How to Treat Speech Delay at Home

Hey, so let's talk about how to treat speech delay at home. The first thing I want to talk about is when you're treating a speech delay, or more appropriately called speech and language delay, is that we start with what the child wants. A lot of times the advice you see on the Internet given by therapists is that, hey, we should follow child's lead. It's literally saying the same thing. But I wouldn't say following the child's lead is something that you should do right away. The reason is because it takes a lot of observation, skills, waiting and also knowing what you're doing to get this to work. So what do I mean by start with what the child wants? It's basically see what the child is communicating with you for already. So he might want a cookie, he might want to be lifted up, he might want to go on the slide, he don't want to go outside, yada, yada, yada, find that thing that he's already communicating. And that is the thing that we will use to create more appropriate communications to get the words or sentences or full fledged stories. Okay? Start with what your child wants. Don't think that you know, because I want you to talk, therefore you should talk. Why aren't you talking when your friends are talking already? Child doesn't know any of these. When we're doing, we're the teacher, we're putting our standards on the kid. I want you to talk because I want you to do well in school, right? Because I don't want you to fall behind. And when people see that you're falling behind, it reflects on me. Right? These are the conversations that parents are having inside of the brain, whether or not they know it or not. And this is me after talking to like hundreds of parents on zoom on the Internet through emails and whatnot. Okay? Start with what the child wants so that you can push your agenda forward. Because child didn't ask to be speech delayed, right? They were born and this is how they know the world. So whenever you're teaching something, it's rocking their world so you better have benefit for them. Okay, we have loads of videos on this, by the way. Watch more about the mindset of going into therapy, going into home practices and so on. The second thing is to, to focus on only 10 to 15 minutes a day of training. A lot of times is I get an email out of nowhere and a parent from, I don't know, Croatia or somewhere, and she would say, oh, I've been teaching my child to talk and we'll spend like an hour doing it. And I was like, okay, so what happens? Oh, well, like 80% of the time, it's me trying to get him into the task, teach him some stuff. I'm narrating everything doing as what the advice is saying on the Internet. But what people don't understand is if you only use 10 to 15 minutes a day of focus training and you do it every day, it goes a long way, super long. And if you can get an inch that a little attention from your child only during that time, it serves two things. Number one, your child would think, oh, that's not a lot. I can do that. Number two, it's also not a lot for you. And you're getting what we call, like a true ability of a child to come out. A lot of times when a child Is like below 3 or even like all the way up to 6 there, they cannot sit for that long. It's just impossible for them to sit down and learn with you for that long. Plus, if you're doing it in a naturalistic way, like on a floor mat and you're rolling around with tons of toys on the floor, you're trying to do stuff, those 10 to 15 minutes aren't going to work that well because a lot of times it's just switching between tasks and doing this and that. So my next point is to get your home and family members ready. If your home is toys all on the floor, you know you don't have a specific space to do therapy. And I know there are places in the world where the house is smaller. I come from a place where my room is like only a bed, so I know. But then can you transform the space, at least clear out the clutter? At least the child doesn't have something else to fall back on when they're doing therapy during that time. Right. Then your 10 to 15 minutes will be very well served. But if you don't create an environment of which you can sit down with a child for extended period of time, it's not going to work. Okay? Secondly, family members need to be ready and to be on board. So what I mean by that is a lot of times if you're using a reward. I just got an email from a dad from India. It was like, oh, no wonder it wasn't working. My wife was giving out the rewards without the training. Then of course, whatever you're doing is you're going to be the villain. It's like, why? Why do you want me to talk and do work when this was for free anyways? It's crazy. It's like we could drink water for free. Not for free, but we pay for it on the tap, right? Let's say that's cheap. But then suddenly someone says, okay, you need to do this, pay for this, pay for that, and then you can have the water. That doesn't make sense for anyone, even for the kid. Your child is probably smart enough to understand that there are weak links in the family members that will do their bidding. And it won't be nice during that 10 to 15 minutes because tantrums will occur. It's like you're a villain. You're trying to get me to work and say these things according to your agenda. And I can't go like play with toys myself. And I can't just open the fridge and grab whatever I want. This is the same reason, by the way, one of our coaching clients, a parent from Indonesia, and she was like, I wonder why she doesn't like it. Well, because actually the kid could just open the fridge and grab herself with a chair and it happened without them around. So I'm like, hide that. That's your weapon. You got to use that or else she wouldn't need to communicate. I mean, it's the same as going to work. If money just fell from the sky, then we don't have to go to work and we don't have to listen to anyone. And we do whatever we want, right? And we will only go for the passion projects that we truly like to do. But at the same time, talking is not a passion project for a lot of kids who are delayed. If it was, then they would have be speaking already. So just remember, whenever we're pushing forward agenda that we're doing at home, especially at home, it needs to make sense for the kid. And that's why your home needs to be ready. Your family members need to be ready. Because if you have a weak link, that 10 to 15 minutes is going to be helpful. Okay, Anyways, the last point which kind of encases everything is to become a therapy savvy parent. And what does that mean? Does that mean all you got to do is just like watch YouTube videos? It might not be me, it might be someone else. Might be like 80, 90% on ladies are. But the problem is this. You need to do in order to become better and just not watch, right? You need to do stuff. So when you're doing therapy at home, how you become more savvy is to see what others are doing and do it yourself and ask for feedback. And that's how we do it in agents of speech. So you can, you can look at all the free courses in our. In our community. You can ask other parents for feedback. You can ask us for feedback. And we do have paid coaching things that we do, but you don't really need that to become a savvy parent. That's what I'm trying to say. Don't think that I'm trying to coerce you into joining any of our paid programs. To be honest, we have more than enough parents coming in, and we only accept parents who have already gone through at least most of the things that we want you to know. So become that therapy savvy parent. Go learn. Ask from other parents about how they did the things that they're trying to do. The best person to learn from is the person who's doing the same thing as you, not the speech therapist who's in the clinic and the ivory tower where the clinic is already ready for children to learn. Okay, so anyways, that's all for today's video. If you want to learn more, you can grab the free courses at www.agensofspeech.com course. We have free courses ranging all the way from no words, nonverbal children, all the way to sentence building. Full sentences, like answering why, questions, telling stories. There. Okay, that's it for today. I'll see you in the next video soon. Bye. Bye.