How to Teach More Than "I Want" Phrases | www.agentsofspeech.com

All right. Hi, guys. Welcome to our month. Sorry, weekly Monday live. Today I am not at home. So anyways, let's cut to the chase and talk about our topic today. We're going to talk about when you should give in to your kid. So there's a lot of parents who ask me, my kid does this, that's that. Is this okay? Is it acceptable? Should I let him have it? You know, like, what's the, what's the harm of letting him have something or her something that, you know, a lot of kids have access to? For instance, like maybe a chocolate bar, maybe chips. Maybe like one of my kids, my, my students, he loves like sushi. Maybe it's cartoons or whatever. Is it okay for you to give it to him? Right. And I apologize for the video quality. I'm on my laptop, but I don't want to skip a live just because I'm not at home or I'm on vacation, right? So I like doing this and I like talking to you guys. So I'm going to keep on doing it even if it means that it's lower quality. Anyways, so when should you give up? There's a lot of things that you need to think about. First of all, like, you need to think about the long term effects of giving in to your child right away, right? So maybe it's because you gave, you gave in one time and your child remembers it and it becomes really hard to say no in the future, right? This happens a lot of times. For instance, when moms bring their children to me right after the session, they will give the child some, some ice cream because, oh, after Mr. Ming, you can have ice cream. They're trying to pair finishing my session with like something great to entice them to keep on coming. And whilst that is good, right. What happens is that in the session they keep on saying ice cream, ice cream. And recently one of my students, they love like, sushi. So every time we finish a session, the mom's gonna buy like sushi. Actually, it's not sushi, it's onigiri, but whatever. So, so this triangular shape thing he would bring to my session and put it there and say, after finish we're going to eat it, right? But the problem is that all the time he keeps on bringing it up, right? And it's really disruptive to my session, number one. Number two is like, how do we like tell him when it's going to finish? Because like a kid who is speech delayed or a language delayed, a more accurate term is language delayed, right? Their sense of time, what they know about time is, you know, like children, even on, you know, when they learn about clocks or time, it's around at least four or five for typically developing children. So if you think about, like children who are delayed, they need to understand this concept of time. It's kind of difficult, you know, so when you tell them, oh, look at my watch, it's like, we have 15 minutes left. Let's finish this. That, that won't cut for most of the language delay children because they cannot wait, right? And they cannot express and they don't understand. What do you mean by 15 minutes more? It's an abstract concept. So sometimes giving in has effects that actually make it very hard for you to, you know, get out of a situation in the long run. So I would say most of the time, it's the best for you to think about. Okay, if I do this, what's it going to mean in the future? Is it every time you walk past that shop, are you gonna have to buy that thing for him? Like one of the clients I had in Hong Kong, students that I have in Hong Kong, whenever you walk past those newspaper stands in Hong Kong, and newspaper stands, we have like toys and bubble gum, chocolates, you know, whatever, just to increase the revenue of a newspaper stand. And whenever the kid walks past, he loves trucks. So these miniature trucks, miniature mini buses, whatever, miniature double decker buses that the kid really likes at the newsstand, he would want to buy it. And it becomes really, really difficult to get him out of it. And it becomes a routine that after the session, he goes to McDonald's, eats his favorite, like, chips, sorry, fries. And then after that he goes to the, he passes the newsstand, he tries to grab the butts that he likes, right? So that's. That becomes a problem. And then what happens is that because this has become such a routine and the mom can't get out of it, and every time he tries, she tries another route, what happens is that. What happens is that the kid just keeps on talking about that thing that he wants. He's like, oh, truck, car, whatever. And he really wants to go back to that route. Especially for those who are on the spectrum, you know, at the end of the day, think about what long term effects does it have on you. Are you okay with it? Are you okay with buying them that thing every time? Right? Then, okay, by all means, you can give in to them. You know, you really can. And if you're okay with them, like indulging in that and you know, to be very Honest with you, like loads of kids nowadays, they get what they want anyways, like typical or you know, typically developing or having special needs or whatever or yeah, whatever you call it in different countries, like individual needs or children on spectrum, special needs, whatever, right? Whether they are in need of like intervention. That's what I mean, right? Children are still getting a lot more than what we're used to, right, as, as when we were children. So the, the thing I, I want you to take away from is from this video is this. Number one, think about the long term