avoid the task that I was giving him. My assessment was wrong. He just wanted the reward. So my. The supervisor just told me, bribe the heck out of him. I censored the word that he used. But you get what I mean, right? Bribe him. In the beginning, a lot of people will say, don't bribe the kid. Don't do it, but bribe him. You know why? It's not natural. It's not nice. Why am I telling you to do this? Because I want you to have a quick win, okay? If you cannot have a quick win with your kid, you're not going to do the next steps. The whole step is like a thousand steps, man. Like, if you can't put on your shoes for a marathon, then you're not going to run it. You know what I'm saying? So I want you, if you, if your kid doesn't want to do it, bribe him. Find the thing that he loves the most. Find it out what it is. Maybe just now Marella was saying, I can't find it. Keep on finding. Don't give up on it. Find the reward that he needs and wants and then use it to tell him, hey, man, after you do this, you can have it. That's a quick win for you as the parents, because I've done it a thousand times myself. I wouldn't say I've mastered it. I don't think I've reached like 10,000 hours of therapy time. That would take like 10 plus years. But I'm telling you, is that what worked for me and what worked for parents who work with me at the very least, I don't know other people is that if you put the reward in front of them, like hang carrot in front of the horse, that's the easiest to know whether a child knows how to do something or not. And if they don't know it, it's also up to us. That's something you can control of how to give an instruction and teach them and prompt them. As another supervisor told me as well, why we are. How to say how. Why therapists are so, like, worth the money is that we know how to give the correct cues and the prompts to achieve something. Right? So I would say these two things you have to think about when you hit like a plateau. You think, I think about, okay, does he not want to do it? Is it too hard for him? Can I raise the incentive? And then number two, if he doesn't know how to, is it too hard for him? Can I go down a little bit and meet him halfway and slowly build it up and then think about what prompts you can give is a visual, something visual that can help him. A sensory that can help him. Right. A question type that can help him. If sometimes you can ask a question as a cue, that's totally fine as long as they can answer it. Of course. Maybe it's like a modeling first. Maybe it's your instruction that isn't clear enough, which is 80% most of the time. That's the reason why kids flip. Because I don't know what you want. Right. And I get that sometimes. Right. Because I'm. I Started working with a lot of non verbal children. I'm rather, I'm, I'm better at teaching non verbal to, from like nonverbal all the way up to like sentences. I'm not very good after that. I am. Okay, but you know, just normal therapy therapists doing like stories and whatnot and verbal reasoning. Right. That's why it's been taking me such a long time to do like the course for verbal reasoning for you guys. It's hard. Okay. So anyways, that's all I wanted to share today. And the last thing I want to talk about is the membership that we have at Agents of Speech. And this is only for, for people who have already gone through at least one course from us. And this is the paid courses. Okay. There are loads of information that I, that I, or we now put out on, on the YouTube on, on Facebook or whatever. And why we are making this so exclusive is number one, we have a private forum that you can upload videos. We have bi weekly means every two weeks we hop on Zoom and we watch videos of parents working with the children. It's high commitment to, it's difficult, but at the end of the day we see a lot of progress if the parent really commits. Okay? Like sending videos to me, to us, we take a look at it. We tell you, hey, do this, do that, don't do this anymore. The kid is confused here, the kid is happy here. Why the kid is like this. We evaluate with the videos, right? It's hard stuff. Okay? That's why we want someone at least to go through a course first. Right? But at the same time, you know, if you haven't and you still want to join, that's fine. Okay? Because I will give you a free like 15 minute onboarding call, meaning 15 minutes, just one on one. I will teach you how to use the membership. And then when I'm gonna ask and give you my $0.02 about your child after giving, like listening to you and, and, and just maybe I need like a few more videos with you first before giving you a concrete plan. But I will tell you what to do for the next step. And that's the most important thing, the next step, not ten steps ahead. Okay. Parents always ask me what's gonna go after, like, well, what's gonna happen whatever, like at 5 or 6 or when they're like 10 