Curing Verbal Stim | www.agentsofspeech.com/micro

Alrighty, so we're going live. Thanks for joining. And today we're going to talk about verbal stimming a little bit because we've got a few comments from YouTube or, you know, a few comments from Facebook, DMS and emails and so on. And I just wanted to address what my stance is about verbal stimming. And you know, there's a lot of different schools of thought as far as I know. And verbal stimming is something that is highly distracting for a lot of people. Me as well. If a child just verbal stims for the whole like session, it'll be very difficult for me to do any work. Right, so what is verbal stimming? So basically stimming is a short form for like self stimulation. Actually, no, that's not the right word. A self stimulatory behavior. Right. So anything that makes a child or a person for that matter want, like it's just for entertainment purposes. They keep on saying the same thing or doing the same things over and over again just to make themselves feel grounded, sensory wise or just for educate, not education, entertainment purposes. Right, so verbal stimulation, verbal verbal stim is when a child or a person uses the same words over and over again or maybe phrases. And it might not be socially acceptable at that time. All right, so there's a lot of verbal stim examples that I will go through in this live. But at the same time, I believe verbal stim is largely misunderstood. And the reason why I say this because, you know, like, verbal stim happens to everyone. And for this matter, I really believe like verbal stim should be allowed, you know, we shouldn't try to stop them unless it is largely socially unacceptable to keep on going, you know, and when, you know, it's socially unacceptable, unacceptable to keep on verbal stimming. We have to teach them when and how and give them an outlet for their sensory needs. Okay, so in a video on YouTube we talked about echolalia. Echolalia doesn't automatically mean verbal stimming. All right. Verbal stimming is, you know, it can come in a lot of different forms. It might be words, it might be non words. But the one we're talking about here is a little bit more that is disruptive to social interactions. Right? So for instance, if I have a child coming in for therapy and they start going, you know, that kind of stuff. And I had a client or a student before, you know, like if I told him to do something, he would just like verbal stim right above my voice so that he couldn't hear Anything. And that's like avoidance behavior as well. Right? So there's a lot of different functions for verbal stim. And it just, you know, it really depends on what the verbal stimming about. Some, you know, it's just nonsense syllables, what we call, like, totally. They don't have a. They don't have a. What's that called? They don't have a content, a context for what they stim about. The child I just talked about who like stims right above my volume goes wooty, wooty, wooty, right? There's no. There's no reason. There's no exact meaning to their speech. It's just for stimming purposes. And maybe just to like, don't want to listen to us. And then, you know, that happens as well. So verbal stim happens in a few instances, as I believe. Number one is like when they want to escape from a certain situation and they don't want to listen to you. And it's a type of escapism. Okay. The second is, is more of that they are stressed out and they want to like, calm themselves down. Right? And I don't know if you guys, like watched what's that called, like Korean drama called like Move to Heaven or something. And then they have a actor acting as an autistic, like man or boy for that matter. And every time when he gets into a rut, when he gets into a stressful situation, he will start reciting something that he knows just to calm himself down, which is very true. I have students who start singing ABCDEFG when they're stressed out. I have a kid who, whenever I tell him to do something that's hard for him, he will say like that this is just because from the very beginning when he started, like, what's that called? ABA speech therapy. They always train and stuff, right? So that is something that you have to understand. There might be a function, there might be not. And the third function for verbal stim is basically just for stemming purposes, right? And that's totally fine. We all stim. And that is my stance on stimming. I believe that it's fine as long as it's not totally very disruptive to the whole situation. I'm totally fine with that. Stim all you want as long as you are not disrupting my teaching, right? Or. Or anything. You know, if it's. I'm talking to him and he studies stims, right? I'm saying, hey, how are you doing? And he goes like that, then that's not cool. That's not the correct way of responding to me. Okay, so pisa fizza says a feza. I don't know which one. If it says good, I have no idea. What does it mean? I don't know. You have to analyze the situation. How would I know? It's up to you to think about it. So I've already told you three of the functions that verbal stim might come into. And maybe that's not even verbal stim for your son. I have no idea. So is this difficult to know? I mean, the best way is to get a specialist. I know it's difficult around the world, especially people who watch this video, who, who search for speech therapy or ABA or stuff on the Internet. It means that you don't. You're not confident with having, you know, you're not confident with your local professions or professionals or whatever, right? So basically, to know what they mean, you have to observe them, like really intensely. You gotta see what's going on, so on, so forth, right? And then you need to think about, okay, so what are they trying to do? Are they trying to entertain themselves? Are they trying to get out of a situation, or are they trying to soothe themselves and make them feel better? All right, so verbal stim, just like any stem in the world, there are specific functions for it, and most of all is for entertaining or soothing purposes, right? So when, when you see that, what do you do? You give them, you give that child or that person enough space to know, to understand that