things. Can you keep on doing this? Number two, how destructive is it in his life, okay? Is it something that will affect his health? And that's something you have to really think about, all right. I'm talking about this because sometimes what happens is that you allow them to have something and they keep on asking for it and it's bad for them, okay? And I know sometimes on agents of speech, like especially me, I talk about using what they love as a reward or to entice, entice communication, right? Whilst that is a good strategy, a very good strategy in fact, because we always, in fact increase the demand for what they need to say in order, what they need to do, right? In order to get what they want slowly they understand, okay, I need to do this much. I don't want it anymore. All right? That's why we use rewards, right? We don't just give it to them. We don't just like use it very robotically. We use it in a way that, oh, you want this, you got to do this. And then when they do the cost and benefit analysis in their heads, which kids do, okay, trust me, they really do. They think, oh man, I'm going to do this again just for this. I'm not going to do it. So you see, if you're going to use it, don't give it for free. If you're going to use it, don't put it into a routine that they're going to have it, right? Don't do that to yourself. I know that a lot of typical children get whatever they want nowadays, right? But you have to think about that, okay? Don't put it in a routine. Make sure that they're working for it, they're doing something for it. And I'm not being cruel or anything, right? There's a reason why children cannot acquire language as, as quickly as we did when we were young or typically developing children, right? The reason is because there's something missing. They, they don't have the skill to do to acquire language the natural, the naturalistic way. All right? You like typically developing children, you can just put them anywhere with like a phone, with like a tv, with like whatever. They're still going to learn how to talk. All right? And yes, there's like, stuff that's emerging like the use of handphones or, or, or smartphones per se is making is correlated, correlated with a language delay. All right? But as the old saying says, it's still true to this day. Correlation doesn't mean causality. We still are trying to know what is the middle thing. Right. For instance, the famous analogy for this is the consumption of ice cream is correlated with shark attacks. So it doesn't mean that if you eat more ice cream you're gonna get bitten by a shark. No, they're correlated by the same thing, which is summertime beach time. Right. So we're still learning about like, what is, what, what people are calling virtual autism. What people are saying, like, oh, screen time is, is bad for the kid, whatever. I, I don't know. I'm not a expert in this kind of thing and I don't claim to what, what I'm trying to claim and tell you is that if you want your child to learn how to communicate, you gotta, you gotta take out some, some time in your day, maybe five to 10 minutes in the beginning to communicate with them. And I, I think, I'm not sure. I'm, I'm guessing and I am not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna go out there and say, hey, the causality for like, like speech delay or language delay is because of this. Right? I'm just saying you should never give in to a child if there's an excess of tantrum, right. If they're going overboard to, to get what they want, they're like throwing a crazy tantrum just to get what they want. Right. You should never give it to them. Yeah, that's my stance. And if, you know, if that happens in my, in my session, sometimes we give in is because we only have one hour and we have to use the best of it because parents are paying and not a, not a small sum. Right. You know how expensive therapy can be, you know, around the world, you know, it's, you're paying for skilled labor. People go through like post grad grad school just to teach children who are on the spectrum, which I think it shouldn't be such a, you know, such a difficult thing. I think, you know, we should be more generous about teaching like skill transfer. That's why I'm Doing this, right. A lot of therapists are watching my stuff. In fact, you know, it's not just mothers, right? A lot of therapists send me emails and say, hey, man, can you help me with this and that. And it's not only in Southeast Asia, there's like, people who are in America who are learning from Asians of speech. So, you know, it's. It's a responsibility that we have to bear. So what I'm saying is that a lot of these things we don't know about the correlation, but what we can control, we should control, which is, should we give in to a kid? Yes and no. Sometimes, like if the. The short term benefits outweigh the long term, which is, you know, a very round way. Like how to say. I'm not answering your question directly. Obviously, you know, how long is a piece of string? It depends, right? So, you know, never give in if it's excess, in a tantrum, like a crazy tantrum. Never given. All right, that will. If you give in during that time, like a crazy tantrum, what does that tell the kid? They can do that and go what they want, right. Which is not cool. And, you know, not to be political, but look around the world, whenever there's a violent protest, does it ever end up the government giving in? No. Right. Most probably. I'm not