Getting Rid of Hand Pulling | www.agentsofspeech.com/micro
Ming, a speech therapist, explains why kids pull hands to communicate: it works when other ways feel hard. He suggests replacing hand pulls with gestures by creating tempting situations like jars or small toys, prompting physical gestures, and rewarding them quickly to build real communication skills.
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Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Monday Lives with me, Ming, speech therapist. And today we want to talk about hand grabbing or hand pulling or some professionals might call it, oh, guiding with the hands or hand guiding or whatever you call it. Okay? This, this is the, like, maybe like using the hands, Children using their hands and pulling you. That may be one of the most common. Like nine out of ten children do that. And why I want to talk about this today is because it's not an efficient way to communicate, okay? Hand pulling is very bad for communication. I mean, if your child pulls your hand right now and she leads you to the thing that they want or something, and you cannot guess what they want or what she wants, what he wants, it's very, very, very, very often that they get into like a tantrum, right? Because they're like, I'm trying my best to tell you that's the most I know already. And it's not working, right? So the next thing is that they get frustrated and they get angry, okay? So first of all, you have to understand why hand pulling happens, okay? Hand pulling happens is when the child doesn't know better, okay? Doesn't know another way to actually talk to you. All right? I had a client when I just literally moved to Indonesia. There was a client of mine who was a teenage girl, right? But she was still non verbal. So one day she went to a wedding, right? And then the mom was so scared because there's a lot of food, right? And she loves food. So she actually didn't take the food herself, okay. Which was surprising. So what she did was she pulled the hand of the waiter, telling him to signal him to get the food that she wants. So when the mom told me about this, I'm like, yeah, that means in this situation, even if she knew a few hand gestures, some signing, she uses iPad for communication, right? She won't use that because at that time, it's something that she's. It's a new environment. She's learning something. She's a little more scared. She's on her toes, she's thinking, right? So the thing is, children do fall back to hand pulling patterns all the time, even if they can talk. Okay? And this happened to me the other day as well. My client came over and she introduced a new toy which kind of freaked him out. And instead of using his words that I taught him for the past year, and, hey, this guy can talk in full sentences, man. I mean, he's been saying like, like, Mr. Ming, help me open the box, something like that without prompt Right. Without anything. So the fact that, you know, when you give something new and it freaks the child out, the hand pulling does come back out because that becomes their, like their safety zone, their comfort zone. And they feel like this is the only thing that they can do at this time. And it's kind of like a behavior that is so well ingrained into them that they will fall back on it. Okay. I don't know if you have any of these habits. I certainly have about like biting my fingernails. Right. I'm not trying to, like, say that it's the same thing, but I'm saying that whenever people are under, like, pressure, stress, they will find the easiest way out into something. Right. To think about how to solve a problem, they use the thing that has. Has been the most, the best solution for them at that moment. And if you remember that I was talking about this mature student of mine who is like, I think 30 now, who's on the spectrum, right? She. When she isn't in the mood or frustrated or whatever, she doesn't feel good. She will pull your. Pull your hand. She still does it. So if you think about it, if your child right now is non verbal, right? Non verbal, meaning they cannot use words to communicate with you, hand pulling becomes a very, like a. Like a habit, a thing that they fall back on even if later on they learn language. So how do we stop it? Well, first of all, you have to understand why which I took so long to talk about it. I'm sorry. The reason why is because they're starting a communication with you, right? They're telling you that they want something from you of which they cannot get themselves. Or they think that they need your permission, right? So the moment that they grab that is the intention for them to communicate already. So you need to take that intention and then. And then change it into a different form, a different shape, a different way for them to actually talk to you. Okay. So many of the parents asked me, okay, so Ming, like, what do you mean, man, it's so difficult. They always grab my head every time. So that's why what you should do is to create a situation where they have to talk to you or like, they have to. You can anticipate that they will grab your hand. Okay? And I've talked about this a lot of times. Maybe this is your fourth time or fifth time or tenth time listening to this. Certainly for me, this is like the hundredth time saying this