Does Gadgets Affect Speech Delay? | www.agentsofspeech.com/micro

Hey everyone, this is Ming here, speech therapist from agentsofspeech.com today in this live, I want to talk about gadgets because I've been getting quite a few comments and emails about oh Ming. You know, like the doctor told me to stop gadgets to get rid of this addiction per se because that's causing speech delay. Well, that's wrong because gadgets don't cause speech delay. Okay? What it does is that it creates a one way communication between the screen and the child, which doesn't help them become a better communicator. So if you tell me that oh Ming, is it because the device is making my child's speech delayed? No, that's not the case. They were born like that. Most of the time, speech delay is something that there's no reason because behind it, all, right, there's no reason. And we're still trying to find. We as in like researchers and stuff. Okay? We're still trying to find why there is speech delay. We still don't know. Usually there is really isn't a reason. And it really boggles my mind when, you know, doctors or whatever professionals say that, you know, gadgets really do cause speech delay. Oh, hi, Amy. How are you? See, I, the background's different because I'm in a hotel quarantining. I'm in Hong Kong right now, so that's that. Anyways, so if you are thinking about, you know, gadgets, is it bad for a child? Yeah, of course it's bad. I mean, but at this day and age, right, if you think about it, all kids are using a gadget. Some kids, like most kids now, are using gadgets to actually go online to learn. Okay? So, you know, you can use it to learn, you can use it as an entertainment thing. And most of us, we use gadgets every day. You know, like you're watching on a gadget right now, okay, Those people who are watching right now or watching on a replay, dude, you're watching on a gadget too. Are you addicted? Right? Does it hurt your relationship with others? That's something you have to think about too. All right? Who do you think they're learning this from? Okay, why does it, why does mom and dad or the sisters or the brothers get to use it and he doesn't get to use it? All right? It's unfair. Is it because that he's speech delay? That's why he doesn't get to use a gadget. It's really unfair. So you wouldn't know how they feel because they can't Express themselves. But if you think about it, it's actually very. If you can't control it, then you stop the whole thing, then it's pretty bad. Okay? Because if you ban something, kids are gonna think of a way to get it. Okay, and let me tell you a story here, okay? When I was a kid, my dad thought I was addicted to Internet gaming, right? And which I kind of was, but I was just kind of bored, right? So he kind of banned it by taking the Internet away. But I always found like ways around it. Okay, and you don't want your child to do that, you know, you really don't want your child to, you know, find ways to do it. And how do children with speech delay tell you that they want something? Okay, by screaming, by shouting, by beating you up, you know, by biting you, by, you know, just crying non stop until they get what they want? Well, you know, the gadget is such a strong thing that they will never like give it up. So they will try their best. Okay, Another story. Have you. Have you guys like, you think about like maybe six or eight years ago in Egypt, the whole Internet in the country was down because of the government. They kind of shut it down. What happened? Everyone went to the streets of protest for days, right? If you take away something that they hold dearly, they will go against you. Okay. You become a dictator at home. Okay, so this is a little away from like speech therapy or whatever. It's just general, you know, like managing behavior. Right. So how do you manage this behavior and use it in a way that will help your child? Well, first of all, you have to use it as a reward. And I'll talk about this more in the micro course. If you're already inside, that's great. We're getting more and more parents in. That's excellent. Thank you so much for joining. So you can go to agents of Speech.com micro to check that out. We have a whole video about how to use gadgets for the good. And I'll tell you a little bit here as well. Okay? So you use it as a reward. Obviously that's something that you have to learn to use. Okay. You have to be able to control that device in your hand and control the amount of time that your child gets to use it. All right? And this might be super hard for you because you're actually letting your child hold the device. That's never a good thing. Never let them hold it. You hold it and they watch you pause. They wait. It's just a rule. They have to understand if they have to have if they have to get it. It's under regulation, right? It's not that it's never. It's gone. It's that they have to access it through you. Okay? So you are the gatekeeper. That's why they have to listen to you. Right? And when they are like waiting and then you can slip in some tasks in terms of language, speech, behavior, you know, academics, whatever, okay? That's your weapon. And nowadays, you know, the iPhone, Android, whatever, like iPads, whatever, it has made therapy super easy, especially for those, those things that we have to really drill, you know, like back in the day in 2000 and like maybe 13, 14, when I just started