saying this in a political lens, but I'm not saying as a. As, like, why do they not give in, given that, you know, that's what the people want. And the reason is because if they give in, then it means that this thing works and it's going to keep on coming. Right. What you want to teach these people or, you know, children in, in our, in our field is that there's a better way, right. That you don't need to resort to. To this thing. And we're for, you know, if you're following me or agents of speech for a long time now, you should know we. When we're teaching children, we come from a generous point of view. We. We try to give more than we receive. We don't try to think this is my, like, our philosophy or, you know, just in general. If you read any. Read enough about like speech therapy or language development, you should be thinking about, am I giving enough to receive that, to receive language from my kid? Right? So I wrote an email today. If you're not on our email list, you should check it out. It's agents of speech.com. there's a, you know, sign up for anything and then you'll be on an Email list. You need a tick, right? I. I don't want to force anyone on it, but, you know, like, at the end of the day, you need to know that I wrote an email today, so. And what I said was like, hey, there's a lot of stuff that you want your child to do, right? But at the same time, we need to come from a place where we're fulfilling their wants and needs first. So tolerating the child and a tantrum is one thing, right? Giving in is a whole different thing. So you should never give it once the tantrum gets out of hand. You should only give it to the child when they're calm, and you should give it for free when they're calm, just to let them know, hey, this comes for free. I give it to you. I'm a caregiver, I'm a provider. Just as long as this kind of behavior is intact, I will give it to you. Right? You don't need to resort to trying to be like, you know, a terrorist per se, you know, trying to terrorize me into giving you stuff. It just doesn't work like that. Right? So at the, at the end of the day, it really comes down to, you know, you weighing whether. Is this part of a routine? Is this going to cause you a problem in the long run? Right. If it isn't, then yeah, okay, you can give in. If they try to, like, like, talk to you, you can use it as like a language task. You can teach them, oh, mommy, I want whatever, right? And. And teach them a language in order for them to get it. Okay? But you need to understand children who are under four, they don't really understand, like, because you cannot really, like, logic them into understanding that they cannot have this right now. Or it's just later on, it's very difficult for them to understand that. So rather than trying to, like, negotiate with them, what I usually do and what's been working with the parents and agent speech is to ignore them and then when you say no, have a different reward to distract them. Right? Just to reward them for not being angry and listening to you. Right. And usually what that means is, like, for children who are very difficult to handle, we have a box of chips, a box of chocolate, a box of whatever, or we use our phones, use our gadgets just to distract them and tell them, like, hey, no, you cannot have that Ultraman toy right now. All right? But right before he gets in a tantrum and goes on the floor and mops the mall that. The floor of the, of the mall for for the general public, you know, you give him a reward and say, good, nice thing, calm. Good boy. Here we go. You can't have the toy, but you can watch this video or you can have the chip. Good boy, nice thing, calm. And that will really help the child to learn what is a good behavior. All right, so I think that really sums up what I really wanted to share today, because I had. I'm not home. I'm on vacation. Right. But I had, like, two consultations this morning. I like to do it. I love talking to parents. And this is a common theme since I've done, like, over 100 now of these consultations. Right. Actually, more than that. I haven't. Haven't been counting. But what I see is happening is that the parents come to me, Obviously, they're always saying, like, oh, Ming, I want this. I want that for my kid. I want, like, this, that, that, that, that. But they never come from a place of, oh, what does a kid want? What does. How much does a kid understand? And stuff. Right. If you come from that perspective, then it's much easier to think about. Okay, how can I make him talk by giving him this. How can I make him interact with me by making this fun or whatever? So that is what you should be thinking. All right, so let's jump into some questions, and then let's end this a little bit earlier because, you know, not at home. So someone says, I don't know, some. Someone from the Facebook group says, hi, Ming, what about social interaction? How can we assist the kids to play with others? Well, you know what? We. You should always start off with, like, interaction with you first before trying anything. You know, other kids are very difficult. And the developmental. The way that children develop is that, number one, they start with, like, hanging out with adults, learning how to play with adults, and then slowly, they will learn how to play with their peers. So what you need to do now is to. Oops, sorry, pressed the wrong thing. What you need to do now is to teach your child to play with you first, and