Has Your Child Been Left Behind During the Pandemic?

All right. Hi, guys. Welcome to our live tonight, our Monday lives. Really cool to hang out with you again. And today's topic is just to get you guys going on to a virtual. What's that called? A virtual summit. Is it a virtual event? And as you guys know, it's Covid right now. And basically someone, another speech therapist reached out to me and, and she said, hey, you want to be in this virtual event tomorrow, October 5th? Right. And what we're going to do there is that we're going to hop on and there's a bunch of different, a bunch of different professionals, all right? And they're all based in the United States or at least as far as I know. And what we're going to do now is we're going to, I'm one of the speakers there, and we're going to go through a bunch of tools and tactics and strategies, mindsets, activities. All right? I'm not entirely sure what they're going to share, but what I'm going to share is basically everything that I share in these lives, but a little bit more, pretty much a lot more. I will try my best to implement, explain as much as I can during that time. I think out of the time that I have, probably one hour, and I will try to do the stuff that I've been doing here on, on lives, answering questions, telling you what to do. And the theme of it is called has your child been left behind? Okay, it might sound like a little bit fear. You know, it finds it a little fearful. It's like, oh, no, it's my child left behind or whatever. Well, the thing is, you know, you know, like more and more, you know, this covet thing has been making us pretty difficult to get back to school, especially with the vaccination things. Like, not everyone is on board with it. I get it. And that's why, you know, not, not all the therapists can actually go into school. Right. So the premise of this is basically that the whole live event is to talk about, hey, what, what effective at home strategies are there to help your child speak better, you know, increase adaptability and succeed in school. Right. And the reason why I've joined this because recently I've started to see like one or two students who, you know, who I feel comfortable with seeing. Right. And the first time they came back, right, just two of them, they could not adapt to me. They forgot how it is to see a human. You know, they forgot how, how it was to, to be in therapy. And it was quite a difficult task to get them Back up to speed. You know that there was a lot of stuff to. To go through, especially those who are on the spectrum. When they first came, one of the boys, right, he was having a hard time. He was really having a really hard time trying to sit down with me, talk to me, and so on, right? So to. And for me, I also want to learn from the other professionals to see what there are, you know, what, what, what is it that I can teach you guys in the future as well, and what kind of strategies to do. They think it works, right? So, guys, go sign up at the link in the description box. It's. Let me just post it one more time here, right? If you can see it, you can click it. Then you know it's by this speech therapist, her name is Colby, and we're teaming up with a bunch of professionals to talk about it, right? And during that time, for all those people in America, that would be during the day for us in Asia, man, I'll be staying up for this, like 3:00am or something or 4:00am trying to, you know, trying to talk to people and teach parents over the Internet, the stuff that I've been doing since forever, right? So about all this pandemic stuff, right? There's a whole bunch of talk about virtual autism and having Corona babies. These type of children is like the new normal. Let's talk about a little bit about virtual autism first. And this came from me hearing, it was like a year or two ago. And then during our sharing session about asd. If you guys were in it before then, great. But there was a parent who asked, oh, does a watching screen, like screen time or using gadgets, does it create autism? Like, does it make autism a thing? Right? And I said, no. I said, no, that, that, that's impossible for a child to have autism because of gadgets, right? Because autism existed before, you know, we. We had like smartphones or iPads, whatever, right? We. It happened before. And therefore, that's not the. That I don't think it's true at the very least, right? And so, like, a fellow therapist was like, hey, you better look at this and that, right? Which I don't mind, to be honest. I'm always learning. But no matter that that person's intention, right? She told me about virtual autism, which I kind of knew about, but I really think that the word like virtual autism is a little bit misleading. I believe that, you know, at times you should be careful about, you know, what this diagnosis is, because it's not inside of the diagnostic. What's that called DSM 5. If you guys are, you know about that diagnostic booklet, you know, that booklet about all the, all the, you know, different labels and so on. It's not inside. Right. And how do you even get diagnosed with that? Right. What is virtual autism? Does it equal autism? Like, no one can