Guide to Dealing with Speech Delay | www.agentsofspeech.com

Hello, we're live. And today we want to talk about a general guide to if your child is having speech delay. Right now. I know this is rather general, but recently I've been talking to a long time client of mine and she's been saying that, you know, she's got this WhatsApp group within Indonesia and she's like someone who a lot of mothers look up to and she's been telling me that she gets a new parent asking her for help every two or three days, you know, and that is, you know, like that, that, that's kind of like how we, we, we get new students at the clinic as well. We get new inquiries back in Hong Kong, like nearly every week. We get like two people coming up to us, putting up the hand and say, hey man, my son or daughter has speech delay. I need help. Right. And that's exactly what we want to talk about here. It's not for those who have been already, like, they already know what to do and so on. And I just wanted to like, reach out to those parents right here if YouTube and Facebook allows me to. Right. So before we start, yes, I'm going to get a haircut. I'm going to do so tomorrow. It's getting really long. That's why I'm like doing this to my hair. But how about talking about like what to do from the very beginning? So the first thing you should ever do, if you so suspect that your child has or has not, there is always a fear. You know, like with every health checkup, you're like, oh no, should I be doing this? Do I even want to know? All these thoughts get into your head and you start second guessing. It's like, oh, yeah, if I were a third person, I would totally say, yeah, you should get, totally get that checked up, you know, like. But for a parent, it's like, oh, my kid, what if they say they have a, they have autism? What if they say they have like a delay? What if they say they have a disability, whatever. And that really is a mind battle. Is a mind battle for a lot of parents out there. And you know, like, it's always like that. You go into like a body checkup hoping that there's nothing wrong. And if there is, then what are you going to do emotionally? Right? So I'm talking to the parents who are new who have just realized that their child has speech delay. And what now? So the first thing you should ever do is to get assessment. And what assessment you should be doing is one general, a general one with A pediatrician. And a risk to that, and that is that the ped pediatrician will say, oh, I suspect autism or whatever. And it gets into, like. Because they only can see you for like a few minutes, right? Like, or maybe at most, like 20 minutes. And they would give you, like, a guideline as to, oh, you're supposed to be doing this, you're doing that, whatever, whatever. And it gets pretty intense, those emotions. And I've seen it firsthand because, frankly speaking, I've. I've worked in the private sector for a very long time, and I've also been, like, during my master's program, I've also been stationed in government services where, you know, it's a little more relaxed. But people who come to me are people who can. Who want something to happen for their child and would be. Would be happy to shell, like, give out a little more money in order to. Yep, sorry about that. So, yeah, like what? Like, I'm the person who people pay money to get. See results, right? So I see a lot of those emotions saying, like, oh, I can't believe they said this about my kid. And then they decided to say, hey, man, you're all alone. And what should I do now? So get a general assessment by a developmental pediatrician, or whatever you call it in your country. And then after that, what you should be doing is to see a speech therapist or a clinical psychologist for like, okay, so clinical psychologist for autism diagnosis and speech and language and language therapist or pathologist, depending if you're in North America or not. So for a speech and language assessment. So after you've done that, usually what happens is that they say, okay, your child needs therapy, and here's what we can offer you. And usually it's not a lot because nowadays one in. I forgot, what's the statistic? I'm not very up to date on that. You know, like, I think it's getting more and more. When I was in the Masters, it was like one in seven children have some sort of speech and language impediment. And the. What's that called? The definition of speech and language impediment is very, very, very wide right now. Someone who has a slight stutter may need to see a speech therapist as well. Right. So, you know, like, it doesn't mean that, oh, everyone's getting crappier. Like, everyone's speech and language ability is getting worse and worse by the year. I don't mean it like that. In fact, it's probably getting better. It's just that our standards are getting Higher. And especially in America, what they're doing with like, cdc, like the child developmental whatever. I, I don't even know what it stands for. But what they've been doing is that they've, look, they've been lowering the requirements or like, so to speak, their, their age norms for, like, Americans, right? And there's a good and a bad thing to it. I'll get to it later. But for newer parents, usually they get paralyzed when the people tell them, oh, your child needs therapy. And they go into like a cycle that I've seen many, many times. It's like, oh, my child is getting better. He can do this, he can do that, he can do that. I don't think he has autism. Like, first of all, I wouldn't even say, like, I don't think this kid has autism. I would get it checked up. You know, better to be like, Better to be, like, wrong than sorry, you