out, it's actually quite difficult to find a toy that a child likes, you know, and sometimes would use the phone, but it's not as fun as what it is right now. Okay. YouTube is super fast and there's lot. If you search something, you keep on getting recommended the stuff that child likes. And one of my kids actually likes ASMR stuff. Somehow he got into it and now he cannot, like, he cannot stop. So you use that as a way of rewarding a motivation device instead of something that they consume and consume and consume, all right? You regulate it. You tell them, okay, stop, do this first and then you can have it again. Okay? If you do that, that's going to be awesome. All right? But I have to tell you something here, okay? There was a parent of mine, not parent of mine, but you know, like a student who's also a parent who's also a client of mine, she thought that she had to like reward at the end of the week, you know, so she would like, oh, let's say that the kid's name is like Kim. And she's like, hey, Kim, listen, you know what? When you finish the whole week, we do like seven days of therapy time. And if you do a good job, I'm going to let you play with the iPhone for like an hour. And you can also go swimming. Well, that might well, well work for a teenager that's never going to work for a speech delayed child because they don't understand really the concept, number one. Number two, the tasks are too hard, okay? And number three, it's not immediate enough, okay? And this is like telling someone to work for a company for a whole year before you get the salary. That's never going to happen, man. I mean, you know, you got to, you know, you got to eat, you got to have fun, you got to go out. That's all money, okay? And in the child's mind, dude, that's my time, that's my effort. You're not giving me like fast enough. Right? So you have to remember that it's super hard for them to actually do the task you tell them to. If it were easy, they would be doing them some themselves without you asking. Right? So use that phone, that gadget as a way to reward. Okay? It doesn't. Okay, so I'll tell you more inside the micro course if you haven't just clicked the link below or something. Okay, but let's talk about like does it affect speech delay? Yeah, obviously it does because what happens is that they learn stuff from the, from, from the video which they cannot generalize. It's a big word generalization towards the world. Let's say that they love songs like, such as, you know, the. What's that? Pink Koi. What's that? Is it called Pink Koi? Correct me if I'm wrong. Right? And you know, there's some random songs about, you know, vegetables, fruits, ABC numbers, whatever. And what are they going to use that on? When are they going to do it? And no wonder parents are saying, oh, my child loves alphabets. Whenever he sees the Alphabet puzzle, he must like go up to it and go, A, B, C, D, E, F. Well, guess what, that they Learned that from YouTube, right? I've never seen that before. When I was just started as a therapist, I never seen that as a case. But now more and more I see it because it's basically like scripting, okay. And if you leave the child alone with the, with the device, with YouTube or whatever games, it becomes a super scripting device because there's a routine to it. They keep on watching. Oh yeah, Pink Fong. Thanks. Thanks Emmy. Yeah, they keep on watching it over and over and over and over again until one, one day, you know, they remembered the whole thing. Okay? So if you have a child on the spectrum of which I learned from one of my students who's like 30 years old, but she's like, she's got ASD. She told me that whenever, like a child on the spectrum, they get scared or like they feel like at like unease or you know, they feel uneasy. What they do is that they go to their comfort place and they start to like script. Okay. And it does happen with the 30 year old too. She starts like ABCDEFG like that, like to me, whenever she feels a little uncomfortable, when the situation is still too hard, okay? Because that stuff, she knows it's easy and she's listened to A thousand times, right? So that becomes their comfort place. And you're gonna stop that because, hey, if you let that happen, they will keep on finding more and more things, and they will be in their own world for a long time. You don't want that, because if they're. If they do that, the delay will become even more delayed. Because how you get out of speech delay or language delay, whatever you call it, is by communicating, is by practicing the language. Okay? There's three parts to language. I think I've talked about it before. There's, like, content, there's form, and there's use, right? So the content and the form, you can learn through a lot of ways, right? You can read, you can just, like, listen to it. You know, like some of the sentence structures, the vocabs, like what I was talking about, like the vegetables, fruits, songs, or whatever, those are content, right? You learn vocabs. But when are you going to use it? Probably never. Probably never. Okay. And I remember one time, one of my friends who was an exchange student from Canada, but he was actually like, Hong Kong Chinese. Like, I am, like, as a background. But the thing is, all he did was to learn Cantonese from, like, TV shows and movies, and all he could say was informal stuff, sometimes even, like, foul language. So if