Friday Live: Delayed Children Hand Pulling Instead of Speaking | www.agentsofspeech.com
Ming explains why speech-delayed children who pull caregivers' hands to request things need to stop that habit early. Hand-pulling bypasses language entirely, so he teaches parents to replace it with tapping or an open palm, then build actual words from there. Without intervention, kids face social problems later.
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Oh, man. All right. Okay. Good morning, everyone. Sorry for the delay, and today's gonna be a short live. Just to talk about something I was talking about to a parent yesterday over zoom. So what was the topic that we were talking over zoom. So the. The situation was that it was a 10 year old and she was still holding the child, the mom's hand whenever. Pulling the mom's hand whenever she wanted something. And the matter of fact is that right now, if the mom tries to do anything with the. With the girl, she will punch the mom for some reason. And the mom was telling me how, oh, yeah, this is like, oh, mom is not a teacher. It's only for fun. It's only for whatever. If that this is the case for you right now, then I can tell you this is not correct. You know, it's. It's never. Even if your child isn't accustomed to doing therapy with you, it doesn't mean that you can let her or him punch you. And what this means at the end of the day is that you cannot teach your child anything, right? You can only have fun with them or her. Okay? So the hand pulling has been a hallmark for speech delayed is one of the questions that I asked at the first sitting in the clinic. I say, hey, does your child pull your hand when he wants something? The answer is usually yes, right? And for this child that I was speaking about yesterday, she said the mom said that if she wanted something, she would pull the hand. And then the mom would ask, what do you want? And after, what do you want? After asking, what do you want? The child would say a word that she knows, okay? She might say like handphone or something, but she doesn't really understand what a hand phone, what handphone really means. So she didn't want the handphone. Instead, she wanted something else. And after the mom gave her the handphone, the child got angry because that wasn't what she meant. Okay? So you see, there's a routine going on, all right? Your child is very rigid. If, especially those who are delayed or maybe even on the spectrum, the. It doesn't matter to me. But if there's this kind of pattern going on at home, you have to stop it. Because it's just that if you don't do anything about it, it will continue to go on like that until you do something about it. It has become very rigid. The hand pulling has become a way of initiating communication, which is not right. Hand pulling is never correct. Okay? And back when I just came to Indonesia, I was working in a school Right. So that school, they had a student there who also did that. Right. And she was kind of non verbal. Kind of non verbal. Right. And when she was pulling the hand, I changed it into tapping. And you know why I like tapping more is because when you tap, you need to wait for that person to give you attention. Whereas pulling your hand is like, hey, listen to me, I'm going to pull you over. I don't care what you're doing. And if they don't care what you're doing, if you're in the middle of something and they're pulling you, then they will be very unhappy if you don't follow their rules. Okay. All right. So you might ask, okay, Ming, so I get it. My child might be like 2 years old, up to like 10 plus, and they're still pulling my hand. What should I do? Well, first of all, when they pull, don't let them instead change into something else. Might be a tap, might be an open palm. Right. And the reason behind it is very, very important. The reason why we do it is because we need to change the way to initiate a communication. Right. And another story is, you know, there was a parent who used to come to me after the first session, she kind of left. And that's because she thought that me teaching an open hand, open palm, or tapping was too simple. Like, too simple, too easy for her child, which was speaking. But the thing is, the child would hold and pull everyone's hand whenever he wanted something. All right? So therefore we're not teaching the speech, the difficulty of the task. We're teaching nature, the function of the task. Right? The function of language. The function of language is getting someone to listen, getting someone to asking for help, requesting for an item. So if you do that, if you do that, then what happens next is that you can have that. You can have that area to teach language instead. Right? Now what happens is pull, and then the mom says, what do you want? So that's a cue. That's a prompt for him to say something. And then when you say something, you don't know whether he's referencing to that item or not because it's not right in front of him. So what you should do is to tap and then prompt him to say what he wants and then try to find out what he wants. Like maybe open the cupboard and let him choose. Okay. Or bring him to the toy stash and let him point. These are all very, very important. All right. Hand pulling sucks. Don't let it become a norm in the household. All right? And let's diverge a little bit and talk about the mother or the parents or the father's role inside of this. Yesterday, the parent was like, hey, Ming, do you mind if we do it in a team? And I've got a therapist who comes over every day, and she takes care of most of the academic and the learning work for my child. And I'm like, yeah, totally cool. Absolutely amazing that you have someone that you can trust and have them help you. But at the same time, I want the parent to help out sometimes. And the reason is because the matter of generalization, if she can only do something with someone, like some of my clients can only do things with me, I have to lower the difficulty of tasks. I have to make sure that they're well rewarded and then do the same thing with the mother or the father. It's very, very important that the parent has some sort of say, some sort of, like, they need to do something together in order for them to generalize, okay? They only think. If they only think that, okay, the. I. I only need to talk with Ming or, like, another therapist, then it won't work, right? Well, what if they, you know, go outside and order McDonald's or something? Or, like, they need to go to, like, the hardware store and get some hardware store to get some light bulbs or something. So you need to understand that you helping out will help generalize a lot, especially if you're, like, the closest person that he or she has, you know, in a loving relationship in the family, then having your child actually talk to you is very, very important, okay? So don't shy away from that responsibility because you're helping her, you're helping him, okay? If they don't talk to you, you got a problem. You really have a big problem. And that's why all the parents who come to me have to sit in. Or else, you know, other than if it's a really, like, huge speech case, really difficult case, I won't ask the parents to go outside. I always want the parents to sit in, right? And that also holds me accountable, and I let people watch me work all the time, and that's cool. Okay? So what I hope is that parents also feel comfortable with people watching you work, watching you teach your child, because that's the. The best way to actually improve yourself for your child, right? So with that said, I want. Before we end this video. Sorry, it's very short. Today, before we end this video, I want to tell you guys that. I want to tell you that you need to analyze the function of what the child is doing. Okay? You cannot allow some things that become like a vicious cycle. Right? The hand pulling needs to go. All right? The hand pulling needs to go. It means that they don't know how to talk, they don't know how to initiate a communication. Have you seen someone pull some other person's hand in public? You would think that they're crazy. Or maybe like a really old person who has lost some cognitive functions would pull your hand and try to get you to do something because they don't know what is the social acceptable way. And that's why we should teach your child to do it. If your child would go out and do it. I remember that little girl I was teaching at the Indonesian school. Excuse me. She went to a wedding and then she went to a waiter and she held her hand towards the chocolate cake and got a chocolate cake because it was a buffet style. Right? And you know Indonesia, they love standing buffet style weddings. Right? And she held the guy's hand, the waiter's hand, just to get that chocolate cake. Right. Was it, Is it appropriate? No. Right. Did it work? Yes. Therefore, he's gonna. She's gonna keep on going on. She's a little girl. It makes sense for the waiter to like, okay, I understand what you want, I'll give it to you. But if she were any older, let's say she was like 16, it's just going to be very weird and it's not going to end quite well, if you know what I'm talking about. Okay, so therefore we need to start earlier. Okay? So with that said, thank you so much for hanging out with me. I'm in a hurry today and so I need to end this live a little earlier. And hopefully I'll see you guys on Monday morning for a live video. And please do let me know any comments in the questions. I flipped around. Do let me know any questions in the comments. That's what I meant to say. And also send me an email@minggentsofspeech.com to let me know any questions that you have. All right? Be a little more specific so that I can answer your questions over on live. And I love to do that. And you can, when you hop on, you can keep on asking me follow up questions about your child. Okay? So thank you so much and I will see you on Monday. Bye.