thing. Okay? So basically, if they want something, give them a little bit. Okay? So if they want a bread you know, they know that you know for a fact. If you put bread in front of you, they will pull your hand and, like, get the bread and give it to them. Then good. You've created a situation where they will do that behavior, okay? You must be able to do it actively, okay? And the reason why is because, hey, you never know when your child will suddenly grab your hand, okay? You just don't know. Maybe they just suddenly feel hungry, they feel itchy, they feel like they want to eat or like they want to watch tv, so they put your hand towards the remote. You never know when, but if you can control it, you can create situations where you can make them do it, then good. You have a good opportunity to actually teach, all right? And one thing that really helped with my clients is that. And my clients, I'm telling you about parents, okay? Because now with COVID it's still COVID 19. And I do most of our teaching teaching parents like yourself, okay? And if you haven't known, you can go to agents of Speech.com micro. It's a short micro course for parents like yourself. And basically it. I've shrunk down all the things that I've been teaching parents over the past year, whether it's Covid or not, right? And I put it in a course where, you know, so that I don't need to repeat myself, like, a hundred times all the time. This stuff works, okay? If you just stick to it, it works. All right? So let's get back to hand pulling. So if what helped the parents the most is to create that situation through using a jar, right? Or they could create a situation through, you know, it's what we call bribing, right? Some. Some professionals will think, oh, man, bribing is the wrong term. Whatever. Okay? Let's call it tempting, right? If you can tempt your child with something that they want, let's say, like, it's a phone, it's like food, it's like, drinks, a toy, whatever. And then at the moment where they grab for it, you. You change it into a different gesture, a sound or whatever, then it makes perfect sense, okay? But you will go into, like. You will. I'm telling you that you will, because I've done this many times, right? And I've taught many parents to do this, right? The problem is, is that it becomes. The situation becomes like, there's two outcomes. Number one is that they wait for you to prompt them, okay? Or they still snatch. They still, like, pull your hand or snatch until you kind of, like, tell them not to. Or hold their hand or prompt them. Okay, there's two situations, right? Number one situation, they are waiting for you to, like, help them out, meaning that you've been asking too many questions. Your way of prompting might be verbal. Okay. When you verbally prompt someone, it's very difficult to get it away. You know? You know I'm saying it's very hard to fade it away. And what I mean by fade with every help, every prompt, when you're teaching a child or actually teaching anyone, to be honest, you need to be able to fade out your assistance, or else they will never be able to do it themselves. Right? So if you're. That means the prompt is not something that the child can understand. That can be like, slowly decrease, right? So how do you do it? So usually what I do is I use my gestures, right? And you use your hands to do it. But you have to be very consistent on it. Okay? You cannot just like, I'll try it once or twice. Oh, man, he still needs my help. How come he doesn't understand? Well, the thing is, if you're watching this and you're thinking about, okay, how to get rid of hand pulling, and you want to give up after, like, prompting your child, like, 10 times, then, hey, you're in the wrong camp, right? This kind of stuff takes consistent practice, all right? And trust me when I say, because I'm usually the one doing it, but nowadays I can't. Right? Because again, because of COVID So what you need to understand is that this thing to change a habit, especially in communication, it takes many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many trials, right? Imagine getting rid of a habit that your grandparents have. Impossible. Nearly impossible, right? For instance, my wife's grandpa, he has. He physically has to drink soup after a meal. If he doesn't, he would feel bad. He wouldn't get enough. Like, literally, you can see him physically unhappy, right? And it's the same with your child. If he's hand pulling, it's a. It's a habit. It's a thing that has been stuck to him for a long time, right? So let's get back to the two outcome scenarios. Number one is that they're waiting for you to prompt. Well, your prompt then should become like a gesture or a physical prompt to get them. Like, get, get. Help them finish the action. All right? So that's why when we teach to get rid of hand pulling, we always teach a different gesture. Because a gesture or like an action, you can actually help them finish. Whereas if you teach them talking, you're always needing the prompt because they're only imitating you. Get what I mean? So let's say that parents skip the step of using gestures, right? They always say, what do you want? Or what do you say? Or say whatever. Say whatever first. Come on, I know you know it. Like, if you do this all the time, then the