tell you that. There are a lot of. What's that called? A lot of studies talking about that. It's about how, you know, using gadgets and so on can actually. Can actually like, create symptoms, like to. To make children look like that they have autism. Right. And if that's the case, then it's only like, symptoms like, like autism, you know, then it's not the real thing. Okay, I might be getting it all wrong. If I'm wrong here, just tell me about it. But I'm pretty sure, like, no one knows anything about this at this moment, at least not anything substantial. Okay. So, you know, forgive me when I'm, when I push this aside and I tell you guys about this, but more and more, I think this will become more of a theme that a lot of people will ask about these questions over and over again about, oh, what's virtual autism? This coronavirus or, you know, the pandemic decrease. Does it have a social impact on our children now? Obviously, yes, it even has social impacts on us. Right. And, you know, as we go forward, I really think that what's going to happen is that, you know, virtual reality is going to be a huge thing in our lives. At the very least, not fully virtual, maybe augmented. Right. So maybe that would become quite a good. Because. Because I've been playing with a virtual reality machine. That's why I'm talking about this. I think it's quite cool that you can simulate situations inside of a thing and we can use gadgets in a way that will help children to learn things. Right. And there are loads of apps out there that claim to do this. Right? I say claim meaning I haven't used it. I only heard of it and seeing their ads and so on. Right. So they like. Such as Gemini and Speech Bulbs or. I forgot the name, sorry. But these are like the educational apps that you can get on your. On your iPhone or smart whatever. Right. And that becomes more of a. Of a lesser evil when you're trying to teach at home. Right. But at the same time, what I'm going to talk about at the live virtual event tomorrow is that I'm still thinking about it. I think I'm going to talk about, like, how to get your child to just sit down with you like for 15 minutes just to learn a little bit from you. Okay. That's super important. And if you've ever seen all the testimonials on agentsofspeech.com then you will see that all the parents, they are all able to manage their children, manage behaviors, get them to sit down and teach them whatever that they want to teach, right? I just got a parent man, a parent asking me something just today and she was like, oh, how do you get a child to look at me and pay attention? And turns out it's because the task is too mundane. Then obviously no one wants to pay attention, right? And then she also told me that the toilet training we have on agents of speech really helped them. And that really brings a lot of joy in my life, to be honest. Like to make something and then to have it work on like multiple children, then it's great. But obviously there are like other prefer professionals who say, oh, this is not like most like evidence based or whatever. Then you know that that's, that's fine as well. That's fine. You know, just try everything and find something that works. Okay, so inside of the live virtual event, if you guys haven't signed up, go do it now. It's tomorrow. I believe there will be recordings if you're not from North America. And basically what everyone's going to share, there are all the professionals tips and tricks and helping you at home, okay? Because this pandemic isn't going anywhere anytime soon at the very least. And we're not getting back into school as fast as we can as we want to. So given that situation, the best thing we can do is equip the parents since day one. And a lot of the setbacks I get as a therapist a lot of times like today when one of my, I think my 10th student here in this city, right, he came back and his mom cannot really control the child. I don't know, blame the mom or whatever, right? But then every time he wants something, he would whine, whine, whine, whine, whine, keep on whining. And then when he gets his way, he will say thank you. It's like it just doesn't make sense. And his new favorite thing is onigiri, like a sushi rice dumpling kind of thing. And then he would whine about it, cry about it, and then sometimes laugh, but then cry again. So it's like very manipulative is what I mean. Right? He's controlling his emotion, that emotions and his, and his facial expressions to get what he wants and he can talk. That's the thing now when he, when he first came he couldn't talk. Now he can talk quite a lot. It's like two to three word sentences. He can as well sometimes. But it took us a lot of time, like nearly two years to get here like from non verbal we're talking about. Anyways, everyone's different. If you have your child's questions, you know, leave it in the comments below or you know, email me or something, I'll try my best to get back to it. It's getting increasingly difficult to do so, which is both a curse and a blessing because you know, it means that agents of speech is going somewhere, you know, more, more and more people know about it. But at the same time it means that I cannot