you put him in a very formal setting, he cannot perform. He cannot use it correctly, you know? So if you think about that, it depends on, like, how you learn it, how you use it, and then how you generalize across different situations. Okay? That's why, for instance, if I'm teaching through, like, flashcards, I want to try to make sure that he can do it with toys. I can try to make sure that he can do it through, like, board games and try to make sure that he can do with other people. Right? That's what I'm trying to do. That's what you should try to do. Okay. And you might ask me, okay, so how do I use, like, the gadgets? As a language device, right? As a way of learning language. Well, first of all, you don't let them watch alone. You try to watch with them. And when you're watching with them, you. You control the device. You pause it, everything. You hold it. And then whenever something happens, you can, like, describe it a little more in your words. Okay? You watch it together. Maybe you see, like, vegetables, and you say, oh, yeah, that's a tomato. It's red, it's a fruit. Some might argue it's a not. It's not a fruit. It's a vegetable, whatever. But you get what I mean? So, you know, you stop it and you talk about it a little more, okay? You might point things out, you might ask the child some questions, if your child can. If not, just don't ask. I was talking about a lot about that before. So you have to remember, you have to remember this, okay? Don't let your child watch themselves, okay? Because, you know, a lot of stuff can happen, right? And you know, the saying is the same as, you know, the, this, the type of movies that go on the TV at night, you know, that's pg. Parent guidance, right? Parental guidance. You know, you got to have someone next to them to guide them so that they don't, you know, just watch whatever they like and think whatever they like and absorb whatever they like. You have to control it, okay? So at this point you're going to say, okay, dude, this is too hard. I don't know how to control the device because they've had that speech delayed. No, no, no. They had that gadget for a very long time, right? How do I take it away now? Or how do I control it now? Okay, these are questions that come up in your mind. Well, these are things that you have to be careful because you need to have micro, micro commitments every day, okay? If you snatch away what they love the most in the beginning, it's very difficult for you to have a good relationship with someone, to be honest, right? If it's like me and you were like friends, right? And the first day I already like, you know, use your handphone and drop it and stuff. Will you like me? Probably not, right? So given that situation, what you should do with your child is that you need to build some commitment, right? You need to build up that you are a figure of authority, okay? You need to let them know that who's the boss, okay? Which is difficult because you maybe at this point, I'm saying maybe, right? Because there are a lot of moms and dads who are very good at controlling their kids, maybe in a good or bad way. I don't know. I'm not here to judge, but I'm saying that, you know, most moms and dads, if you give, if you say that gadget is a problem, that means that, you know, there's too much free time of them having it and therefore it's very difficult for you to control that one. So how do we build micro commitments? I'm going to make a whole separate video about it. But you know, in the micro course there is a video about that. You can go to agents of speechlight.com Microsoft and you can learn more about what other parents has been saying about all these tips that I've been giving. Okay. So far it's been okay. You know, the feedback. Okay, as in there's no negative reviews. So I'm pretty happy about that anyways. So just to give you a gist of it, micro commitments means that, you know, if you say something, it means that you want it to be done. Okay. For instance, if I say that, okay, pick that up, I'm not going to repeat myself. I'm going to say, hey, you didn't do it. And I'll repeat one more time, say, hey, try again, pick that up. And I'll physically go up, take the kid's hand and pick the thing up for him. Like, take his hand and pick it up. Well, when you do that, a lot of times he starts to understand that when you say something, it means action. There's no wishy washy or whatever that that means they're gonna, like, they know it's like the law now, right? And in their little minds they will think, okay, so if that's the case, then I will allow you to hold things. Because he understands everything in the house is yours, right? That's why if you come to my clinic, kids rarely snatch stuff from my hands. They're. They're free to take things from the table, but they never take things from my hand. Right? Because that stuff is mine. So you have to build that relationship yourself. Okay? And slowly you can do it. Okay? I'm sure you can. So if you're starting off with a gadget, what I would say, I would say first is don't allow him to hold it. At the very least. At the very least, you're holding it and watching it with him. Okay? If he tries to, like, snatch it, just, just close the whole thing. Just lock the phone and. Until he, like, compromises and stops. And then you can unlock the phone again, right? And I know what's gonna happen, right? Your kid's gonna grab the phone