child will always think, oh, I have to wait for mom or dad to say, like, what do you say? Or like, what do you want? And then they will start to initiate some sort of communication, right? So it becomes that routine. And you don't want to do that. What you want to do is to change the hand grabbing into a different gesture. Maybe it's a tapping, maybe it's an open palm, like that. I've said like a million gazillion times, right? Or it might be some other type of gesture or just maybe eye contact even. I've done that before for physically incapable children as well. Just eye contact. Just doing that helped a lot on the hand grabbing, okay? And you would say, hey, physically incapable holiday, grab the hand while they bite you. That's what they do. They use their head and like, whatever, and they use their elbows and they use everything. So it really depends on your kid what you want to teach. But I usually start off with something physical because you can only prompt something physical and fade it out with, you know, with whatever. You cannot fade out a verbal cue. Okay? What are you going to do? You're going to say, like, what do you say? And then you fade it out a little bit. You make the sentence shorter. Like, what do you. That's still. You're still saying it, okay? When you say becomes a routine, okay? So start off with a gesture or action, all right? Number two. They still grab, okay? They still grab. If you don't intervene, that means you don't have enough quality repetitions, okay? They think that hand grabbing is still the easiest way out, right? It's the path of least resistance. Everyone does that. Like, to be honest, if that is the fastest way to get it, that means they've had too many successful trials, too many successful times where they just, like, grabbed your hand and got it and got away with it. So they just keep on trying, okay? So what it is that they have to understand is that every time you teach, the quality needs to be high, right? They need to get the reward. They need to. They need to be manipulated by you successfully, right? And the trials need to be fast. You cannot keep on saying, like, oh, you didn't do it, or like, what do you say, oh, good doing it. What do you do? These. You have to be all gone, right? You need to do it fast because they want it now, right? So if they want it, they start grabbing, you change it, and then you give it to them and that's it. And you say, good job like that. And you keep on doing it like a gazillion times until they understand, okay? So if I follow my parent, my mom or dad, it's actually faster than I pull her hand because she gets it, right? That's what we're trying to teach to get rid of hand pulling is that talking is actually easier than hand pulling, okay? And students or children on the spectrum or like, delayed in some shape or form, sometimes they're not in the best mood to talk, and it's super hard for them to start talking sometimes. Okay? I recently only knew this, and it's a new revelation for me that, you know, children, sometimes when they try, they can't do it. It's just easier for them to pull your hand or do whatever, especially when their mood is, like, really bad. It tends to happen a lot, right? So this is what you need to do, okay, to get rid of hand pulling. Obviously, there's a lot more that you need to do daily to change that habit. To talk about some. Right. Number one is to build, like, micro commitments, right? And what I mean by micro commitments is that you tell your child to do small things, like really, really easy things, but you help them finish it, okay? When you do that, they think like, oh, whenever you say something, I have to do something, right? Whenever mom says that I have to tidy up, if I don't do it, she's going to come at me and make me do it. These small incremental micro commitments are going to go towards a larger. Whenever you tell them to do something hard, it's going to be so much easier because they're used to listening to you. That's why children are much easier to listen to their teachers or therapists, right? When children come to me, they're much, you know, God forbid, okay? Sometimes it's not the case, but most of the time they listen to me, okay? Much better than with the parents. And there's a reason, because I've built up that trust. I've built up that if they. If they can, if they don't know how to do it, I'll help and I'm fun, hopefully. And also, you know, they get a lot from me, like, in terms of reward, okay? So you need to have all those three things okay. And we talk about this. Obviously, I can't go through all of this on a live without a PowerPoint slide or whatever and like videos I can share publicly. So if you want to learn more about this kind of techniques, you can go to agentsofspeech.com micro. It's, you know, I'm giving this out for a very low cost. And the reason because of this is because, hey, I don't want to use a lot of my time to repeat all things over and over again. That's number one. Number two, I know there are other therapists who are charging a lot more to give you this kind of information, but hey, to be honest, this is all free on YouTube. Some way, shape or form, right? It's on the Internet. Some way, shape or form. I've said all these things before, but just that I put them in a very