Child Only Imitates the Last Sound / Syllable of a Word | www.agentsofspeech.com/micro

Hello, thank you for joining this Monday live. And today we're going to talk about a question that I get all the time. And most probably it's going to work its way into the micro course. But today I'm just going to give a brief overview, a brief explanation. And this might be a little bit long winded like those live videos I have just because, you know, I just kind of go off the cuff and talk about like what I would say in my clinic if someone asked me this question. So the question is actually my son or daughter can only repeat the last syllable of a word, okay? So for instance, if you say like baby, they only say B, right? And if you say, hey, can you say bottle? They say to or like do or something like that. So they basically the child who is speech delayed would repeat the last syllable, okay? And to actually counter this or like to teach them about how to like say the whole word or imitate the whole word, the first thing you need to do is to think about why it's happening. Okay? So I have this really detailed explanation that I usually give, but I'm just gonna make it shorter and tell you it right here. All right? So first of all, when people, not only children, do not understand a sentence or something that is too difficult, right? They will try to repeat in their heads what they have heard recently. Like, for instance, if it's a really long sentence inside, like in a foreign language, let's say, and I understand a little bit of like Indonesian, a little bit of like other languages, like Japanese or whatever. The thing about it is that for me at least, or to people who I talk to, is that when we don't understand language, we tend to have a keyword approach, right? When we listen to something out of like a whole story, like maybe you've tried it before, you've watched a foreign language film, right? And then suddenly you hear a few words that you know and you use those keywords to shape, to guess around the meaning of the sentence. So what does this have to do with your child only saying the last syllable of a sentence? Right? The reason is because they can only say something that is like familiar, recent, or they kind of know what it is, right? So if you think about it, if you, you're watching a foreign, foreign movie, like in a foreign language, you hear certain words that you've heard of before and you pick it out. That means you're familiar with that sound, that word, that meaning. Okay? And for children who are speech delayed, who do not have any words yet, what is the Most familiar, most recent thing that they can hear, obviously, is a sound. Okay? Obviously as a sound. So, for instance, I think this question sparked because today, inside of the Facebook group, if you haven't, you should really join. And if you're in the Facebook group, it's easier to notify you that these lives are going on and so on and so forth and what the. Like inside the Facebook group, the parent was asking, oh, my kid. When I say, like, I forgot what it is, it was in Malaysian, right? I'm so sorry. My language prowess can only go so far. You know, I don't know a Malaysian, right? So she was saying how when the kid asked for, like, water or milk, they would only say the last syllable, right? So the reason why is because both the two words. First of all, the mom was saying two words, which is already very difficult, okay? So the two words aside, all the syllables together, there were three syllables as I remember counting. But obviously because I have no knowledge of the four of that language, I cannot remember it. Okay? Muted my mic by accident. Here we go. So the thing is, because I don't have that, I can't even recall the sound. And same as the child. But anyways, when the mother asked him to say, oh, like give milk or whatever it was, I remember it was three syllables and the child only said the last syllable. And the reason why is because all the sounds, all the words, he didn't know, he didn't know at all. All right? And I always give this example. Let's say that I'm trying to teach you Japanese, right? And I tell you that good night is oyasumi nasai, right? Which is super long, a lot of syllables, and you might be able to remember a little bit right now. And when you try to repeat after me, most of the responses I get from parents would be like, something like that. So that is like, if you think about it, it's the same as a child who is like repeating only the last syllable, okay? Meaning you don't know the sounds. You're not familiar with the sounds inside of the language, okay? You're not familiar with the word and the meaning. So therefore, when they hear it, they will just copy you, okay? Their futile attempt of, you know, understanding or trying to communicate with you, right? So how do you go about it now that you know why? Basically, it's because they don't understand it. You've said too many sou, too many words, too many. Like if. If your child isn't. Isn't even speaking on one word, why would you Go ahead and ask him to like say two words in one go, right? It's just mind boggling. It's, you know, we take children for granted. We think that ah, you know, like all children who are two or three are already speaking in this much and having conversations and whatnot. But you know, if it's my son who doesn't talk it, maybe I should teach them like two or three words in one go and tell them to copy me. Not the best idea if you think about it. If you're already bad at a certain language and I tell you to copy me in two or three words just now, I'm not very good at Japanese, right? But the