Home Therapy for Autistic Children - Why it’s Hard to Start

Hey, this is Ming, speech therapist from agentsofspeech.com today we're going to talk about home therapy for autistic children. Why it's so hard to start and what you can expect out of, like, home therapy in general. Okay, so it's. This is a video that is a little more empathizing towards, like, moms. And it's true that most of the people who are watching this video, 80% are women, you know, and odd, 20% of males, high. Anyways, so being a mom is super exhausting. All right? And throughout talking to moms, nearly over 300 moms I've talked to now since the start of my career, I try to count. And the common theme is that they feel guilty, they're not doing enough. They feel like, oh, it's my fault that this is happening. And other people do blame them for domestic things, right? The floor is dirty, you know, the stuff isn't cleaned yet. Whatever. The kids aren't talking. They aren't playing correctly. They aren't doing their homework. It's all on the moms, really. Okay. And I feel bad for it. And to tell you that I understand is. Would be a understatement because first of all, I'm not female and I don't have kids yet. So I'm really extremely grateful for the moms who put in the work. And as you can see from agents of Speech.com, there are success stories of moms just keep on grinding until the kids start talking, which is something that I'm very happy about and very grateful about because it is really stressful. There was a mother who I've been coaching for the past two years. She finally waved the white flag. She was like, I can't do this anymore. I need to take a break. The kid is finally relatively caught up. Not a hundred percent yet, obviously, but she really needs to take care of her mental health right now because it's just been really stressful. Everything is on her. So I suggest to you, like, if you're not ready, then don't start. Okay? If. But you, if you are, go all in and make sure that you have support from, like, either a therapist, it doesn't need to be me, right? And also from other half, your husband. And that's really, really important because if your husband doesn't support you to the maximum, it actually becomes very difficult for you to go keep on going. And likewise, if you're a guy, okay, if you're watching this, you don't have support from your spouse. It's very Difficult to go on. All right. And here at Agents of Speech, we try our best to. To show you. But there's a lot of telling as well. Okay. But nothing beats someone showing you on your child and asking you to do it right in front of the therapist eyes, the person who's coaching you, and then give you feedback right there to tell you what's going on. Okay. Second of all, the whole Internet is overwhelmed with information. There's loads of information out there. It's very difficult to find and pinpoint what is correct for teaching children in general, I would believe nowadays is very hard. It's even harder than before. Because before, if someone like me, I would buy a textbook, I wouldn't buy like 10 textbooks and read it in one go. I would read one textbook and then maybe move on to the next or something. So nowadays on the Internet, it's so easy to go into, like the Google search rabbit hole and probably how you found me right here. Right. So you will see that there are conflicting answers, conflicting information about this and that. And I've had some parents who ask me, oh, is my kid. You know, I read on the Internet, is my kid, does he have apraxia of speech? I heard that this, this, this, and that from the Internet. And then when I see the kid, I'm like, dude, this is very normal. There's nothing. So it's very easy to get really, really, really worked up about the details and nuances about doing a diagnosis yourself. And it's literally impossible. So therefore, I would urge you to go for assessment with a speech therapist or clinical psychologist, whoever. We're going to give you insights specifically about your child. Okay. And at the same time, one thing that I always hear from doing work on the Internet is that the moms will ask me or the dads will ask me, maybe this won't apply to my child. Like, is, are you sure this is going to work for my kid? Well, the answer is I don't know. I really don't know. Right. If I tell you some techniques, you have to try it first. And then if you don't try, there's no real answer whether it will work or not. Right. So without trying, a lot of parents will go into paralysis by analysis. They will keep on analyzing what's best for the kid, what techniques are working, what's on. So what? But actually the best thing is to actually do it and see if it works or not. So there's a lot of techniques that we talk about an agent of speech in our online courses or whatnot but if that stuff doesn't work, then stop doing it, you know, and move on to something else. You don't need to listen to me. There's loads of people out there that you can listen. That might work for a kid. Okay, you know, if I tell you something and you think that, oh, my kid can do this, I would urge you to double check because there's many parents who would try. Like, oh, yeah, I think my kid would sit down and do work with me. We've played before, but then when we really had to work on some speech sounds and sitting on a table, the mom reported that the kid wouldn't even look at her. You know, the compliance went to. Went to zero. So therefore, it really comes down to doing it. Just sticking to one person's advice first. Maybe it's the therapist who assessed your kid, which would be the most, possibly the most credible source because they've seen a kid or, you know, anyone on, on the Internet that you feel that you can trust. Just stick with it. Try out from 0 to, I don't know, to 10, and then try it. If it doesn't work, then move on, find someone else, think about something else, find other ways and keep on going, because that's the only way that you will know. Okay? I've seen many parents who have done this and have had very good results. I've seen parents, parents who have stuck to something and has been doing it since two years old, and now they're like eight or something, and the results aren't that big. And that's because they haven't changed the way of doing things. Okay, and how do you change? And to change means that you've tried something else already, right? So keep moving. Okay? Keep moving. Action beats anxiety. That's how you do home therapy. Why it's important to do home therapy. Well, this is the last point, okay? And that's because if your child can listen to me, listen to any therapist per se at a clinic room, doesn't mean that they're able to transfer those skills back at home or to the classroom. So they need to be able to use the languages that they've learned with you, the person who they spend the most time with in order for them to use it with people who are. Who they are not that familiar with. Okay? So that's why home therapy is very important. Okay? So that's it for this video. If you haven't, go to agentsofspeech.com checklist. Go there and grab your free checklist of all the tools and toys that I recommend you to get when you start home therapy. Okay, that's it for this video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye. Bye.