understandable way this time. And I've got examples from other mothers who are willing to share the video inside the course. So if you want, you can go check it out. Okay. It really is a case study. Sometimes, you know, I said it's better than I tell you by lecture. It's like, hey, listen, listen up. This is what you do. Step one. Step. No, I'm just going to say, look, this is what happened, right? This is what I told the mom to do. This is how I demonstrated. This is her demonstrating it. This is the child doing it. All right? So go to agents of Speech.com micro. Go grab that course. It's worth the money, man. That's what I'm going to say. Okay? And if you don't like it, then, you know, just tell me and I'll refund your money. Because the worst thing that can happen is that, you know, you spend your hard earned cash, especially these trying times, right? And then you get nothing out of it. So just let me know if you didn't. I'll just refund you, man. I mean, there's not much. Yeah, it's just, it's just like that. So hopefully you got enough information about how to get rid of this hand pulling. Some people say that this is like a must. How to say. Some people say that hand pulling isn't too much of a bad thing. Well, to be honest, I think it's not good or bad. Right? It really, it comes down to like, how do you want your child to talk to you? I mean, if every time it becomes a negative emotional situation, you know, like every time, every time they pull your hand, they bring you there, you don't know what's happening? And they get frustrated and they don't like it. How often do you think they're going to communicate with you in the future if it keeps on going on like that? Right. Just think about it. Cool. Someone's saying, like, they can't get other videos. Low to 50%. I do not. Are you talking about inside the course, my friend? Wait a minute, let me check. I do not know where you're talking about. Are you talking about other places or is it inside the course? Right, Well, I will PMU. And then we can talk about it. Oh, it's actually. It's actually Eileen, Aileen, or. I'm sorry if I pronounce your name wrong. Okay, so to conclude this video. Okay, let me just summarize it a little quick, quickly. All right. Hand pulling isn't too much of a bad or a good thing. It's just that it depends on what you want for a child to, like, talk to you. Obviously, it's like, it's still quite effective. Right. Oh, Aileen, you talk about the. After the mic, the full course. I'll talk to you about that in a bit. Okay. Yeah. So hand pulling is not bad. It's not good either, but it's not something that you want them to keep on doing it. But when you teach a child to get, like, when you want them to get rid of it, you have to create a situation because you don't know when your child's going to pull you. So get something. Get something to entice them, tempt them to talk to you. And then when they do want to grab your hand, change it into a different way. And don't just do it one time. All right? If you can do it as many times as you can in one sitting. All right. What I mean is, if you have a piece of bread that they love, like a pizza or something, chop it up into small pieces, Right? If they love drinks, put in a small cup, make them sip it, and they want to talk again and they want to drink more. Is this like robotic? Yes. Is this kind of like training an animal? Sometimes to some extent, yes. Right, but does that mean we're going to keep on doing it? No, obviously not. Because what we're trying to do is to teach them something and then systematically get rid of the, the, the stuff we're using. Get rid of the rewards. Right. We don't want to, like, teach your children with biscuits all the time. Right. Number two, we're getting rid of the help that we're doing, like, the prompts Helping them finish certain actions, we're getting rid of those so slowly it becomes more and more natural. Okay, number three. When we praise them and we pair them with the rewards it gives them, they understand. Oh, whenever my mom praises me, it means that I'm doing something right. Okay? And that's because your words have been paired with good stuff, with good stuff, with the. With the rewards. That means that's giving you the power to teach. Okay? So with that said, thank you so much for tuning in today. I hope I have answered some questions. And before I leave, I'm going to read a question from a parent. Bella says, hello, sir. My son will pull me to whatever he wants. When it comes to pointing, he would take my finger to point, but not his. Okay, do what I said, Bella. Okay, do what I said. In this video, I'm sure he's gonna start using different gestures. Okay? And by the way, if he point, he doesn't point. Just make him point like this, Right? Let me show you. Like this, right? So if they're, like, holding your hand, right? Just take their hand like that and then point like. All right. It takes some practice, but the more you prompt, the better you will become at prompting. Okay, that's it. Thank you so much. I will talk to you in the next video, which is next week. Tune in for Monday. If any questions that any topics you want me to talk about specifically, you can put it in the comments. Okay? See you guys. Have a great evening or morning, wherever you are, and have a great day.
