How to Prevent Autism?

So the answer is no, you cannot prevent autism. If you don't want to watch this video, just click away. But in this video, I'm going to talk about some ways that you can soften the blow and so to speak, prevent it from being more severe than it is. And the reason why I'm saying this is because we just had a parent who was posting inside of our parents community and she was saying how in the beginning, like a year and a bit ago, she had like diagnosis for, for autism and speech and language delay in four different places, in two different countries, four different places. And in the beginning it was always severe, severe, severe. And recently they got a new diagnosis because they had to go to school and it became mild to moderate. So the mom was really happy and the professionals were like, oh my God, this is a miracle. And the mom was like, no, it's dedication, commitment and a lot of hard work. And she was telling us how she never thought this would happen and she was sharing it with us. So I want to share with you what, what we told her to do. And she was also like a product of our parent coaching. Not saying that it's going to work for you. I'm just telling you to prevent or to lessen or to a child with autism is no easy work. Okay. So if you're still here, very good. There's loads of things that talk about what causes autism because the, the rates of the prevalence of autism is going like that. It's going on a straight line at the very least. All right. I don't know if it's like parabolic or whatever, but at least it's going in a straight line. It's going increasingly more. Right. A lot of people are starting to think, a lot of professionals start to think, is it our vaccines, is it our food, is our water? Right. And I'll tell you the things that are semi correlated. Okay. I'm not trying to be going into conspiracy theories about like heavy metals or whatever. Obviously that does have its role. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a scientist, I'm not expert. But the first one is if you're rearing a child at an older age, that increases the risk of everything, including autism. Right. Second of all is that if you're having a lot of stress during pregnancy, that also increases the risk of your child having anything. Right. And the third thing is that, and this I see a lot, having a boy obviously is going to increase the that risk by a lot because 70% of autistic people are male and what shoots up even more is if you have a twin who is one male, one female, the male has a much higher likelihood of autism. Okay, so enough of this fear mongering, enough of this. I'm just telling you what some of the so called facts out there. So there's no way of preventing that, right? There's no way of you deciding to only have a daughter. Obviously you could. That would be unethical, I think. And secondly, you know, you cannot choose when you get pregnant. Obviously you can again, but then economically speaking, nowadays we're having children much later because of the many things that we have to do in life. Right? So anyways, let's talk about what we did with that particular parent. And that's not just one case. We've got loads of cases, but we're just going to focus on that one. And if you want to see that testimonial and see a lot more of these parents who have strived and thrived, so to speak, you can go to www.agentsofspeech.com course, go there, put in your name and an email, and we'll send you to our private parent community, of which we have 3,000 parents already inside at this moment of recording. Okay? Anyways, so first thing you need to do, you have to understand the logic behind therapy. Okay? The logic behind therapy is that your child didn't choose to become autistic or language delayed. They didn't ask for it. So when a lot of parents say, I want my child to do this and that and whatever, that's coming from a place of selfishness. So you have to understand that for yourself first. Okay, yeah. Obviously right now parents are going to say, yo, mang, you're not telling me the exact steps here. You're not gonna what, you're not gonna tell me exact activities? I want things I can do, right? I'm Asian, I'm Chinese. You know, think about all the parents that I teach who would say that back to me. But if you don't get the mindset correct, whatever you do, the kids can feel it. They know what you're trying to do is to push them to talk or to fulfill a task, or that you're teaching them something and they'll run away. So therefore, if you don't do and don't understand this, the chances of you winning are very, very slim. All right, and hear me out here. All right, listen up. So if your child didn't ask to be delayed and you ask for them to speak up and talk doing the thing that is super difficult for the child, then is it fair or not? All right, so obviously it's not. I'm trying to say in a rhetorical way, but you have to understand it's not the what of what you do. You can do a lot of things with your child. You can teach them with flashcards, you can teach them with, like, play. You can talk to them non stop. But if they know the intent of you is not to give language, it's not to give, but to extract language from the kid, you're going to have a really hard time. All right? So I want you to change that mindset because what you're trying to do is to facilitate a child's language and to give as much as you can instead of trying to tell them, I want to hear this, and then I will be satisfied because I want you to do this. I want this goal to happen. This is what I see a lot of parents on the Internet do. And the parents that we teach, we teach them to let go of that first. Right? We don't want to hear you say, I want my child to do X, Y and z. Right? What about your child's wants? They were born in this world to fulfill what you want them to do. Right? So I know you know the best for your child. Right? Let me get that out of the way. You're not wrong if you're thinking, I want my child to do X, I want them to talk. I want them to, like, assimilate and to become a part of society. Right? To habilitate them inside of this world. That's our job, right? Don't get me wrong, that's the first part. You got to get the mindset. Right? If you don't get it, kids will smell it, they'll run away. All right? I'm sure you already