thing is, if I tell you to, like just now I told you to, if you can remember what is good night in Japanese, what I said just now, which I'm guessing you don't remember, which is oyasumi nasai, right? If I told you like that's only one or two words, imagine me teaching you three, right? And that's what a lot of parents are doing right now is that they operate way out of their child's language competence, right? Their language ability. And that's why they're seeing a lot of screaming, seeing a lot of like unhappiness, running away, ignoring, you know, and copying only one or two sounds just to make the mom or dad just like stop, you know. So when, when that's the case, what you need to do is to simplify your language. All right? And we talk a lot about that in the micro course. If you haven't, you should really join. I mean it's just a lot of these, if this, this kind of topic amuses you and it's like, oh man, this is exactly talking about me and my kid, right? Then you need to join the micro course because it's just a whole, it's just really short lessons about the most frequently asked questions. Like ah, what if like we speak two or three languages at home or like oh, my kid always pulls my hand, whatever, or I can't get my child to sit down with me, right? These are all questions I get a lot and this one included. So this is probably going to go inside the microcourse some way somehow. Okay. And if you have questions, you can post inside in the comment section. But most probably if there's a burning question that I've seen it like a few times already, it's already inside the micro course. We've made that. I've made that for a very good reason so that I don't Answer questions all day long. All right. Anyways, so when I tell you to make the language easier, okay. It means that if you're speaking in two to three words at one time with grammatically correct forms, which is fine, by the way, as long as you don't require your child to repeat after you, that's a low stress environment. But. But if you require your child to repeat all the time and you're speaking in, like, words with a lot of syllables, especially in Indonesian, in, like, Southeast Asian languages, I feel like there's a lot of syllables in one word. I feel like. I'm not particularly sure. The reason why I say that is because, you know, a lot of the people who are on Facebook watching are from Southeast Asia. Because of where I am geographically. Right. Secondly is. And is because I am living in Indonesia, so I know that, you know, there's a lot of syllables in one word. But not saying that English is any easier. English is, you know, like, there's a lot of blends in English. And, you know, constant blends is more of a layman term of saying it, but basically it's just two constants together. Right. So for instance, if I say blow Bl, that's already, like, quite difficult because you have to be. And an L BL below. Right. That. So even if a syllable is easy, like, the words are easy to pronounce in English, or it's longer syllables like Japanese, Indonesian, you know, Malaysian and not Korean, I would guess. So these kind of languages, the syllables are easy, if you get what I mean, but the sounds inside the syllable is easy. But there's. When one word, there's loads of syllables. That's the problem. So what you can do for your child is, first of all, if they haven't even spoken in one word consistently, and all they go is mama, mama, mama, da, da, da, something like that. What you need to do is to not speak in two words and only go in one word. Okay, first of all. Second of all is if you really have to require them to repeat after you, which is, I don't really think it's a good thing if you're not teaching them to speak as a structured task, you know, and we talk about that in the micro course. We talk about how you need to have a reward in order for them to copy you. Or else you're just telling them to, like, work without, like, kind of, like a salary, and they can ignore you at any time. And given that fact, then you're basically teaching your child to ignore you. Right? Because you say oh, say computer, right? If someone comes up to me or I come up to you and I say, like just now, that word again, like for good night. I can't even say it now. Oh, yasumi nasai. Right? I come up to you and I say, hey, hey. Say, oh, Yasumi nasai. I say it like a thousand times, and then you don't know why, first of all. Second of all, you have no incentive to do so. How often would you do it? If I did it to you, every day, you would start ignoring me, right? So whatever gets ignored, children will think that it can be ignored, and therefore it will be kept on ignored, right? So what I'm telling you is, try not to always require a child to repeat after you, because if it's too hard, then they won't want to do it. And secondly, they don't have an incentive to do it. It's not like after they say it, they get to do something. Because most of the time, when I see a child repeating after a mom or a dad or the grandpa, grandma, is a reaction like this, like that, okay? Like, then if your reaction is like that, you're kind of taking their reaction for their imitation for granted, okay? And especially for a child who is speech delayed and they are not very good at copying, not very good at talking already, then when you do that, it doesn't help. It doesn't help at all. Because if it were easy, they've been doing it already. You know, talking, using language is so natural to human beings that we learn it without anyone teaching us. As long as people are talking around us, right? If no one is talking around us, of course we won't learn