Ming shares five evidence-based strategies for talking to children with speech or language delays: slow down, use shorter sentences, get at eye level, comment on what they see instead of asking questions, and copy their sounds. Praise any vocal attempts they make.
June 9, 2020
www.agentsofspeech.com/faq
Hey, this is Ming from agentsofspeech.com and in today's video, I want to talk about how to talk to speech delayed children in general. Alright? So stay tuned. Okay, so speaking to children who are speech delayed or language delayed or however you want to talk about it is very frustrating because most of the time, no matter how hard you try, they just keep on ignoring you. And to make things worse, when you repeat yourself, they just don't care. So how do we actually do it? Well, the first tip I want to give you is to speak slower. I don't know how many times I've been talking about this in my practice and on this YouTube channel for you to talk slower. So slow down, slow down. No matter how many times I've told my clients, whether or not they're online clients or offline doesn't matter, I need to keep on reminding them because it's just in their blood already. Number two tip is to simplify your language. Simplifying your language is very, very important. And I've actually been pointing this out from my previous boss in Hong Kong that he told me that, hey, I was not simplifying my language down enough for parents like yourself, for teachers, for other therapists, people who don't have the same experience as you do or like same knowledge as you do. If you don't talk in a way that they understand, you're actually being disrespectful in the same sense. I realize that when I talk to children, I simplify my language way down to their level. And whereas parents, they just think, they believe that they should talk in their natural way, which is the fast way, and expect their children to catch up. But the thing is, if they were to catch up, if they were to understand that they would have already and you wouldn't be watching this video right now. Methods that don't work, we have to change right away and be respectful towards why there are reasons why your child is ignoring you, is not answering questions, is running away from you. And most of the time it's actually because the things that we say, they don't understand. It's too hard. So a good rule of thumb is that if your child is talking at one or two word sentences, you should use one to two word sentences when you are talking to them. It doesn't mean that you have to be robotic about it. It's another way of communicating. Okay? You have to learn and catch yourself using only around one to two words. So tip number three is to talk within your child's visual Field and I've talked about this a lot, and what this really is, is you crouching down, kneeling down to their level, and then talk slowly and accurately and in a simple manner that they can understand to make it easy for your child, to get it to communicate with you by closing distance between the vertical height of you and the child, you talking slower and simplifying your language, it makes it that much easier by chance that your child will actually understand, react in the appropriate way. So number four, okay, Meng, so I get it. I need to talk slower, I need to talk simpler. I need to go down to my child's level and talk to them. But what do I say? What you can say is basically by referencing and commenting things around the world. And why we do that is because many parents, including mine, actually, they love to question what's around the world to quiz and test if I have the knowledge or not. Which kind of is like a cultural norm to do it right, Ask, hey, what's that? What's that? How does the, how does the cow go? Which one do you want all these kind of questions or just stressing your child out? I've talked about this in a previous video. You can watch it. I'll probably link it above here as well. If you were to teach your child a certain behavior, you would want to do it yourself. For instance, if you don't want your child to litter and throw rubbish on the floor, you wouldn't do it yourself and you would put everything in the garbage can yourself. Correct? So if you do that, that means you are teaching by showing and you want to do the same in language. For instance, instead of asking the question of what's that? You can actually just tell them what it is. Okay, you just say, oh, bluebird or bird flying or whatever. And then when you do that, it makes them understand that, hey, actually mom and dad, they're doing this kind of commenting and referencing things around the world. Maybe I should do it too. When you ask a question and they don't respond, it's because they don't understand. So rather than just hoping that they would know naturally, just tell them the answer. Tip number five is the last tip I want to talk about in this video, and that is to imitate everything that your child does. So we've been trying our best to make it easy for a child to listen to us and respond to us, to actually tell them exactly what to do by showing them. But at the end of the day, if they do something, how do we react? We react by imitating them. Imitate everything they say. Imagine that you are inside of a museum with a huge hall. Let's say it was a huge hall. And then there's this circle in the middle. And you go in the middle and you stomp on the floor. What happens? There's echo going all around. Okay. As a child, what you're gonna do, you're gonna keep on doing it and try other sounds. Cause it's fun, it's echoing. You know that there's an effect when you do something. So similarly, you want that to happen between you and your child. Okay. When he or she does something, you echo it and maybe you add a little more fun to it that they wanna. They wanna try all the things that you might echo and see if you can do it. So when they understand that whatever they say has an effect, then they're gonna try, gonna try more. And I myself, I've seen it firsthand, this happening between me and the child. And after teaching the parent, the parent does it, the child also does it, and then everyone's very, very happy. Before we go, I want to tell you, hey, this is exactly how you should talk to your child. Yes, it's going to take longer. Yes, there's no immediate results, but it's a sure thing because I know it's going to happen. I've seen it a few times already. In fact, more than a few times. Whenever you imitate, you reference, they copy you. You talk slow, you kneel down, you. You talk simple. Whenever they respond to you, you have to remember to praise. It's not taken for granted. Whatever comes out of the mouth means that they're learning. And this, this kind of behavior should continue. Therefore, you should praise them. With that said, thank you so much for watching this video. It means that you're a great parent and you really want to learn more about how to teach your child at home. Specifically, if they have a speech delay or like a language delay problem. I've actually compiled eight of my most asked questions at my clinic and I put them inside a website. You can go to www.agentsofspeech.com faq to get it. Okay. And by doing so, you'll be also joining my email newsletter, where every week I'll share some updates about what I'm doing with my own clients and what's working, what's not. With that said, thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you in the next video very soon. Bye.