know what I'm saying? Like, you are not a professional at the end of the day, you know, like, and I've also had this problem as well, you know, like, I, you know, like, sometimes I don't think I need to see a counselor or a therapist because, like, what, I'm going to listen to them. I already know a lot of the stuff. I've read books, I've read textbooks. I've been in courses and so on. Why should I listen to this person? And that's what, like, a lot of parents are saying about, oh, I know my child better than this person. Right? I, I've seen that many times. I've worked in the most competitive street in Hong Kong for. And we're talking about Hong Kong, right? Such a small population, so competitive place. I worked on the most competitive street of Hong Kong in terms of speech therapy. You know, like, everyone across of us, our clinic beside us, they had therapists who were like 20 years in experience. Plus our clinic was the most. What's I called lack of experience. Like, we, my seniors are like 10 years. I had like two. And what I would say is that, like, is this okay? There's nothing that, you know, if, if, if you don't know what you, if you don't know. Like, for instance, if a parent comes to us and they don't know what they're doing, and they would tell us, hey, man, I know what. I know my pet child better than you. That's false. Because I've seen more children as a job. I've seen, like, before I used to do like eight kids a day for assessments, right? Can you rack up that kind of, like, data. Like, for me, I'm still a. I would say I'm not a senior therapist per se, but I'm telling you, if you've been able to see a certain type of children, a certain type of person many, many times per day, there must be some sort of pattern or some sort of insights that you can. You can garner, right? No matter if your. Your. Your intellectual ability. Okay? And most of all, like, parents who really listen to me are. Are the parents who are actually professionals themselves because they know this fact, because they know that professional advice. Professional, meaning that I know something that you don't know that's professional already. Like, I know something that you need a lot of time to. To. To gather and understand that's professional already. Right? It doesn't mean that you. You have like a. It doesn't mean that you have a certain. What's I call it. It doesn't mean that you have a certain expertise or, like, you have a cert. Right. A certificate or whatever. It doesn't mean that. It means that I've seen children so many times, I kind of know where your child is at, okay? And if you cannot get past that. That feeling. And I've had this with my. One of my wife's cousins. One of them really listens to me about their child, and the other one was like, speech therapists are useless. They're stupid. And I don't see any. Any like. Like, therapists in general. I. I can just, like, teach my kid my own, and I'll do a better job, right? Whilst that might be true, and I don't discount it, but at the same time, you know, if someone gives you advice and it's someone who does this for a living, you better be listen. Listening to them whether or not. Like, it's an easy pill to swallow, okay? Because there's some truth to it. All right? So someone's asking, like, someone's asking something really, out of the equipment for audio and video, man, it's just a USB microphone and a webcam. That's all. Okay. Okay. I'm not like Casey Neistat here, right? Just enough equipment to talk to you guys anyways. So you got to remember that that's something you have to keep in mind, all right? Is that if you're ever stuck and you're thinking about whether you should be doing it or not, the answer is yes. Get therapy. What's the. What's the worst that that can happen is that you waste your money and your child doesn't improve, Will they, like, get worse? No. Right. So I guess that's all I wanted to say because a lot of parents, a lot of parents get stuck during this time, right? Really? They really get stuck. They're like, I don't know what to do. I've seen it so many times. And, and that, and that longtime client of mine who has a WhatsApp group for the parents in Indonesia, she also was like that. In fact, you know, like one of her friend's friend actually reached out to me and then she's like, oh, I'm the, I'm the kid's aunt or something. I want to reach out and see what I can do for her. And then the mom hasn't really accepted the fact that, you know, the, the child has a speech late or not. Whether it's true or not, she hasn't really accepted it. She's trying to say this and that, and I'm just trying to see what I can do and look around. Can I call you? And I'm like, hell, no. I don't, I don't offer even like, for even like, it's like family members. I will not offer a call. You know, that's not something I would do. And it's like a lot of people would want to say, like, I want to contact you, I want to talk to you about my kid. Like, pick a brain or whatever word they use. First of all, this is my job, right? I mean, like, it's okay if you pay me. I don't mind, right? It's fair ground. It's only fair to all the people who have ever paid me. I don't want to go there because it's like, it's like as if I'm not trying to help, right? But anyways, what I'm trying to say is that if the, if the parent or that's you or your relative or whoever that's watching this, if you're not ready, if the mom or the dad is not ready for speech therapy or whatever, therapy, don't do it, okay? At the end of the day, you're going to have so many doubts in your head and the therapist has to extend and try to like, convince you that, say, to say your child is