then you be the mediator to play with other kids. So I always say, can you find a group therapy session within the. Within a center that your child has been going to? Right. So if you can then do it, like, add the session at the group session, that'd be helpful. You need. You need the adult to be a mediator. Right. If you don't have that, can you set up play dates just to play the same things that. That you've been playing with at home with your kid? Right. That's something you need to look into. All right? Create the stuff that. Create the. The routine and the games that you've been doing with your kid and then bring other children into the equation, whether it's siblings or, you know, played it with your friends, kids or something like that. All right, Kuyan. Hey, Kuyan. Kuan says should we hug him and help him to calm while not giving what he eagerly wants? I felt it works with my kid, but not sure if it's appropriate since some advice to let him stop by, own him instead. You know what? Sometimes, like, I would say that, you know, of course you can. You can hug and calm and, you know, in Indonesian or I don't know about. In Malaysian, right? You can say young, you know, you know, you can. You know, like, we do that all the time. You know, like, people say that. Oh, that's what I learned in aba, is that there's no point. Okay, let me, Let me start all over, right? So. So I. I learned in ABA when I was ABA therapist, right, that there's no point in sayanging or, you know, trying to emotionally console a kid because they don't understand us, right? But experience has told me and through looking at senior therapists that I've worked with, is that doing this gesture and telling them, oh, it's okay, you know, ah, man, I know you're. You're bummed out or whatever, and trying to be, like, emotionally supportive to your kid during this time is actually. It actually works. It actually does. Especially if you have a great relationship with your. With a child. So I've had a few students where, you know, if. If I have, like, a really good relationship with a kid, right? I really have, like, I've built it up for like, a few months. They're actually very forgiving with me, and if they get into a very unhappy situation and if I, you know, I. I console them and give them a hug and sigh on them is actually. It actually works. It actually does work. To my surprise, I didn't know from the beginning. I was always thinking about therapy as a means to an end. And I was talking to a. I've been coaching an ABA therapist to help with a. With an older girl who was in her early teens. No therapy has worked so far, and we're trying stuff. So I'm still thinking about how to do things right. And the therapist told me, oh, dude, I don't. I don't want to give rewards this way. I don't want to, like, talk to her this way because, you know, ABA is very structured. You know, like one, I, I want to try one trial without any cues, and then if she doesn't respond, I go down and I give Q and then whatever. So she's thinking very, very rigidly. Right. And at the end of the day, kids who are teaching are human, right? So if you're not treating them like a human, like we, when we treat each other and you're treating them like a experiment for, you know, behavior intervention, then I don't think that's gonna, you know, at the end of the day, it's not gonna work. You know, it's always about, you know, building a relationship, having rapport with your kid, having a, having a good social interaction with the kid. And then you teach the language. That makes a lot more sense. Right. So, Kuyan, that's a great question. I would always start from a human perspective because we're dealing, dealing with humans if we don't k, like if we ignore them. Yeah, sometimes we have to ignore them. But you know, like, I really think it's, it's obviously it's case by case basis lie, right? But at the same time, you shouldn't think about, about it in that way that, oh, because someone said like this, this information, oh, whenever the kid goes into a tantrum, you really want something, just ignore them. Right. That doesn't mean it will work for a kid. And the same goes to my advice. If you don't think my advice is going to work, you can try it. If it doesn't work, then change. Right? At the end of the day, I want you to try. If it doesn't work, then don't use it. Okay? My stuff, my advice isn't, isn't universal. It's not. No one's advice is universal, Right. No matter who you find. Okay. And no matter what subject you're talking about. We can give a general statement, but does it apply to your kid? I don't know. Not really. For Kuyan, I know your kid, your kid isn't, you know, it's not that kind where you need to be that rigid that you have to ignore him all the time. If, you know, if, if it works, then use it, you know? Yeah. So use your own experience, Kuya. And you know, sometimes I can be like, I can be harsh on you and I tell you, like, I, I can be harsh on you and I tell you, hey man, you gotta do this, do that. You know, at the end of the day, I, I, I, I can say that to you because I've seen your kid multiple Times. I've seen you do it multiple times. Right. So. So this is where you have to help me as well. You need to tell me what's not working, what's not, and what is. Right. And so far, it's been going okay, I would say. All right. I don't know who this is. Maybe it's on Facebook. So, yeah, thank you for. For that. Yeah. I'm not sure if it's a best or