years. I don't know, man. All I know is that I'll give you the next step and then it'll be easy to go, like to keep on going. Right? So anyways, Bella asks, is it accessible for me in South Africa? I think it is. If so, for us. We only take credit card for this one and it's, it's paid for. We can't do this for free. Right. It's just impossible for us because, you know, with the technology, I'm not trying to justify the value. Right. Actually I don't mind if you don't join because it's a lot of work for me, you know what I'm saying? It's just a huge amount of work that you give videos to me and then sometimes if you want to blur out the videos, we go ahead and blur the faces of your kid. I spend like two hours on zoom every two weeks and we have like three time slots for people of different time zones. It's a nightmare for me, but I think it's the best thing I can do for you. Right. That's why I went ahead and did it. And it's the most like efficient way we can do it. So it is access for everyone around the world. And yeah, I think we have, we don't have members from, from South Africa at this moment in time. Most of them are either America, Southeast Asia or Australia. And then we have one, I think we have a few, like one or two from Ireland and then some in Great Britain. Yeah. But to be totally transparent with you guys, we have like 60 something people in the membership. It's not a lot, it's not a few, it's a lot of work. It's been nearly a year. We launched April last year and we have recordings of every single zoom that we've done. I'm proud to say that. And if we get more than 100 or up to like 200, I'm going to upgrade the system so it's a lot easier. I'm showing in some, some workshops that I'm doing for the recordings inside where you will not see anywhere else because I don't want people to take it out of context because I want you to like for instance, I'm doing one about like speech sounds, meaning if your child has like mispronunciations, whatever. I'm gonna put like how I do it there because I don't want to put it out there, like sell you a course or whatever and like do it one time or give it to you for free where you won't do anything about it. I want you to try that and come back to me because it's a very, it's, it's a. How to say it's like A exercise of, of doing like mental elimination. I was like, okay, if this is not right, then this is this. If the sound sounds like this, then it must be because of a certain reason. If that's the reason, then we do that, that kind of thing. So it's, it's a high commitment thing and I want it to be high commitment with me as well. Like if I'm. If you're committed, committed, then I'm committed. That kind of, that sort of stuff. Right. So yeah, that's pretty much it. I don't want to talk about it too much, actually. We only open it like four times this a year. This is the first time we're opening it. The next time will be open in July, I believe, or June and then like two more times after that. Okay, so that's pretty much it, guys. I don't want this to be like out in the public. You can't even find it on our main website. Yeah, that's how, how much I want to protect it. I don't want it to be like exploding, you know what I'm saying? Although I think it wouldn't. But I just wanted to make it a little more exclusive so that I can keep my sanity for a little bit. Okay, so that's it, guys. If you have any more questions, please do shoot me an email or shoot me a PM about the membership or any questions that you may have. I'll try my best to answer. And, and obviously if you have, like, if you have a question, just search it up on the, on, on. On our Facebook group or the YouTube channel first before asking. That saves us a lot of time because sometimes I just search and send the video link of something that parents want to ask me about and which is okay, it's just fine. But you know, like, it'd be nice if you could do that for me. And yeah, I'll stop talking now. Hopefully this session was fruitful. I'll talk about this. I'll make a longer video to talk about how to get through with non verbal and how to go from non verbal to sentences. It's going to be long videos, obviously. And you cannot take over a course because all of our online courses are hours long. There's a lot of resources, people ask a lot of questions and I try to get all the FAQs all done. Okay. It's hard work and that's pretty much it. My email, I guess you're not. Right. I guess I'll just put it here, right? I mean, Yeah, that's my email. All right. Please. No. No spams or whatever. I trust you guys. That's why I put it here. Although the channel is going pretty fast and a little anxious putting it out there. Bots will pick it up or whatever. But it means that you guys aren't on my newsletter. So get on my newsletter. There's quite a few people on there. And I send just cool stuff. That's pretty much it, guys. I'll talk to you.
