A short instructional video by Ming @ Agents of Speech on how to get a speech-delayed child to repeat (imitate) spoken words. Ming outlines a spectrum of teaching approaches — formal/behavioral (ABA-style with rewards), a middle ground of structured play, and a fully naturalistic, narrating style — and notes that training parents differs from therapist-led work.
Let's talk about how to get your child to repeat what you say. So when we're teaching speech delayed children it's pretty simple. But simple doesn't mean easy. I want to walk you through some things that has worked with us. Teaching parents how to do it is very different from a therapist or myself doing it. There's always a very structured way, meaning it's more aba, meaning it's more behavioral therapy, there's more rewards and so on and using those if you're not comfortable, that's also fine. We have other ways. Right. We have something in the middle which is like structured play that involves playing and also teaching a child to play with some requirements and all the way at the end is more naturalistic is where you're talking as if your child is your friend. You're narrating everything you're saying you're seeing and doing and that in turn you're trying your best to get your child to imitate you.