it's okay to stem. That's totally okay. If you block their stimming, it means that you are taking away their rights, their human rights, right? And just because we, as, you know, like nowadays, we got to be politically correct, right? And you know, like children on the spectrum or people on the spectrum, they are, you know, they function differently from us. So if we try to put our rules on them, which is, I mean, that's fair enough. I mean, we are the majority. And you know, people on the spectrum, like autism, autistic people, they will have to learn how to, you know, talk to us, learn with us, you know, and so on. And we have to teach them when it's not appropriate to do so. And that comes much later on, okay? Much, much later on. We cannot teach a 2 or 3 year old or even a 4 or 5 year old child to know when to stim, when not to, because that's very difficult. But if we tell them, don't stim, stop it, that's not good enough as well. All right, so what do we do when this happens, right? So we need to wait for them to be able to understand what is socially acceptable, Acceptable or not, which probably is around like primary school or secondary school. But what about this verbal stimming? Now the best way to deal with it is actually to reward them and label it. When they're not verbal stimming, right? When they're being quiet, you can say good girl or good boy. Nice. You're staying quiet and you give them something. Okay? This will take a long time and it's a very like you need to be committed about it, all right? And you need to remember rewards always work better than punishment or whatever you're using. Okay? Rewards always do better. Okay. So it's a Chinese name. So I guess it's. I don't know which one you're Cantonese or. Or Mandarin. So she says hi. How about verbal stim until voice crack? Well, it depends on the. On. On the on. On the age of your child. If your child is like younger and don't understand whatever you're saying, it's very difficult to tell them to stop. You can only reward them when they. When they. You can only reward them when they. When he stops, right? That's the thing. If he voices crack, then you know, like find something that they can, they can. That's more appropriate like singing or something that they can channel their energy towards. Right? That's number one. Number two is to teach communication. We talk about this a lot in agents of speech, right? Communication is something that it doesn't matter if they like how many words they have or whatever. They need to know how to use it with you. Right? And that comes down to the first, very first step is to use rewards. Let them know that by using words, they can request for things from you. Right? And my cat just agreed with me just now. Anyways, so someone asks my child, my boy is a non verbal, but he sings or humps, right? Go watch the live from the previous week. We just talked about that. Totally. You know, just if this is something that you're having problems with, watch the video. Watch the live from last week, the previous week. Okay? Someone asks songs all the time. Is it verbal stimming? Ask them to stop then stopping and learn how to talk. Well, no, you don't stop verbal stimming. You can never stop verbal stimming. It's impossible to stop verbal stimming. All right? It needs to be a consensus between you and the child that, okay, this is not the appropriate time to do so. I will do it in a different Time and place, right. You cannot stop them. It's impossible. Right, so how do you do it is to. Yeah. Is it then, is it stopping him to learn how to talk? Well, you need to remember, like watch the video from the previous week, right? Go. Understand what it means by communication. Communication is by they using like some sound or some words to tell you something and then to get what they want. But you need to first find out what they want from you first. You cannot just stop them. It's very like whenever a child or a person like starts stimming and then you say like, stop it. That's very. How to say. That's very selfish of you because you don't want to hear it. But they want to hear it. They want to do it, right? And they don't, they don't understand why. And there's no incentive for them to stop. So why would they stop? And how do you think that you can teach them to stop without explaining the social implications? And you know that that's all right. So that's the problem. You cannot teach them to stop without teaching them the social implications which they will only understand later on when they're a little older. Right. If you understand what I'm saying. Okay. So for now, I'm not telling you to ignore the stim. Reward them whenever the social, like the, the verbal stimming isn't active. All right, but all of this doesn't make sense. If you don't teach communication, which is by telling them, oh, by using a gesture or a sound or a word, they will get whatever they want. Right? It's totally separate things. People always think that, oh, because they're stemming, they're not communicating, but they don't have a reason to communicate with you. Okay, so Nurol says hi, I have a 3 year old son, has development age of 1.6 years old. Should I send him the full therapy or can I teach him at home? Well, is the best that you can send them to full therapy, right, Narol, or sorry, I'm pronouncing your name wrong probably no rule, I'm guessing. And you know, if you can and you have the energy to teach him at home, after night, after work, at night, then do so. You know, if you send him to a daycare, he's not going to get professional help. You know what I'm saying? Right. So for now, if you can send him to full therapy, if that's something that you can afford to do. Okay? All right. So guys, remember, verbal stimming is not something that is Bad. It's something that children who use it, they need it. They need it in their lives. And if you don't let them have it, they will find other ways to do it. Or they just don't listen to you. Right. That's something you have to understand, too. Is. Is. Is it addiction? No, it's not an addiction. It's like a sensory need for some children. All right? So you have to understand that before you move forward by stopping them, it doesn't