How to Teach a Gestalt Learner on the Spectrum

This is Ming from agentsofspeech.com we teach parents how to do home therapy with their speech delayed children. In this video we're going to answer some questions from our community and if you have any questions, you can take a look at the link in the description below and you can ask questions inside there. Okay, so the first question is from Sean and he's asking. My son, age 5, learns Gestalt and has some autistic elements. Diagnosed as non verbal. Understands everything you tell him. Will get dressed, put things in garbage, wash, sink, a pickup, etc. Follows directions, so understands my words. Will only speak one word or the small forms of repetition from things that he has seen. But he can sing all songs loudly, count up to a thousand colors, shape, etc. He can speak, but won't put any structure together. I feel like going in circles without a concrete system. I have time to work with him. I know he can talk. I just need to know day by day exactly what to do. I'm going to answer your question here. First of all, we have a group coaching program called let's Talk More that directly deals with this kind of situation where the child is going from a single word going to a sentence. And I want to first of all highlight the word gestalt and some autistic elements. I'm not sure if that's something that you want to keep in your mind when you're teaching children. Sure, there are cases where your child does learn in sentences and phrases and we all do and that's a very gestalt thing to do. But I would also say that your child is not non verbal because he's already using words and because he's compliant with getting dressed, putting things in the garbage and stuff. I would say he's at single word level and at times he has some like songs and all these. And the main problem I see here is that there's a lack of play, there's a lack of activity interactions that he shares with you, Sean. That's why there's a problem here, right? Because his everyday life is very functional. He can go about his day without speaking. And if he wanted to speak, he would use a very effective way and that is to just say one word. And you can see all the words that he used, the phrases, the songs, the whatever those are, for what purpose is to entertain himself or to get what he wants. He can just say one word and he will get what he wants. He can communicate. It's effective. Why would he change? The only reason why children need to go up to sentence level is so that they have something to comment on or that they have something that they like and they want to share with you, and they have to be direct with you. Okay, so I'm going to share two strategies here that you can use. The first one is what we call sabotaging language, of which we do teach inside of the free courses on ww.agentsofspeech.com course. And I would say if he uses one word, you need to act as if you don't know what's going on. So it could be like a cup that he's asking for. It could be like just water that he's asking for. And then when he says water, you can say, oh, yeah, water, I'll drink it. So then he has to add the verb, because the verb dictates what you're going to do with the drink. It could be pour water. It could be like, drink water, give me water, whatever. So then you're going to at least get to two or three word phrases just by doing that. And the other thing is the other strategy, what I do is focus on the play and forget about the language. Because this child, your son, Sean, he's already five. He already knows a lot of stuff that what you're trying to do. The moment that they say something, he's already ready to just repeat and just get out. So then we cannot focus on teaching language. We have to focus on teaching something else that you guys can have a good time together. And that's play. All right. By the way, and all these, if you want to talk about play, you can just check out the free course called Word Combiners. Go there and watch it and learn the skills that, you know, like doing play routines and stuff over there. All right, so next question is from Yamli. Sorry if I'm getting your name wrong, but she says hi. My daughter has shown improvement with the strategies from the course through kitchen play. We do sequencing too. She will come up to me and ask to go with. Go play with kitchen. Should I switch it up? I'm needing to play with other toys than the kitchen. It helps. It helped the most. But wasn't sure if I should diversify the games with the kitchen since she loves or play completely different to avoid her. Her getting stopped and what, doing familiar things only. Thank you. Yes, of course you should dive. First of all. I mean, the most important thing is that you have a bunch of repertoire of play that you can have fun with your child with. And what we need to do here Is that you can do expansion in the kitchen set. So you can add oven, you can add a sink, you can add play doh into it to mold around it, make a dough, make noodles, whatever, and. And this is how you expand and you slowly move towards something else. Okay. And you have to take what we taught you in the course and generalize it to other toys. So one of them, as I said, you can use a sequence to make the play doh stuff. And another you can use it to teach her how to play with a dollhouse. And it really is up to you to expand and think about what will work. Okay, so hopefully I've answered your question here. Next question from Mary. Hello, Ming. My daughter can talk, but only when being forced. How do we make her talk more? She does therapy once a week since last year, but I didn't see much progress on the talking. Cool. So, Mary, the thing about getting your child to talk again is the same as what I told Sean above. And I would say that the most important thing is to create scenarios where your child wants to talk to you instead of you forcing her to. And that forget about the language for a bit and start teaching to play. I know it's hard, but you only have two ways. Either have a reward that makes her want to talk to you and keep on talking or you build a routine that creates a need for her to talk, which is play. Okay. And both of these you can learn through the word combiners course, which is for free. And if you want to join our group coaching program that does the same thing and where you can send videos to us and we will guide you through the whole process, by all means, just let us know in the comment inside of community and we'll get to you. Okay, so next question. Bharat says, hi, Ming. My son is 3.3 year old. He has started picking up words and tries to mimic us. But my issue is that he only says the first Alphabet of the word and does not say the full word. I keep repeating to him the full word but keep repeating the first Alphabet. Please suggest of this. And we've touched on this in a question before. So you see all these questions, they keep repeating themselves. So if you would please go to the community, do a search, watch the courses, and you will at least have a very strong fundamental basic knowledge that you can lean onto. And when you ask us questions, it'll be a lot easier. So, Bharat, go to the micro course and check out the video on teaching children how to speak in like multiple syllables. Okay. So that should be it. And if you have any questions like this, and even before you even have the questions, maybe it's already been answered on the forum or that it's in a course that's for free. So Please go to agentsofspeech.com course. Put in your email address there. You'll be directed to a page where you can sign up and apply to join our awesome parents community, which has 10,000 people inside already. Please go there and apply and then you can ask questions there and I'll answer you in this format. That's how I help you. And that's all for today. I hope to see you in the next week. Bye. Bye.