anything. We won't learn how to speak. We might learn how to bark. I don't know. We might learn how to. I don't know what we would do, right? But anyways, so what I'm trying to say is, if you require your child to repeat after you, keep it as simple as you can, okay? You can say the word. For instance, if a child wants like water, I don't know what accent I should go for. Like water. Okay? Let's go American. So if that's the case, right? Then if you ask your child who you know only can repeat syllables like ma or like da or like wa, you are setting him up to fail, knowing that he cannot say water, right? So when you, even if you slow it down, you say water like it's not going to work. Give you an example. For instance, Indonesian, there's R. I always talk about It. It's called a trill. So when you go like that and then there's this person, there's a lot of people called Rama or Raman or whatever in Indonesia, right? So. So if given that, you know, last time I wasn't that good in Indonesian using the R, I could do it, like, by itself. I couldn't use it in a whole word, right? So I said Raman or Raman or something. And then that person's like, no, no, no, Rahman. Like, he slowed it down for me to, like, copy. But I can't do it on the spot, obviously, so he's setting me up for failure. You know, he hadn't isolated the sound and that did it sound by sound and taught me how to do it. Instead, he just slowed it down and asked me to do it again, which was fair. I mean, you know, it might have worked before, but it didn't work on me. So, you know, I was a little frustrated. And that's how children feel, by the way. Okay, so what you should do is, like, back to the example of water, right? Instead of asking him to repeat water and you can say water, right? Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, Spanish. Spanish is like one of the ones who roll the R's like crazy anyways, so you need to think about. You need to think about how you can simplify the word for him. So if it's water, can you change it like two. You can say it once so that it's like language, Correct? Right. You say water. Yes, we're at water. And then you can tell him to. If you want him to copy you, then make it easier, like wa or a T or. And then you put up two fingers and go water, right? And you can tell him to go water like that to signify there are two syllables inside. All right. I don't know how many years of. Actually, no. When I was young, I didn't know that. I didn't know how many syllables there were and words actually, when I was speaking English, because it came. So I, you know, I learned it naturally, right? So I never took into the count that that was the problem. So when people said to me, like, vegetable, as in vegetable, right? That vegetable, that's four. But when you. I tried it with an adult and I told them, dude, there's only three vegetable like that, they instantly got it. So it's about what we call, like. Like in the textbooks, it's what we call phonological awareness, right? Or whatever it's called. I don't know. Maybe I'm getting it Wrong. It's probably not phonological awareness, but they need to understand how many number of syllables there are inside, right? So someone asks, is the explanation valid for toddlers who imitate only the first syllable of word? Maybe, maybe not. Okay. The reason about that is that you need to try. And you can try out that the thing I was talking about, make it easier for them to copy and one by one, right? And a lot of parents will say, oh, yeah, if I slow down and tell them to repeat one by one, they can, for example, dinosaur. Like that. They can go die. Can go no, and they can go sore. But when you put it together and say, can you say dinosaur? And then they go sore or die or no or whatever. I don't know which one. Okay. So you can try out the finger method, which works like. I don't know. It works. Okay, Pretty much works. So you put it up and you say, dinosaur. Okay, Your turn, Dinosaur. Say it together. And then you take away the cue of you saying it together with this one as a cue because you built this Q and A prompt to represent the number of syllables and because you've done it a few times. All right? Then you. Then your child will understand as a dinosaur and maybe you can just give him the mouth shape and it will work. All right. The problem with a lot of things that you do at home is that you only do it for one or two times, and that's it. And you didn't have any cues. Either you cue 100%, which is imitating, or you tell them to say it themselves, which is what we call spontaneous. And between that gap, there is nothing in between. It's like telling them if you're into doing exercise. Right. Into exercise, right. You're telling someone to like to roll on a wheelchair for 100 meters and then tell them to run 100 meters. It's very difficult for children who are speech delayed. Okay, so Rena says, hey, Rana, what's up, man? By the way, Rena, I sent you an email, I think. Did you answer me yet? Let me check. It's important. You need to check your email right now, by the way. Anyways, so should we teach one syllable words first, then two syllables or it doesn't matter. Can do all the same. Yeah, to be honest, you really can do both all the same. As long as you make it clear about, like, if it's two syllables, you can teach, but you have to make sure that he understands how many syllables there are in the word. And you can put your fingers up for that. Some People use a dot method. Like they draw, like, two dots on a paper, right. And put it to the mouth and make them go, duh, duh. Like that. I don't know. Or bottle or something like