serve you like as much as I wanted to before. It's just physically impossible. Anyways, so when I asked the mom, hey, can you sit him down like every day 15 minutes just so that we can increase the effectiveness of our therapy. Because a lot of his, his therapy work is basically just building sound because he's a speech disorder case. If you don't know what that is, just you know, search it on, search on the Internet, right? Maybe on Agents of speech on our YouTube. We have talked about this before, like speech versus language. But anyways, so he's got a speech disorder and if the mom could sit him down 15 minutes for real and go through the sounds we've been doing which is like K sounds and also at the, yeah, we're doing, been doing K and G and also like some multi syllable words and if the mom could go through those at home like for 15 minutes then it just makes sense. Right? And what she said to me was, you know, quite interesting today she said that, oh I'm. How about this Ming? Let's give it to him because you know, we, we spend money to see you and I don't want it to be like just wasted him sitting there crying. And, and, and she's like, you know, if we waste like five or six sessions, that's a lot of money and I don't want to do that. And I totally agree with that. But at the same time, you know, there's a part of me which is like, is there any way that we can manage this child's behavior a little bit more just by suffering on the front end? You know, like obviously as he gets better at talking, that's a huge blessing for all of us. Right? But at the same time, if you can't sit your child down and control him and tell him like, and it's always bargaining with him. It gets very, very tiring. You know, it's very, very, very, very difficult for everyone to have a good time in, in life, you know, and that's, that's the problem with it. So the thing is, the huge problem I see in a lot of therapy work that I do is because I get the parents, especially the moms in the room with me. So, you know, I want them to be there, but when they're not around, the child becomes someone else. You know, it's very, very easy going. It's easier to manage them. They do a lot of work. But would I give it up? Would I give, give, would I give up parental education over, you know, the child's ability to like, follow me? I would say no. I would rather the parent just sit there and see how it is. And what I really don't like when what parents do is like, it's like when, when the children aren't speaking, they will tell the child, hey, say it now, say it now, like beside me. So it doesn't work that way. And sometimes I do want them to go outside at those times. Right. You know, it's always a double edged sword. You know, you let parents in, like if you guys come, go to a therapy room, you can sit in, right? How does that affect the whole environment and so on, right? So my point is that you need to become a better communicator, okay, with your child. You need to become a better, better leader with your kid. Can they follow you? Can they listen to your stuff? If not, it's going to affect all, all aspects of therapy whenever you're inside. Okay, cool. So let's see what Aisha says. Says, I'm doing good, thanks. My son is now speaking in full sentences of speech. I still need based mostly. Okay. Encourage back and forth conversation, proper communication, borderline ASD on medication. Okay. I don't know what risk is. I'm sorry. He is five years old. Well, you know, like Aisha, as we always say, as we always say about this, you need to have like a strong context for him to have a back and forth with you. So that's the thing about it. You cannot just, you just want back and forth, right? I mean, he's not interested in something. So you have to have an activity that you guys both enjoy having. You know, for instance, like board games or, you know, reading a book together or whatever. But you can't, you know, if it's need based, you cannot literally just Jump up into back and forth conversations and using language for everything. Right? It's very difficult. So what I would say, Aisha, is that, you know, you gotta have something that you guys enjoy together, some sort of activity, and also be the ability to sit him down every day for 50 minutes as I was talking about, just to teach them some stuff through books, through pictures, through games and whatever. And during that time, you will build a lot more rapport with your cat, with your kid, and they will try to talk to you more. Okay? But if you don't have that activity and it's all need based, they're not treating you like a friend. All right? And this is where the parents will say, you know, my kid really likes you. You know, he would come up to you and show you something and tell you about something. But you have to remember how much work I have done, how much work I have done to help with the child liking me, you know, and wanting to show me stuff and wanting to engage with me, how much work I have done on the front end trying to, you know, give them what they like, praise them for everything that they do, ignore all the bad behavior, never reprimand them, never like saying bad things about them, you know, it