How to Get Autistic Children to Focus with You

Hey, this is ming here from agentsofspeech.com we teach parents how to do speech therapy at home. So how to get autistic children to focus with you is a thing that we work on with parents all the time. We get videos from parents, and I find myself repeating myself over and over again. So here's a video of exactly how to do it. So number one is try not to repeat yourself. Why do we not repeat ourselves, especially when we're giving commands, instructions, prompting children to speak? We don't do these things because the whole thing gets rewarded. Now listen to me. What do I mean by that? If I tell, like, autistic child, a person on the spectrum, like I say seven times the command, and then the last time without any prompts, that autistic person replies in their mind, the whole thing gets rewarded, meaning the whole seven times that was was ignored in their minds because they're very ritualistic and there's a risk, right? This, the key word is risk. We're risking the fact that children on the spectrum will think that they have to ignore seven times and then speak at the last time, and then you will praise them or give them a reward or, like, you can move on or they can stop with the work. So then this whole thing gets rewarded. So don't repeat yourself. Parent sentence sent in some videos yesterday, and I was looking at it. Basically what was happening was the mother was repeating and asking, what's happening? What's happening? And then in the midst of it, child was looking around like, doing whatever. And then around the sixth time, I was like, okay, the sixth time he responded, and you gave him, and you let him, allowed him to go off the chair and do something else. Therefore, the whole all the time that six times was rewarded. And I asked her, is it that only at the chair he looks around and she's like, yes. And I'm like, that's learned behavior. Because he doesn't have this behavior anywhere else. By repeating yourself, you're pushing and prompting your child to look around and ignore you and then respond when. Like when either your voice goes up a little bit or you take the reward and bribe him a little bit, and then suddenly he says it. So basically, the repetition has forced and taught children on the spectrum especially to not focus on you on whatever the task is. Right? That's the first point. Second point, reward the correct behavior. A lot of times when we're doing math, reading, English language or speech, whatever, that we're teaching, the rewarding and the praise is hinged on the child's performance. And we don't want that, right? Why? Because we want to praise the effort. Because if your child is having behavioral issues, especially not concentrating, the constraint, the thing that is not allowing your child to show you what they got, isn't the language skills, isn't the math skills, is actually the attention and the behavior. So therefore your reward needs to be contingent, right? Needs to be rewarding the correct behavior, which is the focus. So it's okay, it's okay to go down one a little bit and reward whenever your child is actually looking instead of the results. Because if your child is looking and you know that they know, then it would be, they would be incentivized to respond quicker and more accurate and pay more attention. Okay. I know this is hard even for therapists, right? But remember, if it's a behavioral problem more than a language problem, then deal with the behavior first. Okay? It's always good to target and praise and reward when someone is paying attention. Okay? So number three is, does your child understand what is being rewarded or not? Right. So there's a general confusion about what are they being rewarded for. So other than the case of the first, the first story I shared here, the first case where the mom is asking what's happening? The other case is that this is a nonverbal autistic child and then the mom asks the child to do this and touch her head. So very meaningless kind of action imitation. We do this for various reasons. I'm not going to go into this, but child starts to guess everything. So I guess just scrolls through everything that he knows. He show, he shows the mom everything that he got. So it's not really attention problem now. It's like he doesn't know what he's being rewarded for and therefore he's not going to focus on your instruction. Because a lot of time when this happens is that children are responding even before the mother gives the instruction or the command, right? Or whatever it is that you ask your child to do. So if they're moving before, they're totally neglecting and not care about your, your language input, what you're asking for. So therefore what you need to do now is to establish what you're rewarding for. You need to tell your child even if he or she is non verbal, okay. Because it gives you clarity when you go into teaching your child anything. Okay. So what happens is when your child moves before you give a response, you have to give some negative feedback and you need to say it out loud, right? I heard a story of something that helped me a lot when I was learning to drive and trying to get through the exam and stick with me for a little bit. There's a reason why I'm telling you this, right? My friend said whenever you're looking at the mirrors, say it out loud so that the examiner will think, oh, he's actually doing it right, because or else they're going to think oh, you neglected to look this or whatever. So it's, it's just good hygiene to just oh, I'm checking the mirror now I'm going to look at the blind spot. Oh, I'm going to turn, I'm going to signal and turn left. Sounds like a lunatic to the examiner. But then he can't fail you. And it's the same as teaching autistic children because they are so rule based, right? So when it's not clear, the rule isn't clear. They will try everything. They don't even know what's what. So then you need to tell