that, right. Or bubble. Right. To put two dots. But I don't think that's very natural. Number one and number two, you need a piece of paper. And number three, the finger method. It's a visual countdown of the number of syllables. You're done. That's all the syllables you said. Right. So therefore, you need to try. I don't know if your child only imitates the first syllable or the last syllable or the middle one or whatever, or totally gives you, like a. And that's all right. So you have to see what's the lowest point they can imitate. All right? Is it. I wish I had a whiteboard here. That'd be cool. Wait, let me do it. Let me keep on talking while I search for a whiteboard on the Internet. Cool. Found one. Cool stuff. The thing is, we're going into. What's that called? Speech instead of language, per se. But some of the times. Right. Most of the times this stuff is interconnected. All right? And this really depends on. I hope you can see this. Okay. I think you can see this. Okay, cool. So get rid of the ad first. Cool. So this is what it looks like. So, for instance, if it's bubble, right? Oh, man, this is too small. Bubble, right. Excuse my mouse handwriting. It's not that good either when I use a pen. So bubble. So if you think about that, there's two syllables. Let's use a dot as a way of signifying how many syllables there are. All right? So bull. Right. When you write it out in phonetics, which I'm sure some of you here will know. So it's B and then bo. Man, that's bell. Ba. Ba. Something like that. I'm getting it totally wrong. I'm embarrassing myself. I call myself a speech therapist. I am not a linguist at all. Anyways, so ba. So in English, this is the stressed part means this is the louder sound. All right? In Singapore, people put the stress at the back, kind of. So they go bubble or something. I'm not very sure. Don't be offended if you are from Singapore. Okay? So the babble. Okay? Babble, bubble. Okay. So maybe we can make it more accurate, I guess. But if it's an American is. Which I think is like this. Okay. Doesn't matter as long as you understand. So when you write it out, it looks like this and phonetics. All right? So when we do that, you need to understand how much your child can imitate and what I mean by that, each syllable. There's two here, one and two. Right. I need to change the color. My God, there's one and two. One syllable, two syllables. This one is what we call a cv, all right? Which means consonant, vowel. All right? Because it's B and Right. So a cv, consonant, vowel. And this one is consonant, vowel. And what consonant. Right? Because it's l at the end. So therefore a lot of children who skips the l at the end. Skips it is because CVC is a little too hard for them. And it doesn't mean that they're like, you know, speech disordered or anything. A lot of us skip these sounds if we're learning a new language anyways. All right? Sometimes we even get the vowels wrong. But the problem is, is that the vowels, at least, at the very least, which is the nucleus of the, like, nucleus. I'm being fancy. The center of the syllable, right? This thing needs to be correct. All right? They kind of go ba and then change this into like, all right, ba ball. That's kind of wrong. Okay, so what I'm saying is you need to know what level your child can say, all right? Oh, man, I need to pay for this. No worries. Just no worries. So let's delete all this. Right? So what I mean here is that if your child can not say it. So you need to go see, the levels are like this. At least one, I think at least what the textbook hints towards and a particular experience tells you is that vowel is the easiest. Right. And then afterwards you go vowel plus another vowel, which we call a diph. Long. I'm not going to try to spell that because I'm going to embarrass myself. And after that, you go into a consonant. Yeah, Plus a vowel. At least that's what I think. Okay, so that's a cv, right? That's a vv. That's a V. Okay, so excuse me. And then actually we go cvv, which is like buy. That's a cv. V. That's a high. It's also a cvv. Right, so after that. After that. Sorry, after that, we go cvc. Right. So I'm not sure developmentally if it follows this pattern about, like, how much your child can copy. Right. But let's talk about something that you can use practically. Right? Oh, man, this is difficult, man. Everything online needs money nowadays. Not even, like, I should have used paint, Microsoft paint. Anyways, so for instance, just now, the water, right? How can you simplify it? So wa as a C, V. And then ta, right? Water, water, whatever. However you like to say it in whatever accent. It's a cv. Cv, Most probably. Okay, water, okay. Unless you count R as a consonant, which rarely is the case sometimes. Okay, so cv. Cv. Okay, so if your child cannot do this part, the front part, change the color, cannot do this part, then stick to this one. If you're doing imitation, all right, just go T or like wa, and then t. And then you tell him or her. Man, tell him or her stick up your fingers and go and go wa. Ter like that. If this can't even do cv, right? Some kids can't even do cv. Stick to the V because it's easier. So here is actually ah, or that's a. My bad is like this, the schwa. So you can do either, I think, right? So you can stick to this and then add the. Add the consonant, right? Which is T. So go ah like. And she goes. And you heard, Good. Now say T and goes like that. So you slowly add. You slowly add stuff, you know, slowly add stuff and make it harder and harder until they can do it. But don't. Like, you know, if your child can only go ma, right, that only do ma, then you're