change anything. Rather, you should, like. I'm not telling you to ignore it, but, you know, like, whenever they're not talking, reward them. Number one, they're not stimming. Reward them. Tell them, oh, good job. You're staying quiet. That's good. That's why I want. Here's your reward. Right? That's number one. Right, Sorry. The camera is, like, focusing on the. On. On. On this thing, but it's not on my face. Oh, there we go. It's much better. Anyways. So you see, if you talk to adults who are autistic, they will tell you, oh, yeah, I do verbal stim. That. That's something that I do. And I would. I would appreciate it if people let me do it, right? And it's totally fine if, you know, a child or whatever does it, you know, as long as it's socially acceptable and they do at home or whatever when people. When you're not talking to people, all right? And I know for a fact, you know, like, everyone stimps in a certain way, whether it's verbal or another way, right? So if you walk on the streets in Hong Kong, where I'm from, or on the MTR or something, you know, someone's listening to, like, some songs, they start, like, singing by themselves, you know, like that. That I would consider as verbal stimming as well. You know, what am I going to do? Go up to them, tap them and say, hey, man, that's not appropriate. Stop singing to yourself. Right? It's not disturbing me. It just looks kind of weird. Right? And as long as they're not shy, do whatever they want, right? So you need to have that understanding with your child. Okay? If you're. If they're stimming, then so be it. Exactly. That's. At least that's what I think. I'm not going to go there and stop them or whatever. You have to remember and respect that this is a need, okay? So we cannot use our, like, typically typical, neurotypical brains to think about, oh, well, what do ASD children or people Think, you know, how do autistic people think? It's nearly impossible. So we respect them. We let them understand when they grow older, we tell them that, hey, man, this is not how the rules of society works. You've got to do this, that and this, right? You cannot, you cannot do. You cannot verbal stim at these times because people will find it strange, so on, so forth. And you cannot do this and that because it will hinder your communication. And if you hinder your communication, that means people will understand you better well enough. And if people don't understand you well enough, it leads to a different things, like people won't like you in the workforce, whatever. And this is a lot older when they are around, like, I don't know, at least 15 or 16, when they understand why and how to socially interact with. Okay, so hopefully you guys know more about verbal stim. And verbal stim is very important in any therapy context, right? So it's important that we don't stop them. It's important that we understand it's a need and it's important that we respect. If they want to do it, then so be it. But at the same time, we're going to reward them and give them a lot of love when they don't verbal stim. That's the way that we would do it. If we cannot explain to the child, if they're too young to know why they shouldn't verbal stim, right? And it's the same as a lot of different stems, like flapping hands, whatever. And to be a little more sensitive, right, Once a child hits puberty and they cannot control their sexual impulses, a lot of times at their age, if they don't understand what's going on, they will start doing things that are not socially appropriate in public. Okay, and how do we do that? Well, we give them a place and time to do so. Even us neurotypical people, quote, unquote, normal people, we also need that time, okay? Not being. Trying to be disgusting or vulgar or anything, but, you know, we do need that time, that personal space to do what we need to do. And if you think about it in that way, then you have to understand that, you know, it's a sensory need and they use it to soothe themselves, to calm themselves down. If we don't let them and give it to them and don't provide a replacement, behavior, that becomes very hard, okay? And behavior, a habit is hard to break, okay? There's a saying in Chinese. Don't know you guys are Chinese or not, you know, Dynasties change, right? Times change, but the behaviors and you know, their primal instincts, basic instincts, is difficult to remove. So when a child has that kind of. That kind of thing built and embedded within them, it's very difficult for you to change it. Okay? The only way we can do it is to reward them even more when they don't do it. Okay? It's totally fine to verbal stim. If it annoys you, then that's our problem because it doesn't annoy them, right? So you have to think about it in that way and try to be a little more selfless. All right, then that's what we're trying to teach in agents of speech, to be selfless and to teach how to communicate on the other side. Don't focus on what your child is doing wrong or don't focus on what your child is doing inappropriate or whatever. Focus on teaching your child to communicate with you. Okay? What can you give your child? Can you teach them to use gestures to talk to you? Can you teach them how to play a new toy? Right. Can you teach them something different? What are their strengths? Can they already say different words through verbal stimming or delayed echolalia or whatever? Can you give those words a new meaning and teach them something new? That's the mindset that you should have. You shouldn't be thinking, oh, man, my kid just thought a lot of verbal stimming. It causes me a headache. They can't function at school or whatever. That's the thought process of how you get into a rabbit hole and you can't dig yourself out of it. All right? If you always focus on problems, your problems get bigger. If you focus on solutions, your solutions get bigger. That's what I learned. All right? Don't think about the problems, think about solutions. Don't think about how to get rid of the problems. Think about giving them a new way to replace those problematic behaviors. And that's something we're going to talk about a little more. No matter if it's like verbal stim or problematic behavior or whatever you like