not. As long as it works, then I'm fine with it. Okay. I'm also fine with being wrong, by the way. So if you don't. If you do something and you. You're not sure, like, if it doesn't work, I'm also okay with that. You know, like, just tell me. I'm all for, like, changing and learning. Right. I'm a huge proponent of us being very, very flexible, because our kids aren't flexible. So we have to be flexible for them. We have to think of different ways. Right. And that's the premise of, like, therapy. Right. One way doesn't work. Find another. Okay. And sometimes that's a long journey. Long journey. Like, one of my students, I haven't really seen a lot of students because of the pandemic, but one of them who recently came back because I really trust them about their health conditions and so on. Right. And, you know, like, we stuck with teaching the same thing. Although I say that, oh, if something doesn't work, then we should change. Right. But at the same time, I can tell that he needs that one skill, which is the imitation skill, to go to the next level. Right. So we've been stuck on imitation for a very long time for, like, how long? I think like, eight months. And then he finally could imitate, like, mouth shapes. Right. Kind of can go like that. Right. Very, very, very labored. Meaning it took a long time. And it really depends on his diagnosis for. My diagnosis for him was, like, this artery. I mean, that his. His oral muscles couldn't do it. Couldn't make sounds correctly. So it took us, like, eight months. Eight months, man, to get to oral imitation. Those weren't very good. Okay, but let's get back to. To the main topic here, and let's answer some questions. All right? So, yeah, I mean, like, for the courses so far, I'm trying to pump out courses as far as fast as I can, you know, like, but at the same time, I only throw courses out when I've. You know, like, me teaching a kid is different from me teaching you teaching the kid. Right. There's an extra layer. It's like a hammer onto a nail and then a nail into the wood, as a Chinese saying goes, a Cantonese saying at least, right? So all the courses that I make are verified by parents who have done it before, at least like four parents who have gone through the process. And I'm like, okay, I'm confident to put it in a course to teach other people. I don't want to, like, give generic advice, you know what I'm saying? I want to tell you what works. Right? And you know that that's what I want. I don't want, I don't want to have generic courses. I want to make more courses and I want to collaborate with other people to make courses as well. Right. I don't know what kind of courses you want. You tell me what, what stage your child is at and maybe we can work things out. You know, it takes a long time to write down a process that, you know, it's clear for parents. You see, like, for us, it's very like, because this is our profession, we do it for a living. Our. What's that called? Our livelihood. That's online. We, if we see something, it's very easy for us to replicate. It's very difficult for a parent who doesn't know a lot of things in terms of, you know, this kind of knowledge to, to, to get it done, you know, like, it's very difficult. So that's why it's been taking long, a long time to make courses. That's one of the reasons, number two is just, it's just hard, man. It's hard trying to distill what has worked into easier, like digestible things for, for parents to learn. Right? So that's why it's taking some time. And I would appreciate it if you guys tell me what you guys want to learn and I will put in the course. The next course coming out would be about verbal reasoning, about answering why questions, describing things in the sequence, and so on. So the next. That's the next course, basically. Right on. Okay, so someone in the group says, in the Facebook group says, My 2.5 year old babbles all the time how to encourage him to start using yours. Go through the micro course, my friend. So agents of speech.com. i'm typing it in the chat, guys. I mean, like most of you guys who watch me all the time have gone through or at least tried the micro course, right? Yes. Lifetime learning. Gan. That's right. Okay, so that's what you, you're, you're looking for. Well, you know, like go through the, our YouTube video about Mr. Potato Head. That will give you a good framework of how to use. Now let me just find it here. Mr. Potato Head. A good framework of how to teach why simple why questions and sequence description. So I'm going to copy it. Oopsies. I, I cut off my video myself anyways, so this is the, this is what you can watch. Okay, about this is why you can watch Mr. Potato Head. All right, just click that and then it will give you a good framework about teaching like simple why questions and sim and what's that called? Sequence description. There you go. All right, so go there and check it out. We're still in the midst of the making verbal reasoning. It's taking some time, man. Especially you need a. It's not like all toys. You can do it. Like you need some. Or cycle. You need some teaching material. And we're making that right now with a, with a friend of mine who is a. Was a part time artist. We're making more teaching materials and obviously I cannot give it out for free. You know, like it's something that. It takes time on my end and also on my friends and to like illustrate and stuff. So what I'm thinking is we're gonna sell it a la carte and probably