Ming explains why children, especially autistic ones, stop responding to their names and how to fix it. The key: make responding rewarding with immediate praise or treats, avoid repeating or shouting (which teaches them to ignore you), and gradually shift to natural rewards instead of artificial ones.
Hey, this is ming here from agentsofspeech.com and today we want to talk about how to get your child, especially for autistic children, to respond to the names. Okay, so we need to start off with why your child is ignoring you. I've had many accounts of parents coming to me through the clinic or, you know, just asking me online. Is that hey, Meng. It seems like when they were younger, they were responding to their names and slowly as they grew older, they unlearned that and they don't have that ability anymore. So sometimes I think like most of the time is that what happens is we need to rethink about why you're ask, you're asking for a child's attention, right? Why are you calling for that child? Right? And I'm guilty for that as well. What I'm about to tell you, right, is that sometimes, for instance, my cat is here. I would call them just to make them look at me and I'm like, okay, that's it, you know, like, oh, so cute. And get over with it, right? I just want them to respond to me because, you know, I want them to respect me or whatever. And I think sometimes this is what parents go through as well. It's just that when they're playing, I mean, when the child is playing, they just want to say, hey, John. And then John looks ha, Mom. And then that's it, right? But as children grow older, especially those on the spectrum, there's the consequence for it is not rewarding at all, right? So for the child, it's not that rewarding. For us, it's very self serving. I love looking at my cats, love looking at children when they, when I call their names, right? It's cool. But not for them. There's nothing in for them. That's why slowly they learned that, oh, I can ignore this. There's nothing cool. There's nothing that mom is showing me or whatever. The other thing I want to say is like, I bet if you're holding something they want to eat or you have lunch ready when they're hungry and you call their name, they will like run to you. Other than that, I really think that parents are sometimes actively teaching the child that ignoring is okay. And what I mean by that is, what's, what are you going to do when your child ignores you the first time? You're going to repeat their name over and over and you will increase the volume. All right? And what does that teach the child is that I can ignore mom once, twice, three times, four times, five times, and then until you scream and shout and then you're like, oh, okay, fine. So you're teaching your child to only respond to you when you go overboard, right? You're teaching them to ignore you. It's okay if you speak in your normal tone. And when you call them, it means that they don't need to respond to you. So your question would be, okay, so how can I do it? Because, you know, they never respond to their names anyways, right? So we need to praise and reward. Whenever they do look at us and they do pay attention to us, right? And how we do that is basically through a few things. Obviously, the easiest way is to have a reward in your hand. And some might say this is super, like highly unnatural, Highly not cool, because we're like teaching a pet or whatever. I think this is the most effective way. But it's. Once we get there, we can slowly decrease the unnaturalness and make it more functional for. For the kid. But what you can do is actually just by, you know, having toys that you're teaching them routines, singing songs, things that are entertaining for them, and then call their name. And then when they look, you praise them and say, nice, nice, answering me. And so on, right? As you build this momentum that they're. Whenever you call the name, they. They respond to you. And then they have something nice, right? You reward them, you praise them. It's more likely in the future that they will respond to you. So you don't have to repeat yourself whenever they ignore you. It's fine. Okay? Don't push it. Because the more you push it, the more they don't want. That's just how it is. That's human nature, right? It's just like this sales guy who keeps on coming to your face or this guy, guy or woman who's like chasing after you, like trying to date you or something. It doesn't leave a good taste in anyone's mouth. Okay? If you do that, if you keep on pushing it, asking for attention, isn't that great? Lastly, I want to talk about avoiding artificial attention. What is that? So for instance, whenever someone drops plate inside of a restaurant and goes plang. And then everyone looks, right? So that's artificial attention, Right? We didn't want to pay attention to it. It was because of an external cue. Okay, So a lot of parents, a lot of teachers, whatever. A lot of it as well. Before, I was stupid to do it. Now I know, but sometimes I still have to, like, catch myself. Okay, so if we want a child's attention, we'll Go, Steve. Like that, right? That's not that great. Because what you're doing is you're pairing the clapping with the attention, right? So what it means is that you're teaching your child to respond to the clapping and their name. So every time, you will have to clap in order to get their attention. All right? Some parents. Some. Some. Anyone. Even me, right? I was saying it's not your. Your problem. This is everyone's problem. Okay? We will speak in a higher tone. Like me, just that I'm on Steve. And then I had to go louder. I had to sometimes shout or whatever. These are also artificial attention, okay? It's how you scream and shout to get their attention. But what you're doing is you're teaching them that you require this amount of energy and this amount of stuff in order for them to really react to you. And that sucks because you cannot stay at that energy level for the whole day. Right? You wouldn't want to do that. So instead, stay at your neutral tone and make sure that you have, like, good stuff to show him. Like, play with him or whatever, whenever you call for him, okay? Have a reason behind it, or else why would he look. Okay, so that's all for this video. If you want, there's a checklist for all the tools and toys we recommend@agentsofspeech.com checklist. You can. You can check that out if you haven't. And that's all for this video. See you in the next one. Bye. Bye.