to call it, we're going to talk about it a little bit more within agents of speech. And if you haven't, the last thing I want to say is that's joining the micro course, okay? Join it. Trust me, if you haven't. If your child is pulling your hand, doing a lot of verbal stim and not using the words that he knows to talk to you, then, you know, join the course, try it out, and then it'll be pretty easy for you to Understand what's going on. We have over like 1,500 people in the course right now. Some parents see a lot of positive impact, right? Some parents who watch it but don't do it, you know, like, obviously nothing happens. Number three is like, people purchase and don't watch it. Obviously. I want you to watch it, to try out, to iterate, to learn, okay? The last thing I want you guys to do is to, like, watch all these live videos, whatever, and don't do anything. I hate that. I don't, like, feels like I'm doing all these things for nothing, you know? And then you would. You would just text me or PM me and say, hey, Ming, my child is three. He's still not talking. Can you help me? I cannot help you. Ultimately, you know, as I would like to say, you know, I'm pretty sure this is the quote from Bruce Lee, but, you know, he says something like, ultimately, all help is self help. Because I can give you all the advice in the world, but you have to be the one who does it, okay? I cannot take over your place even if you come for therapy, right? They can start talking, whatever, and, you know, do a lot of things in the therapy room and the clinic room, but when you go home, it's the same story all over again, right? That's the premise of why agents of speech is in existence, right? Because I want to teach you. All right? So to summarize, don't focus on the problems. Verbal stim is a behavior that we need to deal with, but we cannot stop it, okay? We can only mitigate it and tell them, okay, this is a time where you can do it. This is a time where you can do it. You can do whatever you want. But in a conversation or when you're interacting with other people, you're out and about, you cannot do it because people will find you strange. And a lot of things consequences will entail, all right? And this even there are like teenagers, adults that I teach, they still struggle with this problem. Don't focus on that because that's a long fight, all right? Focus on the things you can teach, which is communication, using speech, right? You know, teaching them more sentence structures, okay? Teaching them more play skills, Teach them social interactions, all these things you can teach. Do not try to reduce or eliminate multiple more to eliminate something that they need, which is stimming. Everyone stims in different ways. Just think about it. I'm not trying to be disgusting or, you know, vulgar or inappropriate, but we all stim in different ways. Whether it's Socially acceptable or not, we all do it. And we owe it to our children to let them have the flexibility to, you know, to have that choice in their life. Okay. And later on, when we have. When they have the cognitive ability to. Or language skills to understand what you're saying about. Okay, this is not cool. This is cool. This is social acceptable. This is not socially acceptable. And then, then you can teach them something. Okay. I've had a lot of parents ask me about puberty hitting for autistic children or just in general, any child. And I don't know what to do that would be socially acceptable. When they meet a person of the opposite sex, maybe it's a boy, meaning a girl. A girl meeting a boy. Right. There's loads of things we have to go through, but for now, remember, these things we cannot control. We can only reward them and give them something that they want. And, you know, we can only, like, reward them whenever the behavior doesn't happen. That's the best way ever. Okay? All right. So this is the end of me talking about verbal stimuli. If you have any questions, I'm just gonna stay for a few minutes just to answer them. All right, so Shushu says hi. How about. Because lining up. God, Shushu. I mean, like, it's very difficult for me to say, you know, like it's, you know, this kind of question you just throw at me is very difficult. I would say that you, you need your child to go through group therapy for a therapist, a good therapist to look and teach how to line up, because that's not something you can, you can, you can, you can simulate at home because you don't have enough children. Right. So what we usually do back in the day when I was working at ABA center, is that we would simulate lining up and then teach them using the. What we call behavior, what's that called behavior systems that we have, like, for instance, using tokens, for instance, using rewards, so on, to teach them. Oh, okay. By lining up, that's the right thing to do because I'll reward you for doing so. Right. So that's something that anything behavior wise, especially for, like, social situations like lining up, you have to do it in a group setting with other children or else it's not going to be able to generalize with after, when the teachers aren't there. Okay. All right, cool. So that's pretty much it for this video here. Let me know if you have any more questions. And that's pretty much it. Thanks, guys. Have a great Monday evening. And I'll see you next week. Okay. Next week we're doing something really cool, just to let you know. We're doing. What's that called? We're doing a. We're doing a. I forgot the word. A giveaway for our full intro course. Okay. So. So we're going to select three people and we're going to put the link in Facebook, YouTube, whatever. So look out for that if you're not in the courses yet. And it's just for, you know, just giving out for the. To the community if you want to, you know, just join and look out. And we're doing a giveaway of that course and the course has loads of good reviews. You know, I'll show it later to you guys when the page is up. Okay. But, you know, look out for that. And if you're not inside of our courses yet, this is a great time to try. Okay. It's a great opportunity for you to, like, learn more about it and. Yeah, that's it. Okay, cool. See you next week, guys. Bye. Bye.