delayed, he or she needs help, then a lot of stuff you would take with a huge grain of salt. And it's not going to end well because whatever we do, we need parent collaboration. And one parent of one of my clients, a parent, a mom, said it very, very well. She said, oh, the only reason I Thought I wanted to work with you was because you said that I had to sit inside of the, of the room. And when I first got my diagnosis with Dr. He said, oh, if you want your child, your son to talk, this is going to be a really long fight and you have to fight for it for years and years and years and maybe he's going to start talking. And he was non verbal until 5, so now he's like 13 and he's like, I always forget his age. But anyways, like he's talking in sentences. It might not be the smoothest or the most correct sounds or the best experience, but at the same time he's done it. And a lot of people ask that, ask his mom how to do it. And yet there are the fence about all this stuff. So if you want to do it, do it. If you, if you're on the fence, don't do it at all. You know, and this is what I told the aunt who, who texted me back. I said, hm, so the mother's not on board. Well, a lot of therapy that we do here requires parent involvement. So if she cannot involve, then I think that she, she shouldn't come. And this is something that no therapist would ever say to like parents. And I am the only one. Like, maybe the mod probably thought I was pretty up myself and being a little bit rude, right? Maybe it is. Maybe it is to her to whatever she wanted to call me, she wanted to discuss over the phone. Dude. First of all, like, that's not cool because, you know, like any professional, we charge with time spent, especially on the phone, right? If you DM me, I cannot go through all of them, but I try my best and it's not like I can give you like a short answer with like just through text. That's just impossible. There are parents who keep on doing that and sending me like videos and send me like a whole assessment report. First of all, don't do that because if you share like an assessment report over the Internet, especially through a DM or whatever, that's not safe, okay? We have protocols for that. And it's just unethical to do so if, even if you're the mother, it's actually rather illegal to do so. You know, it's not nice. Second of all is that it's true. Like, if therapists would just take a step back and tell parents, hey, man, if you're not 100%, then don't join. And a lot of people say, hey, stop being so entitled, Ming. Like, not everyone is like, you that they can say no to, like, money or whatever. Well, I'm not that wealthy either. You know, I'm not that. I'm not doing this for all the money either. Right. And I know a lot of people depend on their jobs in terms of being a therapist or whatever, but we also have to like, uphold like, like a, a high professional standard is that if you're not the right fit, then you're not the right fit. Right. There are therapy out therapies out there that are more, what's that called? Done for you, like ABA and so on. But at the same time, if you want like a done for you service, you're not going to be able to have the conviction to pay the amount of money or spend the amount of time or like go through with the home exercises if you're not totally on board. So it doesn't help anyone because first of all, you're going to go like, as a parent, you're going to go away and say, ah, this therapy sucks. Because I've heard many of that, like, when obviously there are people who are like, filled with gratitude and say, oh, yeah, you do, like, whatever. You do a good job. I know it's hard. Whatever. I don't need that kind of talk, really. I know a lot of therapists need it because, like, parents really give us a bad time, really sometimes. And I don't say it to be like, complaining or whatever. Like even my cat thinks so. Right. So the thing is, the other, the flip side of it is that if you're not on board, you tend to, like, advertise the wrong things to other parents as well. So just don't do it if you're not ready for it. Right. So Ashlyn said something. I've only speaks for like, two weeks. Okay, well, that's great, Ashlyn. I'm very happy for you. Yep. So gradually seeing process progress with my 5 years old. That's excellent. That's very good. That means you're. You're actually into it and trying your best to like, teach your child. You know, it doesn't need to be perfect. You know that that's the curse of doing therapy. Everyone thinks that, oh, I'm not perfect enough. I'm not doing whatever. The fact that you're doing something is already, like, it already means a lot. Okay, so, Katia, I'm not sure how to say your name correctly. I'm sorry. Or Kashia. Kasha. Kashia. Whatever. So I'm so sorry if I'm butchering your name. My son Refuses to say or repeat the word after me. He's. He knows how to say no. Amongst few words. He boldly says it. And you run out of options of how you can motivate him to say because his mumbles and he's now 7. Look, it's not about, like. Is always about, like, pushing him or her to talk. And that is like a rather like a. Like a KPI, Like, Key Performance Metric Indicator. Okay? Key Performance indicator that people use to judge whether therapy or teaching is working or not at home or whatever, or at the clinic. But at the same time, if you think about it, that's not what we're teaching. We're teaching to communicate whatever. What therapy we're doing, we're teaching him to become more accustomed to our society. And that's like. Might be a lot of words to you. Like, it might be complicated. But what is therapy is that you can function well in the society. It's