really violently. He's gonna attack you. He's gonna, you know, he's gonna, if you pause it and then he's gonna be like, whatever. He runs away and then he comes back and he snatches it and maybe throws your phone if it's locked and he can't unlock it. These are all, like, scenarios that I've been through as well. Don't worry. I've had, back in the day, a whole iPad was smashed by like a student. So we had to buy These, like, really thick, rubbery things around the iPad. Well, I'm not telling you to buy that thing. Obviously, it's a good thing that you have the protection. But what you can do now is that to set a time. Okay? Someone asked. I think it was Elaine. Elaine. I might be getting her name wrong. Sorry about that. She was saying, how long can you give, like, unlimited access, like, free access of gadgets to your child? Well, the thing is, you have to set a schedule, right? You need to let them know, oh, after you eat, after. Like, before you sleep, before sleep is bad, you know, after you shower, whatever. Then you can watch for, I don't know how long, okay? And you have to teach a countdown method to take away the gadget, okay? You have to go 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. If you do it long enough, your child's gonna be running at you and giving you the phone. And I'm saying this from experience, man. I mean, there's. You know, I think most of my kids, they either, like, when I count down the other, like, hide, try to sneak a few more seconds to watch the thing or run away from me, or, like, they run and give me the phone, okay? So you have to start counting down for all things, not only the phone, okay? If they have something that they like a toy, you still have to count down to take it away. Give them some leeway, okay? Give them some, like, heads up, okay? So once you can count down, you can hold the phone, you can pause it. They wait everything like that. Then you can give some free time. You can schedule it in, okay? You schedule in right after the meal, all right? They need to know that right after they finish, they can watch. That means they can eat faster, they can eat more, okay? And what I tell parents to do, okay, what I actually do myself, is that you should reward the time according to the performance, and slowly they will understand it. It's something that language cannot explain with their age. They have to feel it. So if you know that they ate fast and ate a lot, and then you say that, hey, good job eating a lot and very fast. Well, fast sometimes is not a good thing, right? But adequate, right? So if you see that, then you will allow them to watch longer, okay? And slowly, you will. They will understand the connection. Because to be honest, hey, your son or daughter can actually unlock iPhone and find a YouTube icon, even if it's hidden. They're smart enough. I'm pretty sure they're smart enough to do that. So they're smart enough to understand if they do something better they get longer screen time. Okay. To be honest, even my cats understand that. Even dogs understand that. That's why they're trainable. Yeah. So make sure that, you know, you do that in your, in your own spare time. Okay? Understand, there's the differentiate. There's like a differentiated reward. Okay. They do something better to get something for longer, all right? It makes you more generous as a, as a person to hang out with. It also makes, it's also contingent, what we call contingent, meaning when something happens, like when X happens, y will follow. Okay? Especially for speech delayed children or children on the spectrum, this is very important to them because they're living in a world of uncertainty. There's a lot of stuff that they don't understand. And to children who are constantly scared of new things, you have to be very contingent about being a person or else they will set rules for you. Meaning you can't touch the phone, you can't disturb them, you cannot pause whatever the video they're watching. So you have to be the person giving the instructions, the commands, the contingencies, or else they're going to give it to you. They're going to set a rule for you. They're going to say, mom, stay there. Mom is only for this, okay? I want mommy to be mommy. That's what one of my clients said. One of my clients, another client also said, who's a 13 year old girl would say like, mommy, go upstairs. I don't want to play like, like that. Like, mommy, go watch tv. That's how she says, leave me alone. Right? Because they're not used to mom being like a therapist role. Okay? So although they might seem to say that, okay, at the very end, they will appreciate you. All right? I didn't know this, but as I said after interviewing, like one of my students who's 30 years old with ASD, she said that. I'm quoting her. I'm not saying myself. Right. I would never know. She said that, you know, despite all the hard times where she would cry, hit people, bite for the reward, like this is her when she was five or, or six, she was non verbal, right. She's still, she's still grateful that her mom would pick her up from like wherever, put her back on the chair and start therapy again. Okay? She said that. Thank you. Like, she thanked her mom for all the repetitions that she made her go through to understand stuff. And now she finally can, like speak in full sentences and, you know, understand a lot of stuff. Obviously there's some stuff she