Ming shows parents how to teach pointing at home using toys that pop, bubbles, and unreachable items on the fridge. The goal is teaching what pointing does (asking for something, showing something) rather than the gesture itself, and recognizing that pointing can be hard to read, especially for autistic kids.
Questions this video answers
May 22, 2024.
Ming from Agents of Speech (speech therapist).
Around 10,000 members (as of this recording).
Chapters
Hey, today I'm going to teach you how to teach a child to point. So my name is Ming from Agents. I'm a speech therapist. And pointing is something that we rarely do inside of the clinic setting. But a lot of parents ask this question. So I'm going to dive in first and I'll talk about some alternatives and why we don't really do it. The first thing is use toys and activities that promote pointing. A lot of times when we do teach pointing, we use bubbles. So why? Because you can poke it and there's a lot of joint attention. Using bubbles by itself is already very, very entertaining because there's like bubbles flying around. They're floating, and when you do an action, it pops. So think about what other toys that you have lying around that when you press on it or you point to it, something happens, right? And so this kind of pointing is not very like, if you're really into the weeds of, like, looking at the diagnosis criteria for speech and language, you will see that there are, like, different types of pointing. Something that is, like, immediately next to you and something further away, like distal pointing, as they call it, whenever using these toys. Most of all, what you're going to teach is that by pointing and pressing a button or using that toy, something's going to happen. And therefore, the type of pointing you're going to teach is going to be very. A closed distance kind of pointing. So for the longer distance, you might want to provide some choices. So between these two, which one do you want? Right? And you can do this in a puzzle piece. You can do it with a shape sorter. That kind of things like, oh, if, if you choose this one, this can't fit, so you must choose this one. But, but the main thing about it is because children will usually snatch if it's too close to them, right? So what you could do is to put the choices inside of something that they cannot readily open. So you can have two containers or under a glass box or whatever that you can find. And that's like, you can use that so that your child will actually point because it doesn't matter if they grab it from you or not, because after they grab it, they can't open it or they cannot access it. They must ask for help from you. All right? And some therapists, and I do see parents online, they use an iPad to teach pointing, right? It's just tapping. But at the same time, if you want something that's further away, choices, but the choice is something that they cannot readily get. And you can do this with something that they cannot reach on the, at the fridge or you know, like during those kitchen standoffs that you have at home, you can get them to point. Okay. And then what you can do is you can model during a joint attention. So the prerequisite is that your child already has some sort of joint attention with you. There are activities that you and him or her already enjoy. That's the prerequisite. It means that your child needs to have these activities under your belt that you can use together. This can happen when you're playing puzzles together. You can point, you can model, right? Or when you make something happen, you point to it and see if your child will point at it as well. So a lot of times you have to think about what's the main reason for pointing. Number one, to let you know, to command you to do something. I want that one. Right. Or to show you something. Hey, look at that. That's really funny. Haha. Look at my like. So you need to understand the language function dictates what the action is. So if your child doesn't have anything to show you or you guys don't have any activities during a joint attention, it's very hard for you to model and for your child to do the same because they don't. They're not thinking to show you anything, then why would they point? So what happens is a lot of parents will grab the child's hand and make it into a point and go, that's pointing. Good boy. Like that. But there wasn't a motive behind using it, using the pointing. So therefore you're teaching a means to no end. So you're teaching the form of the language without considering the language function and the use. So that's why pointing is not something of a, like it's not the best gesture out there. First of all, it's hard to see. And for children on the spectrum, it's very hard to be inside of someone else's perspective to see what they were pointing from or at. Right. So therefore it's not the best thing that we teach. And that's why we choose not to do it in the therapy room at times, because there are better things to do. So the better thing would be to promote your child to have different language functions. Right? To engage them with routines and play. Play routines, play sequences or whatever so that you guys have something to enjoy together. And then when you teach and model the pointing or whatever, it's going to make a lot more sense there. Okay? And your child has a much more effective way of Getting what they want. Instead of pointing, which is grabbing, hand leading or hand pulling or whatever you like to call it. So therefore pointing is not something that is so naturally understood by children. And so that's not something we want. So pointing is also not the best gesture out there because pointing is usually related to a noun that we don't know its name for. Oh, that, that one, this one. That's what we do in a foreign country. If we don't know the name of something, we usually just point at it. This one, that a lot in Japan, I'm like this, please. That's the only use for it basically, right? But whereas if you were in a foreign country and you knew the activity or the verb that you want to do, what would you do? I'm thirsty, I want to eat, right? I'm hungry. You know these ones, right? Or I want to go swimming. All these you can actually use. Like you can even sign up an egg. Like an egg, right? And it's better to teach different gestures out there that are related to some kind of sign language in your language so that it's more direct, it makes more sense, and it builds the child's semantic relations, meaning the word, meanings with other words. Okay, so that's why pointing might not be the best thing to teach right now. I know the reason why is because inside of the milestones where parents are given are like, oh, does your child point yet? Does he point far or close? Does he point for declarative pointing? Or like whatever. Pointing. I even forgot the term. But those are just symptoms, those are just benchmarks, right? And it's the same as like for anything. So what if your car can go so many miles? For what purpose? So what if a computer can do whatever. For what purpose? And the same for a child. So what if a child can point? For what purpose? Right? If it's what pointing to show you something, that's good. If it's pointing to, to tell you what they want, that's good. If this pointing just for the self entertainment, is that a good thing? Maybe not. Right? So you have to think about these things before you teach something. All right, so what should you teach? We have loads of videos about that. And if you want to learn more about just general how to teach your child at home, Language development, speech development, we have all free courses. Just go to ww.agentsofspeech.com course, put in your email there and then you can get, get in and join our community. We have around 10,000 members there now as of this recording and I'm sure you're going to learn a thing or two there. All right, thank you so much for tuning in, and I look forward to seeing you next week. See ya.