them, oh, you did, you did it before me. That's not right. That's not right. Mom didn't even say anything yet. I didn't even say anything yet. You wait, you put the hands down, you say the command which you were trying to do and then they might do it and then you reward immediately and tell them what they are rewarded for as nice. Thank you for following me. Thank you for writing your name, thank you for answering a question. These things are contingent, meaning it happens for a reason. When this X happens, why follows and autistic brain. And I'm saying this with a lot of love here, I'm just saying in general, children on the spectrum, they respect you more when you stick to the rules. When you make rule, you stick to it. So therefore when you're teaching a child to follow you and focus with you like this camera, just refocus. It's very important that you, that you tell them what the rules are. Even if you think that they don't understand because it's for you, it's more for you more than for them. So they're super pattern, they're trying to recognize a pattern. They're trying to think what do you want out of me? What do you want? What do you want? What do I do? So the next thing is to be quick. When you're prompting a lot of parents and teachers and therapists who reach out to us, they don't, they get the same results over and over again is because they think your performance and why the children is not focusing is contingent on their Language performance, as I said. So once you said this, I'm going to withhold this phone until you tell me I say it first. Say it first. What do you say? And then nothing comes out. And then you. Let's just grind it until he says, I want phone. And then what's the point of this? The point is that you should prompt right away. Even if you know that your child knows what to do, you know that they know it. That's what the parents would say. I know they know it, so I'm just gonna. They're just lazy to say. The thing is, when you're teaching a child, especially on the spectrum, when you're prompting, rewarding or whatever, what you want to focus on is how fast they respond, how accurate they respond, right? What function is the communication for? If he. And this goes back to the first point, right? If you keep on going on a standoff and you don't prompt right away, right. Even if your child knows it, what's going to happen is that the whole vicious cycle, the whole thing gets rewarded. Okay? The whole the I want and then all those things gets rewarded. So your child is incentivized to wait it out and ignore you. So then to, you know, to kill this vicious cycle, all you got to do is to prompt. Because when you prompt, it makes it faster for them to get what they want. And then the process, you can go on to the next time when they want something real faster, give them a little taste of what they wanted, go back immediately and keep going at it until you get a spontaneous quick response, which is talking about spontaneous. I've been doing a bunch of online consultations with parents, and I've been looking at some. Some speech therapy notes. And then something really scared me. I was like, oh, this child can say a sentence either modeled or spontaneously, no percentage, no accuracy, no whatever. So which one is it? I don't know. So therefore, don't be like that. Just prompt right ahead. Right? Don't wait for spontaneity to happen. Right? Then why do therapy? Why teach when you're just waiting for it to happen? That's the opposite of teaching. If they were able to do that, you wouldn't need to sit there and try and get them to communicate better. Okay? So the last thing I want to share is to make it easy. I know in your brain, as a mother, as a father, as a caregiver of autistic child, you have your goals, right? And I see these and the responses, the emails, the long essays that mothers write to me, they Say I need my child to do xyz and the list goes like 11 points. Make it easy, my friend. Make it as easy as possible for your child to, to achieve something with you first. Because if your child has a, has a history of failure, has a history of having you repeating yourself, getting angry, both parties get angry. How's the relationship look like? It's going to suck, right? So why would a child on the spectrum or not would want to focus, sit down with you and work? Right. If there's a lot of homework to go through, like us Asians, how are you going to suppose the child want to do that with you if every time the experience sucks? Right. I'm just saying it with a lot of love again. So that's why you want to make it easy and focus. Take the focus away from the, from the performance of the language, of the math, of the counting, the spelling, whatever, and shift the focus onto your child being able to focus, sit down, having nice hands, all these compliancy things. Label it out, make it easy for them, right? When you see it, reward. If they're able to do it without any tasks, add a little, add an easier task that they've previously mastered, right? If you're doing writing, go back to something that they've mastered before. It might be a straight line. Just do straight lines for a bit until like they get into the mood and you're rewarding. Rewarding. Oh, writing it so fast, you're doing it so nice. You're building a correct relationship for your child to like studying with you, like working with you, then it's going to be a lot easier. Okay? So if you would like to ask questions and follow up and also learn more, you can go to wwagents of speech.com course. We have a bunch of free courses on the platform. Yes, It's a lot of work to go through, but it's very searchable. Right. And if you need more help, there are loads of, including myself, loads of therapists and parents on the platform. There's 15,000 people on at this current time. Go there, make yourself at home, ask questions there. All right, that's all for today. Thank you so much. I'll see you in the next one. Bye bye.