takes a lot of effort, you know, so you have to think about that. If they only come to you for needs, then you have to think about, okay, what is my who am I to my child if it's only a need based thing? You're a vending machine, you know, I'm saying, have you ever given like. Or are you a song machine? You know, sometimes you're a jukebox that you go over and you instantly have to sing something, right? So you have to become someone that the child wants to engage with you. And that's why you need to find things that you can enjoy together. I hope I answer your question. It's very difficult case by case basis on this live. Anyways, another Aisha. What's up? Many Aishas, boy, 3.3 years old, follow my techniques. Very good. Now he improves. He used to say two word sentences sometimes. But his alien language use is still there. Yeah, alien language or like babbling or whatever you call it, it's still going to be there. It's just their way of practicing over and over something. Hopefully that's the case. Right? So you know, like that's just something you have to keep on going, man, I'm proud of you. Keep on going. All right? And maybe if you can guess the alien language, you can say it in real Language for them. Right. So that he knows or she knows or he in this case, what to do, what to say in that situation. Okay. It comes down to always describing talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, and then telling them what this is, describing that, answering questions, so on and so forth. Right. By the way, guys, if you haven't, go sign up for the, for the virtual event for tomorrow. Man, I'm already sleepy. I don't know how I'm going to do it tomorrow, but you know, I'll try my best. P says, what is the easiest way to teach them to say yes and respond to their name when they're called? Please. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, you didn't tell me how, how old and what language level your child is at. Very difficult to answer this. Yes, no questions, I wouldn't touch. Until they can speak in one word or whatever and respond to name. Why do you want them to respond? We have loads of videos about responding to names. All right. If you don't have a reason to why your child should respond to your name, then don't do it. Okay. If you know it's responding to name is a very self serving thing. You know, you just want to like, oh, okay, hi. Like that or is there a function to it? If there's a function to it, what's the reward for it? What's the consequence for, for, for responding to the name? You have to think about that. Okay, get back to me on how old and the language ability of your child. Very difficult to answer that question. All right, Amy says what interventions would you do for a child with severe receptive language delay or. Okay, so I don't know how old your child is, Amy, and I don't know like his or her. Right. I don't know his or her motoric skills, so forth, so on and so forth. If it's severe receptive language delay, you can either do like you can do, go two ways. Right. Number one, you can go really structured and do something like ABA therapy. If your child is on a spectrum, that is, if they're not, then, you know, try speech therapy and also play based therapy and you know, either go really structured or really free. All right. And I'm not entirely sure what your child's profile is. It's hard to give a solid recommendation because of that. But I would say stick to speech therapy and some play therapy would be great. And choose between something super, super structured or something rather loose like play therapy that you're playing around, teaching them stuff and so on. I would say like that okay. If they have. If your child has any other complications, then, you know, try, like, occupational therapy or maybe some physical therapy. If they have problems, like walking problems with, like, whatever. There's loads of interventions that you would do. I'm not sure what you mean by interventions. Are you talking about, like, the therapy or the exact tasks. Tasks that I would do? These questions I cannot answer because I don't know the profile of your child. Okay, so thanks for the questions, guys. Again, if you guys haven't signed up, please go. I'll drop the link again. And this one is like, it's not on Agents of speech, obviously. I'm. I'm. What's that called? I'm partnering up with another speech therapist who. It's not only me. There's loads of other professionals you can see on the site, as I believe. Okay, let me just check the site to see how much info they put. Oh, that's not a lot of info. But watch the video from Colby over there. Let me just give you guys a little more, like, background on it since there's not enough info. Basically, there will be around, like, five professionals, some speech therapists, some developmental psychiatrists, I believe. And what we're doing there is that we're going to share tactics that we will talk about at home, strategies you can do during this time, during this pandemic time, which is super, super, super stressful for everyone. Okay. Even for me. I'm stressed out and I don't have a kid. I can't imagine for you guys. Oh, yeah. Amy says intervention Eagles