How to Teach Children to Respond to Their Name

Hey, so today we're going to talk about how to get your child to respond to their name. And maybe your child may or may not be on the spectrum. It doesn't matter at all. Maybe your child is just speech delayed. That doesn't matter at all. All I'm just telling is what worked for us. Okay? And we've been teaching children how to respond to the names over the Internet. And we teach parents to do it, we don't do it ourselves. It's impossible to get a child to focus over the Internet. So that's why you are my hands. So how do we do it? The first thing is that we don't use the names over and over and over again. We don't repeat ourselves. Why? Let's say that you call the child's name like five times. Every time you say, Steven, Steven, Steven, Steven, Steven, and then they suddenly respond. And so what happens is that if your child is on the spectrum and he is somewhat autistic, then what's going to happen is because they're very rule based and they're very rigid, they're going to think that, oh, when mom calls me five times, I'll respond, that's not good. You want them to respond on the first go. Right. So don't always use it in vain. All right? Don't keep on saying it. If you repeat it, it's not, it's going to become cheap. All right? Okay. My second point is this. Do you have any reason for calling your kid. All right, if you don't have a reason to call for a kid, don't do it. The reason why is because when a child used to respond to you, but there was nothing that they got out of it, no smile, no hug, no whatever, Nothing that they care about. Okay, and what do I mean by that? It's everyone will not, will cease doing something if it's not economical. What does that mean? So let's say if you keep on going to a place and you don't get rewarded, what's going to happen? That reward's going to diminish. And that's a very sad point I know to make, but it's kind of true. And the reason is because there are two. Okay. Number one is that calling a name, usually how it's learned is that whenever the name is called, there's a good experience to happen. Right? But if you're dealing with a child who is on the spectrum, then maybe your relationship with a child hasn't grown yet, hasn't been at that point where you can just call them and they will respond. And the reason is because they don't have that social bond, they don't feel that having this conversation with you is actually rewarding to them. Right? So therefore, you need external things, which is my third point. Whenever you call your child's name, you should always have something of value, right? Might be that you tickle it, might be that you give a reward, which is very animalistic and aba. But it works, okay? Of course it's going to work. Or the third thing is that you have some toys that they want, right? It might be screen time even. So that will work. But you need to make sure that when you say the name, you already have it on you. Because when they come over, they feel disappointed. The next time, the effect of you calling the name is going to diminish in their minds. They're going to be thinking, what do you want from me this time? Right? My fourth point. A lot of times parents call their child's name just for being like, oh, okay. Oh, hey, Stephen. Oh, okay, that's it. And there isn't any, like, utility in terms of doing whatever. So for me, why I can tell you this is because we don't usually train parents. Sorry. And I want to tell you this right now. As therapists, we never train a child to respond to the name. It's something that comes naturally. We don't set a goal that, oh, the child should respond to the name like, five meters away. If you see that in a goal, then, first of all, that's really sad. Second of all, that means that goal or that someone, that therapist. I'm not poo, pooing over them. I'm just saying that maybe that's not the best use of our time and resources, because it all comes naturally. If you have a good relationship and you've been teaching your child to communicate and play and stuff, they should come. All right, I'm going to show you right now on camera, and it might be fast forwarded, but I'm going to call my cat over, all right? And I've never taught her that. And the reason why I can show you this is because I've done this with a lot of kids and a lot of children. Well, when I say a lot, I cannot count. Okay? My very first case ever, his name, I cannot tell you. But I was the only person that he would respond to if I say, hey, something. And then he would go heime, and he would come to me. But I never taught him that. I never did. And the supervisor even is like, oh, we don't need to teach it, because it will come naturally if your relationship is good. So let me try now. All right. Might be sped for it a little bit. Slate. Slade, come here. Slade, come here. Yeah, so my cat's getting up. I know I'm not supposed to repeat myself, but that's just in the initial phases of teaching. So now she's here. This is Slade, if you can see her. So whenever she comes over, I give her a pat so that she knows she's rewarded for coming over. And I tell her, I reward her. I praise her verbally. Good job, Slade. Come here. Say hi to everyone. And she hates being handled like this. She's going to kill me. But that. That's how you do it. And we also have this one here. Who's Colin? Colin, come here, Colin. Okay, never mind. She's not going to come this one. So I'm going to. Yeah, just to show you. I don't have any food on me. I don't have anything on me. And it's because of the relationship that I've built with this cat. And you can also build the relationship with your kid as a working relationship. You know, it really doesn't matter. So go through the steps that I've talked about. The most important thing is that you don't fixate on this as a problem. Because I know that not responding to name is a red flag for autism. Right? And a lot of parents are thinking, if you're watching this, it means you've searched it and you're thinking about, oh, how do I get my child to respond so that I can get rid of the symptom? And therefore there's a lower chance of my child being autistic. Doesn't work that way. You cannot treat symptoms one by one. And the more you think that you can do that, the more you will keep on searching. Like, how do I teach eye contact? And then you will go into the rabbit hole, like a lot of parents do that. They will say, look about me first. Look at that first. Like, Respond, hey, you're not focusing. You're not looking. Look before you speak, right? And you go like, red flag by red flag by red flag. And you try to treat each of them. That's going to be a very sad relationship. That's going to be like all children, when they feel like you're trying to teach them something, they're going to run away. That's for sure. Right? So you do this the way that is the most natural. And I can only tell you by experience that if you build a good working relationship. And I don't mean don't tell them to work. Right, don't whatever. No. Play with them as much as you can using the principles we share on this channel. And if you need more help and this is all for free, you can go to agents of speech commcourse to watch how to use toys and the other underlying principles. No matter if your child is non verbal at single word level right now, trying to get into sentences, have behavioral problems, you know, like toilet training. We have all those courses covered inside of www.AgentSofSpeech.com course and it's inside of a community. And every month or two I'm gonna do a workshop to to tell you what I've learned from coaching parents. And those will become permanent classes and lectures inside of that place. And you can watch it whenever you want. Okay. We used to sell these for money. Now we're only earning by teaching parents and coaching parents. All right, so that's it for today's video. I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye. Bye.