needs to catch up. On. But, but now I know that, you know, all this, all the work that we're doing doesn't go, like, is it in vain? You know, and we as therapists really need you as a mom, as a dad, to like, continue the work at home. Because, you know, you can't, you can't bring me back home, you know, and even if you were working with me, there's some day that, you know, I might leave or other therapists who are great, or other teachers who are great, they're going to leave, they're going to like, get married, start a new life. So the person who will always be there for the child, as much as I want to be there, you know, as much as other therapists want to continue to work, they leave. Like, one of my supervisors, I was learning so much from her, but she had to go to Canada and start a new family there. So I was picking up her work already. But it was not the same, you know, it was really not the same. We had to build, you know, relationship again. And then by the time I was at another clinic, the reason why I got into the clinic was because the therapist became pregnant, right? That's why I went there and like, started to work there to take up her work, her clients. But it was not the same either. You know, half the clients continued with me, but half went back to the lady who was pregnant and came back to work and now she's pregnant again, so she's gonna stop all therapy again. So think about that. You as a, you know, I'm not trying to say I'm like, I don't want to work. You know, I'm very flattered that, you know, nowadays after, you know, the Facebook page and the group and our YouTube are growing more people asking where my clinic is and, you know, like, what's my schedule and so on. But the thing is, I cannot do it, okay? I cannot serve everyone. You know, I already have a bunch of students that I really like working with. And plus, you know, sometimes it's very difficult because I have to travel here and there. Like right now, I'm not even at where I'm based. I'm back in my hometown. Sometimes it's difficult, okay? So that's why I created agentsofspeech.com and that's why I made the micro course because it's really bite sized. It will tell you all about the stuff I always, always talk about, especially for the gadget stuff. Okay? And I'm going to leave this live soon. I want to tell you something. Is that to, you know, hammer down that gadgets are actually okay? It's how we use it. That's not okay. All right, look, we've been, you know, when I was a kid, we had tv. That was an evil, right? When my dad was a kid, I guess, like, Chinese chess was an evil, right? When, I don't know, when my sister was a kid, maybe it was a Game Boy or something. But these are all things that make us, like, obsessed, makes us addicted, right? If gadgets really made speech delay a thing, then everyone who uses a gadget will become speech delayed, all right? You. You wouldn't see all the people, all the children at the restaurants. Well, maybe not anymore because of COVID When they're watching so much stuff, when they talk, they still talk very, very well, right? So the speech delay doesn't come from gadgets. And people say that, oh, nowadays, like, there's much more autism kids or like, speech delay kids just because of the technology, right? Just because of how the water is or whatever. Whatever reason. There's no reason. We don't know yet, okay? We really don't know yet. And to those who tell me, oh, you're in a good, great industry. This industry is growing. It's sad. I don't want it to grow. Right? I don't really don't want it to grow, man. I mean, it's hard enough already. So gadgets don't cause it, okay? Use gadgets. You know, technology and AI is the way to go, you know, I'm telling you that someday we're going to learn. We're going to lean on it for therapy, and it's going to be effective somehow, and it's gonna save us a lot of time and effort, and it's gonna be much more fun than us trying to do therapy, okay? But at the same time, one on one, facetime, like, physical teaching is still very, very important. That's why we control the technology. We know how to use it. We will use it as a reward. We will use it as a motivation. We will regulate it. And also we will watch it with them and give the correct language input they need, okay? Don't let your child look at the gadgets too much by themselves, okay? If you really need. If you're a single parent or you're really, really busy. Parent. Excuse me. Then do use the gadgets. You use the TV as a way to escape and do some work and get some stuff done, but not too long, okay? Maybe sell an alarm, okay? Teach your child to play more toys. Increase their Play skills so that you can put them in. Like one of my clients, you know, she, it was a she as a girl, she used to just watch YouTube, right? But after now you can put some toys on the floor and she can just be on her own for the whole day, right? So it's not only her. Okay, I'm talking from experience. Most kids, if you teach them how to play toys, they will be able to sit down and play toys for a very long time, maybe for a whole day. Even so, the cure for gadgets is, number one, don't let them watch alone and then give them the appropriate ways of listening, using it, that you are the person in charge, so on, so forth. Number two is that you have to teach play skills so that they can play other stuff and have meaningful, imaginative play. All right, how