therapy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Severe receptive language disorder. Go for speech therapy. Oh, not disorder, delay. Yeah, Go with speech therapy and also some play therapy that would help build his. Her play skills or his play skills, build his. Or her, you know, use of gestures, wanting to communicate, all the. All these kind of things and build it up from ground. Okay. It's going to take some time. Ever severe. Okay. And if you don't mind me saying, like, when you have a child who is young and it says severe, it doesn't mean that they're super, super, super below. Because you know how much you always think about how old are they and how, like, the severity of like, a disorder or delay is compared to their, like, to where they're at. Right? So if you have only. They're only two years old, right, and they have only two years of life to compare to, then it's not going to be a lot of. It's not going to be a lot of stuff to talk about. You Know, like this, you don't have a lot of years to compare to. That's why when you are two and you're severe, it doesn't mean that they're like, they won't catch up or whatever. It's just that at that point in time, they act like someone who is two years younger. Right. But obviously, all children who, like, develop. They develop in a hockey stick. Right? So therefore, the longer you stay at one point, the more delayed you are going to be in the future. Okay? So that's why early intervention is very important, no matter what people say. And I would say that the best intervention is the one that you do at home. Don't leave them to their own devices, literally nowadays. Right? Don't leave them with their own devices. Don't leave them with a hand phone. They'll need them with the iPad. You know, interact with them. At least have like 10 to 15 minutes every day you can spend with them. At least you can put them in the same place and listen to you and play. Right? Okay, so that's it, guys. This live is done. And guys, be sure to check out that link I put in the description box. Read it if you need. Before joining. If you don't want to, it's fine. Don't need to. Especially for those who are in the Asia time zone, like me, like myself, then, you know, you can. You can have a little more. What's that called? You can have a little more context about it. Right? So Angie says, can you teach me what to do, Angie? Yeah. If this is your first time in my video, go watch as many in the. In the YouTube channel. Okay? It's called Agents of speech. Since you're on Facebook, you can join inside of our Facebook group. I think you have, maybe you haven't, I'm not sure. But go through those videos first. All right. And then absorb what I'm saying. Okay. Because I. What I don't like, which you will find out, is that I don't like repeating myself, Angie. So, you know, go ahead and take a look first. All right, so Jess says hi. Hi, Jess. What's up? Yeah, we're nearly going off now. Just staying for like, another few, like one minute or something. P Says it's helpful. Thank you. Yep. Hopefully I have answered your question. I'm trying my best. Yeah. So guys, if you're new here or you haven't watched any of the. Of my videos, we do this every week. The best use of your time, of your, you know, of our time, is that you write down your Questions in advance and come to me during this time because the thing is I don't do like free consultations one on one. Okay? It's a paid. So if you want me to answer your questions, write it down, make sure you have everything that you need and then come online on Mondays at this time, save it even on your Google calendar and then ask me here because more and more it's very difficult for me to answer questions from everyone, right all left and right and so on. So. And if you need more help, obviously you can set up a one on one consultation, but obviously that's paid, that's not free and I'm sorry about that. It's just, you know, it's my job. So if you guys need help, come online on Monday or ask inside of the Facebook group. Last time I checked my DM there were quite a few messages but I totally just missed it because, you know, I just don't even look at it. So this is the best way to reach me as of right now. Okay? If you're not inside of the courses, go to agents of Speech.com, go check it out. The best way then to build to have a relationship and you're okay with teaching with yourself online is to go there and check those courses out. If you like it then you can join the membership on the, you know, we can join the membership later on and we have this kind of chat every two weeks. Every two weeks you can send me videos and I will go through those videos and so on. But we're not, not here to talk about that tonight. If you know, if you need more help, join the Facebook group, you know, come on to this live video and ask me questions. And at the very last thing I want to say is to join the virtual event that I just pasted in the, in the, in the description box below our, on the left or right if you're on Facebook. Alright guys, so have a good night guys. Have a good Monday evening and I will see you guys next week or maybe tomorrow if you're on the virtual event. Okay, See ya.