know, if you know what I mean. Whenever you try to ask your child to say something or do something, they just run off. And that's because they can feel it. Okay? Second thing you need to start doing is to focus on what I like to call a lead domino. Right? What is the one skill that if they master, it will make other skills really easy? Okay? And usually speaking, if your child is nonverbal, sorry, that would be verbal imitation, right? Verbal imitation is the stepping stone to everything, all right? And a lot of parents or a lot of people would think, oh, well, how do I get to verbal imitation? I'll just, like, bombard them. And the reason, because there's another skill that you have to get the child to master. Before verbal imitation. And that's learning to learn skills. Right. And we have a whole video about learning to learn skills, verbal imitation, how to get there step by step. But the gist of it is if your child isn't able to wait, isn't able to take turns, isn't able to, like, just sit down and just be still and not snatch, that's going to be a huge problem. And a lot some parents will ask, oh, I see a lot of therapists online or like, you know, if you're in the uk, the NHS speech therapists now do a very similar model to us. They don't have the resources to do like one on one physically. So they give parents information and they coach them over the phone or zoom or whatever. So we've been doing this way before the governments have been doing it. So I can tell you what the leading domino for parents in the beginning is to understand. Look, it's not about how much you're talking to your child. It's not about if you're getting to the level and talking to them or like you're following their lead. All these are great advice, but it will not have the result that you're looking for. The reason is because the lead domino for all of this to work is that first of all, your child feels as if you're just giving them stuff and just playing with them, nothing else. Second of all is that your child can wait and not snatch for things that they want. Right. The third leading domino is that they start to imitate. All right, so how do we get through this? The first step is, in fact, you should talk less. We'll have a video more on that later on. And then the second thing is that how can you shape imitation as a behavior? Right. If you keep on repeating the same word over and over again, the chance of them actually imitating you goes up. Right. But at the same time, can you have a middle step that you can provide? A lot of times we teach action imitation and we do it a lot. Right? And the reason we do it is not because it's fancy or something that a child should know. It's just a stepping stone towards to shape, towards verbal imitation. Because if you don't have verbal imitation, it becomes very hard for the kid to actually speak. Because a lot of what we do in the world when we're learning something is always imitation comes first. Right? Okay. So even if your child, like, let's talk back as your child, as we're going along, and your child all this time was autistic, what you're trying to teach here is the language functions, right, Is that they're supposed to wait, they're supposed to take turns, they're supposed to imitate, and they're supposed to do this X, Y and Z to get what they want. So autistic people don't really understand why they have to go through, like, jump through the hoops to get what they want. They feel like, oh, I can do this on my own. I don't need you in my life, so to speak. And don't get triggered because I'm not autistic, I'm neurotypical, most probably. I haven't checked. But from all the adults that I've talked to who are on the spectrum, certainly that's how they feel as far as I'm concerned, is that most of the time they find socializing really difficult. They don't understand the means to an end until when they become an adult, they start to understand someone has what they have what they want in the world. And all that comes down to, like, communicating and so that someone can give them what they want, be it a promotion, be it. Be it to sell something, right? Be it to get into a school, right? Be it to get a partner in life, get married, all these things. It takes communication, asking, right? So if you're teaching a child who is language delayed and also on the spectrum, the first thing you're going to teach is how to receive, right? The second thing you're going to teach is how to ask. So if you want to understand this and you want to prevent your child from having severe autism like the parent I was talking about, then all you got to do, all you got to do is to understand where your child's coming from, a language standpoint, what they're lacking and not understanding from a social and also a language functions perspective, and try to compensate that way, all right? And it's a way for them to cope, all right? So I cannot get too much into detail right here. This video would be like four hours long. As I'm talking more and more, as you can see, I'm talking very like just off the cuff. And so that you understand we've been doing this for a long time. That's what I can tell you. So the gist of this video is that you cannot prevent autism, but we can. What you can do is to help that child who is already on the spectrum or not, if their language delayed. The first steps are always the same, right? If you go to a therapy room, it's always, ah, let's do some mending, right? Let's do some requesting all these things, right? But in the beginning, the therapy is going to be the same. Don't care about that diagnosis just yet. Don't look into it. Don't try to dig into it. Don't think about why is my child like that. Don't think that. Just do. All right. And even if the results are that your child is on the spectrum, it's not the end of the world. You can still habilitate your kid as long as you're willing to put in the hard work and a lot of like putting full commitment and trying your best. All right, that's it for this video. And if you want to watch more videos, watch courses that are on about how to get your child from zero, nothing, no words all the way to speaking in sentences. You can go to ww.agentsofspeech.com course. All right, so that's all for today's video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye. Bye.