Ming from Agents of Speech explains why I and you are hard to teach: they require kids to shift perspective. She recommends checking that children can speak in sentences and take turns first, then using a two-sided paper cue labeled I/my and you during games to help them map perspective to the right pronoun.
So today let's talk about how to teach children pronouns. So the pronouns that parents ask me a lot is between you and I. And a lot of the times when parents try to prompt children to say I want or like you want or whatever, they tend to just repeat after and parrot after what the parent says, and in turn, it's wrong. Okay, so you and I, these kind of pronouns are quite hard to teach because what are you going to do? You're going to tell your child to repeat after you, and that would sound wrong coming from your perspective. Right? So first of all, you have to understand where your child's language is at. Right. If your child is stuck at like I want phrases or very frozen phrases, as we would say, then maybe the best idea is actually to teach different subjects, such as mommy, daddy, brother, sister, policemen, whatever, people, as a category of subjects, maybe you should teach those first. Before going into you and I, a lot of parents go into the trap of thinking, oh, you and I are so simple. It's that it's so functional. I should teach my child to do that. But at the end of the day, it's actually more functional for your child to just call you mommy or call themselves their name. For now. Right. I understand there are milestones out there on the Internet saying that, you know, I and you pronouns are around like 27 months, all the way up to like, I don't know, three years old maybe. So if your child is above three and they're still mixing up you and I, it's still rather common, I would say, especially in the delayed population. That's where we, our clientele is there. Right. Like, you will see that children who are typically developing, they might even master it by the age of two. And that's why when you see other children as a parent, there's going to be a discrepancy. Right. And why is it so hard to. The you and I pronoun is so hard is because it's a shift in perspective. So let's say that if I am trying to learn a new language, especially in English, by the way, like I, it could be me, could be my, but you is always you, and you refers to different people around who are all you without using third person pronouns, like you, a second secondary. So if I keep on saying you for everyone, that doesn't really make sense because children are trying to learn a specific name for a specific person, whereas myself or themselves, the child, him or him herself would want to refer themselves with their name. Right, because you've been calling their Name and so on and so forth, right? How do we actually teach it? So the prerequisite is that your child is already speaking in a rather full sentence, at least a subject, verb, object. So for instance, mommy eating apple, right? Mommy is eating the apple. And the grammatical correct sense. And then secondly is that you have some things that you can take turns in doing. So if you can take turns and do it doing something and there's a game going on, it will be much easier to teach the you and I thing. And one of the things that I used a lot in the clinic and I also teach a lot of parents to do which works is to get a sheet of paper one side, right? I, one side you. Now, this might be tricky because in English it could be like when I say my turn, then it should be my right. You have to decide what to write given the situation. And the first reply that I always hear parents is, my child doesn't read yet. But you know what? All writing is just symbols. If there's an I, I'm sure they know I from ABCs. And you just the length of the word is going to help them differentiate a little better than using a gesture. Because like, I see a lot of therapists as well as like, my turn, your turn, like that. But the problem is like either whatever, the gesture is going to be the same, like tapping onto the chest, right? So it would be really difficult for the child to understand. So if I prompt like this, they're going to try to say my, because I'm tapping here and they think that they're supposed to copy that, right? So if you're doing a gesture already, remember, take their hand and put it on your chest instead of doing this. Okay? So that aside, going back to the written queue, one side is I or my and one side is you. So why it's good is because if it's their turn, if it's child's turn, you can put the paper here and I'll sell I and put out the slanted angle so they can read a little bit. So there I. And when it pushes to you, it will say you, right? So this is something that it's. It's like a. It's. It's like it's something that doesn't flip and it's easy to understand like that. Easier to understand, you might need to go back and forth at least 10 times for them to start getting it right. The queue doesn't become a queue unless you build it. That's always what we say in the therapy world. All Right. So usually it should be done by the time you use this queue. And if you have a turn taking game going on, it might be like an A single that we have over there or anything, to be honest. Like any type of game that your child enjoys. Add one more player and then now you can do more use because you can refer to the person you're looking at. And that's pretty hard for a child who is on the spectrum because making that connection that everyone that I look at is a you, it's going to be difficult because a lot of times they're not referring to someone directly, they're referring to the situation. And so there's something that you just have to power through. All right, this is what I would recommend for you. And I see a lot of. And I seen therapy before using a mirror. I've used it myself. I don't really. It's very cumbersome, especially for a parent who is already juggling how to play a game and then you still have to hold onto a mirror. That's going to be really difficult. But for me, what I see is working for me and other parents is just use the piece of paper with the written cues, you and I. Right. So that's all. This question actually came from our community. And if you want to ask questions that I reply and other therapists reply, just go to agents of Speech.com course and then enter email. You get an email there to your inbox with the link of our community. Please make an account there and then you can ask questions inside. There are 13,000 parents and professionals inside, so go ahead and ask your questions there. All right, so see you guys next week. Bye bye.