we're gonna bundle it up inside of the courses so you can use it. And we also have a free, like. Sorry, not free, my bad. We have a membership where I look through, we look through videos of parents who, who want to learn from us and, and those will be free on the membership. Okay. If you want to know about the. Know more about the membership, just email me. Mainsofspeech.com is only for really committed parents. You know, like we go through videos together on Zoom and we learn with each other and. Yeah, and we have a private community off, off of Facebook and we share resources with each other there. So it's very, very. It's only for committed parents. Don't, don't join if you know you're not that kind of person to teach your child like every day and, and try to have like try to learn therapy techniques and so on. It's not for, you know, someone with a faint of heart. You know, it's not something that you're supposed to do. It's for, for people who want to learn with me. Okay. All right, Cool stuff. So thanks. Korean. Yeah, I will enjoy my vacation. Actually I am in Bali and so far it's been pretty cool. It's pretty cool here. I hear the Waves. It's nice. All right, so someone says, yes, I'm willing on that. We have paid lots of therapy, said 90. It only works. Yeah. At home. That's, that's true because I said it. Right. We should learn more. Okay. Yeah. So because we are our courses, what happens is that I worked with parents one on one before. Now I seldom do that. I work in the membership and I give out advice and I try out things with parents who are committed. When it works, we actually, I try to package it and put it into like a, a course that people understand and that's how like From Zero to Words came and where combiners came into place. Right. It's just I tell parents to do something, they try it and we found out that something works and we put it into a course for other people to learn from. Right. So it's like a baby of, of me teaching and the mom teaching and the dad's learning and like that. So yeah, if you're willing to, to learn about that, you know, like, just email me mingagents of speech.com okay. About the membership. And you know, it's funny because we charge such a low sum for that as opposed to the apps you see online. I'm not going to name any names. Right. And that, that's because, you know, the, the, the reason why I charge little for it. I mean there's loads of therapists out there who charge like 100 plus per month just for that, you know, and it's not even the, the therapist doesn't even review videos or whatever we're doing. This is because, number one, most of the parents who, who watch our stuff are not from, you know, totally developed, you know, not, not, not to say that developing countries, but you know, not, not usa, not uk. Well, yeah, the majority is I guess English speaking countries because I'm talking English. But you know, I'm doing this because parents want to learn and I don't want to, I don't want to be the, you know, I don't want to charge you 100 bucks USD per month. You know, like I talk to a speech therapist that the other day from the USA and she was doing like parent coaching as well, but in a small group as well. And she was charging like 127 USD per month. I'm not going to name her name here. Right. But, but obviously she does great work. But she was like, what, what parents would actually send you videos and do the things that you tell them because she was having a hard time getting the parents to do the stuff she was, she was telling them to do. And here I am, right, sitting in my room receiving videos from parents all around the world, you know, uploading stuff to me. And we go through it on zoom and our zooms are like one and a half hours or two hours of me just asking, tweaking, seeing what's working, what seems not working, stopping the stuff that's not working, you know, asking for opinions of other parents. And one of our coaches who just joined us, like, that's how we work. And if you want it, then you can, you can, you can email me mings of speech.com just to learn more about the membership, because that's what we do, right? We're not a nat, we're educational platform. You know, the, those apps I'm not going to name you, you know, the big two. If, if you've been in this for a long time on Facebook, you see their ads, right? They're, they're, they're, you know, especially one of them, they, they're like 99 USD per month. Not to, like, differentiate with pricing, but, you know, it's funny because, like, one of the parents who got into Agents of Speech, she was like, you know how I found you, Ming? I found you through the ad of this, this speech development app. And then one of the comments is that, hey, why, why pay 100 bucks when you can learn from, you know, agent of Speech and do it yourself? Right? And that's, I'm really grateful of that because that means that I'm, we're doing something correct and we're, we're appearing on other people's advertisements and. Yeah, so if you're, if you're in for that, if you're really committed and you really want to learn how to, like, teacher kid yourself, then email me. That's all. That's the, that's the call to action for this live video. All right, so thank you for all tuning in. I'm gonna, maybe I'm gonna take a shower now and, and relax for a bit and I'll see you next week, Monday when I get back home. All right, thank you guys and I really appreciate you guys, and I'll see you soon. Bye. Bye.