Ming (Agents of Speech) explains that many speech-delayed children may appear to "understand" because they use contextual cues (smell, gestures, routines) rather than true sentence comprehension. He recommends testing comprehension with decontextualized, contrastive-element commands (e.g., "put the orange on the plate") and teaching comprehension via rehearsal, gestures, and gradual fading of cues.
This is Ming from agentsofspeech.com and today I want to talk about why your speech delayed child might not truly understand you. All right? So for many times when I go online for a consultation or people come to me back in the day in my clinic, parents will say, oh yeah, he just can't speak. But otherwise he understands everything. If I tell him to do, go there, take that, or whatever, he can do it. But at the same time, that's something that I always think, is that true or not? Like from parents report, is that true or not? And you know, like parents, they tend to overshoot and overestimate their child. And that's not your problem. That's for everyone. I overestimate that. The students who are really close to me as well sometimes, you know, I really think they can do it because I'm so close to them and I have a good relationship. Right? But then the thing is, we need to look at the facts. Okay? So the first thing is you need to understand. Children are people who don't have a lot of language. They use the context to guess what you mean. Okay? So for instance, just like a foreigner in a foreign country, when a local speaks in their local language, the foreigner doesn't understand. They will use a lot of contexts, their hand gestures, their eyes, right? The general what's happening around to guess what the person wants from them. Okay? Same with children. And they use it more often than you think. So for instance, if you give a scrambled piece of paper that's dirty, give it to the child and say, put it in the bin. What else can they do other than that, right? Can you think about it? Like, if someone who speaks a foreign language gives you a piece of rubbish, what else can you do? They could speak in Japanese, Korean, whatever, it doesn't matter. You're going to know. I'm going to have to throw it with the gesture, right? Just go through it, right? So you would know what it means because the context is helping you. So a lot of times when you see kids, they know when the food is coming out and oh, go, go sit down for dinner. Well, obviously, because the smell of the food, you know, people setting up the table, so on, it's easy to guess, right? It's easy to guess when's the shower time? It's at night, there's water sounds, right? And the mom's coming out with a towel, obviously. Yeah, it's time to go out, obviously. People are getting ready, People are getting, putting on their shoes. What else can you do in front of A shoe cabinet. Right. So you need to know if your child is using context to guess what you mean, because it's more efficient that for them to think instead of listening to the whole thing, they just need a guess. Right? So that's why they're not trained to listen. Okay, so how do you do is to check with a decontextualized command, right? So in the speech therapy industry, we have something called a contrastive element command. Right. Very long, right. Some people don't like it. Some people like it. And what it is is actually just sentence comprehension, basically. And in some practices I see, you know, like mands can come in two ways. There's a stepwise command first do this and then do this. And then there's the contrastive command, which in a sentence there are two keywords or pieces of information that are very important. You don't have to understand the sentence as a whole, but if you get those two keywords, you're able to do the action. So let me give you an example that I've been talking about with parents over consultations. So the first thing is, is your child able. Like for instance, the sentence would be put the orange on the plate. So put the orange on the plate. All the child has to listen is orange and plate. And they will know what to do, Right? So are they able to do that? Are they able to take out the keywords? Okay, so you can check like that. But what I'm trying to say is if another way to check this is you can ask for a child to do the same thing but change the words on a daily basis. Right? So for instance, if you give them a piece of rubbish and you say, put it on the sofa, what are they going to do? Most probably they're going to throw it in the bin, right? If they look at you weird, then you know, oh, this, this kid knows. This kid can understand what I'm saying. Right? Or if it's dinner time, you say, let's go out for a walk, let's see what happens. Yeah. So you have to use these decontextualized commands. The more weird they are, the easier for you to see that your child cannot do it. Right. So you can also do this in a very structured setting. As I was saying just now, like put the something in the something. You can put something that's totally not correct and you must have a contrast. Right? So back to the topic about contrast of element commands, right? What does that mean? It means that when the child has to listen to two keywords, there must Be a contrast for each element. So if you say orange, there must be orange in an apple and a banana or whatever. At least there must be two, right? If you talk about a plate, there must be a place, more than one place. So you have a plate, a basket, a box, or whatever. And to the child, even you have two by two, right? It's gonna be like 25% that your child can guess it. Correct. And therefore, that's something you can check immediately with a decontextualized command, which is you can do your daily commands and change the words there. And also you can do these, like, contrastive commands. Okay? So I'm not gonna get into super detail about how to do this properly because I feel like you need to be in a working relationship with your child first. So you can check out other videos. We'll talk about this in the next video, probably. Okay? And the last thing about how to teach. How to teach these is once you know, oh, your child doesn't understand that at all. Doesn't understand, like, commands. And each of the words inside what you do is to teach with rehearsal. If your child can speak, right, then you can use your rehearsal. Say after me, right? Put this on the sofa. Put this on the sofa. That's right. Put this on the sofa with a gesture. Go do it. Right. The next time, you reduce your gestures and you also reduce the emphasis on the keyword and see if the child can do it or not. Right? And if we're doing contrastive commands, right, the best thing to do is to do a rehearsal. Don't allow the child to touch the things on the table or on the floor or wherever yet. And tell them to say it once. I have to say it once. Let go and let them do it. And once you're. And by the way, when you're saying it, you should add gestures as well, right? Put the apple on the whatever. What do you say? Apple on the. That's right. Now go do it. And nine times out of ten, if your child is already verbal, it's just a matter of time. If you teach through rehearsaling and also with emphasis on the keywords and gestures, that they're going to start learning to comprehend sentences better. Okay, so what if your child is nonverbal? Well, that's not the main thing that you should be working on, right? If your child is nonverbal, you should think about how to get your child to speak at least a first word, a single words, and then we can think about this. You can check again later on and deal with this sentence comprehension later on. Okay, so that's it for today. If you haven't, please go to agents of Speech.com checklist to grab a free list of tools and toys for home therapy. All right, that's all for today. I'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.
