Explaining Goals to Children | www.agentsofspeech.com
Ming explains why clinicians and parents often skip telling kids why their speech goals matter, then tanking motivation. For nonverbal kids, show the task. For older kids, connect goals to what they actually want: making friends, getting ready for school, being understood.
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Hello, welcome to the Monday lives. Apologize for my hair real quick. And today I want to talk about explaining goals. So a lot of us, including us, I mean like therapists as well, we tend to not explain the goals properly to children. And what do I mean by that? So obviously if your child isn't talking yet, isn't understanding what you mean, how do you even begin to, to teach, to, to, to explain to the child why they have to do something? All right, and the reason why I'm talking about this is because one of the students that I've been teaching, I went to a different city for the, for, for the previous week and she said to me that, oh, I get it now. Now that you've explained to me before, when people don't explain and just give me a goal and hand it to me, I, I thought that I just had to do it and I get angry because I don't know why I'm supposed to do it. Right. So when she finally understood the functional use of going through some goals that are going to affect her life in general and future and help her get to her, her own personal goals, then you and like the therapeutical goals and her life goals are aligned and it's much easier to do things. All right, so let me go through each of the age groups and tell you what to do. So for instance, for a child who is not speaking yet nonverbal, how do you explain something to a child for them to understand those goals is by task explanation. Okay, so if you type task explanation or task analysis, something like that inside of Google and you type therapy or children therapy, you will see a bunch of literature about, you know, how to make sure that the child understands the goal. Right. So at that age, around that age or non verbal children, their needs are very simple, you know, very simple. It's just that they want to get something. They want to get, they want to, they want to have the iPad, they want to have treats, they want to get away from certain situations. I've talked about this a lot on, on this channel and funny about that, you know, like today I got an email from a parent who said hey, I went through the micro course and I don't see anything that is different from the things that you say on YouTube. Well, the micro course is a very elementary course. It's mean, it means to put it into a very, very nice and structured little course for you to go through. And when you like, it just reminds you of what to do and go do it first before going into some of the harder Courses that we have, right? So anyways, back to the point. If you know what they like to explain, the goal correctly is that you're supposed to tell them, hey, by doing an action, by saying a sound or saying a word is actually easier. It's actually easier for them to get the thing that they want faster, right? So it's aligned with the goals. So you have to demonstrate it over and over again. So how do you demonstrate it is to directly, directly tell them directly show them maybe sometimes it's taking their hands and you know, just telling them what to do. Like show them, like do it once and then give them what they want. All right, that's something, that's, that's as much explaining as you can. But you cannot, what you cannot do is wait too long, ask too many questions. Because once you're like, oh, what do you want? Whatever. It takes too long and the child gets angry, right? So for instance, a parent that I did a consultation with this morning, on my morning, her night, was that she was asking a lot of questions when the child was pulling the hand. So in the kid's mind it's not clear, it's not well explained why they have to talk. If you just ask questions, it's not going to help. All right, so later on, why do children need to combine words into question. Sorry, into a sentence, right? The reason why is because it's more, it's a lot more specific. So for instance, if I say eat, so what am I going to eat? Eat a grape, eat a biscuit, eat a whatever. So in order for them to get their message across and want you to be under, like children who are at two or three word level, they want to be understood. You know, they have some emotional needs now and they find out that, oh, talking is fun, I get reactions from people, right? So that becomes a part of their, of their life that they want to continue, right? So you see at this point there's a lot of playing, there's a lot of storytelling, whatever. But the most important thing about why a child should be using a full on sentence with you is because it's a lot more specific, right? So if they cannot get their point across with one word, how about using two or three, right? That's the reason why. And when they use two or three, does it make them, doesn't make their sentences more communicative with you? Meaning can you understand faster, easier and have more fun with them? Well, that's their goal, right? So that's something I have to keep in mind. So that's why? There's a lot of, not a lot. There are children out there that are stuck at two or three word sentences and that's because they don't really care about like playing with you, interacting and stuff. They can just get by with like just need based language, right? Like I want whatever, give me the whatever. And they're very stuck there. And the reason is because the why isn't strong enough for them. So you need to go back to the basics and teach them how to have fun with you and then you can talk about other stuff. Right? So later on as children develop, they start to understand a lot more and sometimes what happens is that you want them to start telling stories and saying stuff together, playing with other children. So during that time, the thing is every time you give, you set a goal, you have to talk to the kid and tell them why we're doing it because it's hard. And you will say, look, you're going to primary school, you're going to have to like tell stories. I'm going to help you with this. Do you want to deal with me? Right, you're going to say it like that or it's like, oh, why are we doing therapy? So that. Does your friends all understand you 100% and they're like, they're like, no, no, it's like no one understands me whatever. So this time this is where you come in and say, look, I know how we can get to there. And the thing about this is that we're going to train you to talk, okay? And that's how you can get your friends to understand you a little bit better. And that's something, a step that a lot of parents skip at that stage, right? That's something you have to do. Alrighty. And especially for like adolescents, like I would say clients, students, right? You got to tell them why they're doing, why they're speech therapy. And it's not something that they should be, they should be ashamed of and it's not something that they should be scared of either. Okay. And the last population type I want to talk about are those who are non verbal but they actually know a lot. Right. The language is okay, but they cannot really talk. Okay. So there are loads of these type of. Not loads. Okay, I need to stop using these words. What I mean is there are cases where. I've seen a few, right, where the student doesn't know how to say words, but they're able to understand a lot and they can type on, let's say a text message WhatsApp whatever. And they will tell mom to buy something or whatever. And when you ask them why they don't want to speak, they will type back at you and say, it's too hard. It's not worth it. I don't want to. So there. Before you even touch. Speech therapy or language or ABA per se, first thing is to get the motivation for communication up, okay? If your child doesn't want to talk to you, then what's the point of them learning to do so, right? It's like for instance, my. My wife's grandpa, grand parents, they come to a foreign country to spend time with us and then the grandpa's like, I don't want to learn Indonesian. I don't care. I'm just going to sit here and watch my TV and just call it a day, you know, there's no point in giving lessons or teaching them anything if he doesn't even care to start, right? So it's the same with children. And you cannot forget that step. And it's not, they didn't ask for this. They didn't want it. They don't care sometimes. And you have to tell them exactly what do they want to achieve in their life. And working with you or me or whoever will get you there. And the, you know, give them steps and sell them the idea. So many times I see that just children just don't know why they're doing something and they start to become robotic or they just like doze off and they lose motivation. And that's usually they just don't know what the heck. Why they're doing something, you know? And so that's something you have to bear in mind. Think about why they're supposed to do it. Did it find that thing fun? Did they want to do it with you? Are they already in a mode where they're just like automatic autopilot learning mode? If so, then you have to be careful. Okay, guys. All right, so I think that's the end of this short little live I have here. I don't see any questions for now, but that's fine. I also need a. Time's a little tight for me tonight, so thanks for tuning in, guys. I'll see you next week. Monday again.