a soft science that requires that teaches a person, the individual, whether it's like, mentally disordered, speech and language disordered, whatever, socially disordered, whatever. It's teaching you how to. How to function in the society correctly so that you can be. And you can. You can have all the benefits of, you know, like. So that you can be an. A human and have the benefits of, you know, just interacting with a bunch of human beings. You know, I'm saying, like, if. Even if I were really good at something that I do, if I don't know how to talk to someone, no one will hire me, no one will talk to me, no one will do whatever, Right? So that's what I mean. All right, so you shouldn't be teaching him, like, you shouldn't be thinking about teaching speech or talking or motivating to say words. He's already saying no, so he knows how to use words. It's obvious that the words are too hard for him. So take a step back. I know he's 7 already, but take a step back and think about, can I teach him some gestures so that he can get his message across instantly instead of mumbling and bump or babbling. I guess that's what you mean. If a child babbles and doesn't know how to say words, then most probably the words are too hard for him, and he doesn't know how to use it to communicate. So take a step back, think about what. What gestures, whatever that you can use or teach him to use with you. All right. Yeah. Ashlyn, it does take time, okay? And I'm trying to, like, this Is like from, you know, if you've been on my email list for a bit, like I've been talking about stuff that I'm writing and thinking and how to help parents a little more. We've got like courses out there, we've got YouTube videos. At the same time, it's not, I don't think it's the best experience per se. We have a membership where like parents send us videos and that's really, really cool for parents who really want to learn it. It's closed right now, so please don't ask about it yet because it takes a lot of time. Right. We have around like 90 something members now. Really, really nice. But at the same time, is it the best experience that I can think of for parents? I don't think so. So from now on, Agents of Speech is something that would be like, that's the, that's the North Star. I'm trying like the best resource for parents who want to teach their children at home for like speech delayed children at home. Right. You look at it, it's super intuitive, super easy. I haven't gone there yet. Still a lot, long way to go. Um, at the same time I'm thinking about it like I'm trying, I'm trying to get to it and it's been a rather difficult creative process, you know, And I was talking on email, like if you saw it on one of our lives as well. I was talking about how as a therapist, it's easy to do our job because you just come to me and I try to solve a problem if. And yeah, I go through a lot of difficult things in my mind. And, and recently, because I've been coaching this parent for a very long time over the Internet and they've been doing well at home while showing me videos. But when it came to me, I finally said, okay, come to me. I'm a little bit okay now about like seeing them in person. The problem is that when I saw her, she actually performed, performed worse with me than with the mom. Right. That's something you have to think about. And I think, wow, actually I can do better by teaching the mom at home rather than I me doing it myself because I have less time with the kid and that kid hasn't established a working relationship with me. You know what I'm saying? So that when me that got me thinking, huh? Maybe this is the way to help kids from now on, but I'm not entirely sure. Right. So Jolene says therapy, no matter what time, requires a level of commitment to be successful. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So you can't help people who don't. Aren't looking for help. Right. People who are looking for help. There are different, like, orders of. Of commitment. And I really think that to be successful, we really need to be very committed, so to speak. Ashlyn says I unschool my son, and your teachings make it easier. I don't really understand what unschool means anyways. Maybe I'm just gonna search that word. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know what that means. Anyways, thank you so much for. For being a. Being a student. For. For a child walking Philippines. Great. Oh, that's. Thank you. Thank you. I hope to. That's what I aspire to be. Okay, so I need a goal right now. And just before I go, I'm just gonna, like, read these real quick, and then we're off to the races, and I'm gonna cop. I'm gonna call this a night. So the few words. Eye contact. Yeah. These questions. Christina, you need to go through the micro course. Go to agentsofspeech.com micro. All right? It literally. If you go through the list of video lessons, it literally. That's what parents are saying. It reads your mind because I've answered these ones so many times. Okay. Hi, Amelin. Amlin. Sorry, butchering your name again. Two and a half. Knows Alphabet numbers. Can I make a sentence? Right. Okay. So I think you still need to go through the micro course for this one first before I give you, like, a. A good answer. Go through those, look at the videos, see what you're doing right or correct or incorrect or suitable or whatever, and then we'll go out. Go, go, go from there. All right? So the micro course is always there to answer FAQs. Like this ones. These ones that you guys just told me. Thank you so much for asking me. I have to go now. I have another meeting right now. I'm so sorry. And I'll see you guys next week. Monday. See ya.