much imagination do you need from YouTube? There's none. All right, Even, even an Animal can enjoy YouTube videos, right? Even like someone who has, doesn't understand any language can, can enjoy a video. But not everyone can enjoy a doctor's kit because they don't know what it is. Basically not everyone can enjoy, you know, toy foods because, you know, you need imagination to do it, right? Not everyone can enjoy Lego either. I'm not talking about stacking up like making it into like real things. Okay? So that's the end of my life here. If you have any questions, put them in the comments right now. I'm like, hang out for like a minute or two and just going to keep talking and stuff. But you know, put your comments and questions in the, in the box, all right? Ask me about anything, especially about gadgets. By the way, if you need help at home right now because you know, during this quarantine, everyone's at home, right? And everyone from like 3 year old to a grandma are using gadgets, right? Even my wife's grandma has been using her gadget like crazy. She watches stuff and sends me stuff on WeChat, which I never look at. So it really is a very, very difficult time. But it's also a good time to start training your child to listen to you instead. Okay? Because as I told you, there's one time that, you know, when, you know, like when the therapist or teacher isn't around, you're going to be responsible for everything. Okay? So Yvonne, let me put it on the screen. All right, so Yvonne says, can we say it become one way communication when the child is watching YouTube or TV for a long period? Yeah, exactly. So it will become one way communication because the one who is talking is the tv. And the TV doesn't listen to the child. Right. So he's actually just bombarding the language. Like he's just throwing language at your child. Right. At a rate that no one can control. Okay? So it is a one way communication. There is no type of. There's literally nothing that the child can interact with the, with the TV or the gadget, per se. All right, that's good. Yeah. So, you know, if it's a long time, it's not a good thing. So I remember like how long, right? How long? Parent asks, how long can you allow them to watch? Well, really is up to you. Okay, it really is up to you. How much can you tolerate? I mean, if you see that a kid can. This is another thing I want to talk about. Right. A lot of parents say, oh, my child can't focus, whatever. They cannot even concentrate. They can look in my eyes and I'm like, okay, but can they concentrate on the gadgets? Can they watch for a prolonged period? I'm like, yeah, they can sit for like three hours watching the same thing over and over again. Yeah, so they can focus, they can concentrate, but not on you, just on the gadget. So I would say that if they sit for like an hour, that's already too much. All right, you have to remember, two year olds have an attention span of around 10 minutes, right. Three year olds have attention span for around 30, 30 minutes tops. And then you have to take a break, right? So if you think about that, you shouldn't let them watch for longer than like 10 to 15 minutes. That's my logic. There's no scientific research or anything, but I feel like 10 to 15 minutes of free access is more than enough for a kid, okay? Because after 10 or 15 minutes, they think that it's their right to have the item always in their hand, which is a bad thing. All right? And think about it. Even you and me, right, we use it so much that even if we go to the toilet, like for me, I'm talking about my experience, if I go to the toilet, I'm gonna bring my phone, okay? Whether it's like a pee or number two, I'm still gonna bring my phone. It just becomes a habit and it's not good. I'm trying to change it too. So think about this and think about your child. They don't even have their brains. Let's talk about this for a bit before we leave. Children, human beings, animals, whatever, like all creatures, we have a certain brain, brain structure. And the last thing to develop is the front part. This part. This part is all about inhibiting. Thinking about consequences, thinking about why stuff happens. All right, so if the last part to develop in the brain is like something to inhibit you. Right. Think about, like your ability to think long term, then the younger a child is, the shorter term it will think right. They will always think short term. I want it now. I want it now. I want it now. They cannot inhibit themselves. That's why snatching always happens. When they're a kid, they can never wait. You tell them to wait, they cry. Okay? So you have to remember that you have to train them to inhibit themselves. And how do you do that? Rewarding. Whenever they wait, do not let them have them for a prolonged period or else it's going to be hard to inhibit. Once they start, there's a momentum. You can't stop them. All right, so I guess that wraps up our video today. If you have any questions, even if you're watching this through recording or something, you can always put it in the comment section and I'll read it and I'll answer it, okay? Please feel free to ask me anything. And if you want me to cover any specific topic during these lives. On Mondays, 9pm WIB, which is, what's that, 10am Eastern Standard Time. If you're in the U.S. or other places, please tell me. Okay, that's it, guys. And stay safe. I'll see you next week. Bye.