dealing with cv. And this M is so easy as a consonant that, you know, even like one year olds know how to do it. So if your child is like two or three and they can't. They say ma and they can't say like water or water or what, or whatever it is that you. You say, right? Then do not fixate and make them say the whole thing. Make it progressively harder for them to understand the whole thing, or else it's very hard. All right, so let's get back. I think there's a. All righty, let's. Let's answer some questions. So how do you break the muscle memory of. Actually, there's no such thing as muscle memory, to be honest. And I don't really understand what you mean by muscle memory. Yeah. So ani says bill is the syllable, I think. Yeah, it is a syllable. Yeah. So actually, the ones that I was talking about wasn't really phonics. It's actually phonetics. So the stuff that I was writing just now is what you would see in a dictionary as the. What's that called when you read how to pronounce it? Right. That's phonetic transcription. Pretty useless skill anyways. So I'm not sure, Stacey, what you mean by like break the muscle memory of ah. So I'm guessing without you saying is that the kid just says ah instead of, like, saying the word. Okay? So make sure that you make sure that he or she, your child, has other vowels instead of ah. All right? When people don't know what to say or how to imitate, they revert to the ones that they know. All right? And probably ah is the one that your child has mastered. Make sure they know the different. Make sure they know the different, like ah, e, ooh, e and stuff. Right? Okay. So she always says ah even when you try to get her to do o. O. I don't know which one you're doing. Okay? So for these things, I would say that you need to teach her step by step. And this is even like, this is besides the topic of today, because it's not even just like, the one syllable. Your child is stuck on one vowel. So build the other vowels first. The easiest ones isn't actually or okay. Ooh is fine. So you go ah. The easiest ones are the. These three ah, e, and ooh. Right? So what you can do to help her with it is to do the mouth shapes first without the sound. Because maybe, as you mean by muscle memory, what we call actually in better terms is like, it's primed. Primed to do the ah sound. Whenever. Have you ever tried, like, people might call it a muscle memory, Right. I guess it is to some extent to, like, you know, when you use a new mouse, you use something like new, or you drive a new car, you use a new computer. I don't know. You press a place where there's no buttons, right? So you're kind of primed to do that because you're conditioned to do it. So I guess the best way is to not work on sounds yet and to work on mouth shapes, okay. For them to focus on your mouth, for them to copy that mouth shape correctly and then add the sound. All right? Or else whatever you try to say, it might be because your child has the perception. Like, has a perception problem. Not saying that they cannot hear or they're hearing something wrong is that they cannot perceive the vowel correctly because they never said it correctly. All right? And it's like. Yeah, you understand, Right? Good. Good, Stacy. So work on the basic mouth shapes. Mouth shapes are useless, okay? They are useless. But it's a stepping stone. That's why people do oral motor. Okay? It's a stepping stone. All right? So start off with, like, spread lips and then puckalip. Right? And afterwards, when they. When when she can do it at the sound and it will come pretty naturally. Okay. All right. So that's all. I hope I've answered the question to the best of my ability tonight. This type of question, I get every. I don't know if I get a dollar for each time I answer it. I wouldn't be rich. But, you know, I'm just saying it's kind of a lot. Okay, so if you have any more questions, you should check out the micro course first before asking. And if you have any questions, do put it in the comment section or join our Facebook group. It's basically facebook.com SpeechDelaySupport We've got a great mini URL for that, right? So speech delaysupport. Facebook/facebook. Facebook.com SpeechDelaySupport okay, so go there, join the group, ask there. Loads of the good thing about that group, actually, which I really love, is that the parents are starting to answer other parents questions, and it's getting more and more interactive. Okay? Whether or not inside the information is like 100% correct, that's besides the point. You are on the Internet. Correctness is a matter of perspective on the Internet. All right? Even if today I say something about this, people will say, no, you're wrong. I mean, like, I've tried teaching like this. Yeah, there's million ways to skin a cat. I don't mean it to say it in front of my cats, but, you know, a million ways to skin something. Okay? An animal, not a cat. So you need to think about that, all right? And always take all the information you get from Internet with a grain of salt, even from me. I might not have the best answers, to be honest. But, you know, the best thing that I can give you is to have some actionable stuff you can try at home. If it works, then hallelujah. If it doesn't, then, you know, ask again, ask someone else, ask everyone, and then keep on trying. Okay, so that's it for tonight. If you like, last pitch, guys, go to agentsofspeech.com micro join the micro course if you haven't. And that's all for tonight. Have a great night. God bless you all. And let me know if you have any questions on what you want me to cover in the next live, which is next week. So see you then. Bye.