Key to Teaching Non-verbal Children| www.agentsofspeech.com/non-verbal-guide

Foreign. We're live and welcome to our Monday lives. There is a Q and A component about this, so please comment below about your questions where you're from. Say hi. Okay, so into the topic of today. The key to teaching non verbal children. Why do we want to talk about this? Well, and that's the reason is because I've been teaching a bunch of non verbal children since day one of my therapy. I don't know why it's a coincidence or whatever or are there really that many non verbal children around all over the place? I don't know. I, I cannot answer that. But at the same time, what I can tell you is the definition of non verbal for me at least, at the very least, right? So a lot of people will say, oh my kid is non verbal, so on, so forth, but most of the time your child is not non verbal. Okay, so non verbal, is that from my definition there, there are different definitions across the globe. That's the problem with, you know, there's no one consensus about anything in this world. In, in, in the world of therapy, at the very least, we're, we're still, it's a rather young industry. But. Okay, let, let me skip forward. All right, so non verbal for me is that when a child is above and beyond a preverbal context. What, what does preverbal mean? Meaning a child who hasn't started talking yet. Right. So a child who hasn't started talking, it needs to be kind of young, right? So we would say that for me it would be below three, right. Or below two and a half sometimes and that they haven't started talking and their pre linguistic skills haven't been totally developed yet. And I would call it pre verbal. Okay, I would call it like that. Obviously some people are going to disagree with me. Okay, don't mind. You can just put it down in the comments and let me know what you think about it or find a source that you trust and share with other people. Okay. I feel like that's how it should be on the Internet and in society is that if you don't think, if you think that I am saying something that is wrong or whatever, you need to tell me. All right, so why do we want to teach nonverbal children? So a lot of people say the key to nonverbal is to teach a pre linguistic skills. Right? And the definition of nonverbal in my case is any child who is over 4 and still hasn't been able to use verbal expressions to verbal expressions to communicate. So speech is a medium for communicating Language, Right. To convey a message. Okay. They might be able to use like text, might be able to use gestures, might be able to use like what we call AAC machine, like an iPad or whatever, do poke and then they will say I want cookie or whatever. Right. So their language and speech is totally, how to say, it's totally separate. And when we say verbal, we mean like verbal verbal communication. Right. So they probably cannot create speech sounds that are meaningful enough to, to convey a long message. Okay. So given that we know now, now know like the non, what nonverbal means, do we go ahead and teach pre linguistic skills? So the answer is yes and no. It depends on the kid, obviously. Again, when, when is it not dependent on the kid? Right. Meng you every time someone asks me on like email or like I see all your DMs, right. I'm. I'm trying my best to reply them. Thank you so much for asking me these questions. Most of the time I'm caught off guard and then you know, my answer would be I don't know, it depends on your kid. I haven't seen them, I can't give a reply. So let me give you run you through some scenarios of different types of non verbal children. One type of non verbal children would be that their language is rather intact, meaning they understand what we're saying. Most of the time they understand what they want to say, but they just can't. So there are loads of reasons for those. We have severe speech disorders that will create that scenario. So the hot topic nowadays, I say hot because I'm in this industry is that a lot of parents are talking about apraxia of speech. Like long time ago, like a year or so ago, some mother was like, I think my kid has apraxia of speech. And he's like two or something. And I'm like, that would mean that you are rather lucky or unlucky for that matter of fact, because the prevalence of apraxia speech is very low, first of all. Second of all, it's very difficult to diagnose at a young age. Okay. And it's not always a practice of speech. In a severe speech disorder it might be dysarthria. Okay. So I see more and more people joining. So just let me know where you're watching from. It'd be really nice to me for me to like know where everyone's tuning in from and it gives me a sense of I'm talking to someone rather than a camera. But anyways, so about nonverbal, that's the first type, right? Someone who understands the language but not being able to say the speech sounds. Okay. The second type of nonverbal children is that I think overall they are not as developed as other children. Okay. And they have speech and language problems. They might have also motor problems. Right. It's a global developmental delay. That kind of. And I see most of the kids are either this or that, right? There aren't ones that are like in the middle. I think it's rather difficult for me to find such cases because if they're middle and whatever it means that they are actually able to say something like their skills aren't that how to say it's extreme is the word for non verbal children. Okay. So I see loads of people saying actually not those. I'm flattering myself. So a few people, USA Fei, I guess and tuba. Nice. From India and Joanina. Thank you. From Norway. That's excellent. Anyways, so for teaching non verbal children, there is something you have to remember. It's not, not always about the pre linguistic skills. If we're talking about type one, there's no point in doing pre linguistic skills. Right. Because they already have a language system going on. So all you have to do now is to think about what other methods can. Like you need to do two things. Right. Number one is to continue to push for speech. Okay. When we, when people see us, oh, I'm going to teach gestures, I'm going to teach pecs, they're going to think, oh no, that's going to make them lazy to talk or whatever. Right? That's exactly what we're going to do. For the second thing, we're going to teach them an alternative way to get the messages across. Okay. And the reason why is because you don't want to lower their communication intention. Right, Sorry. Intent. That's the word. So why we don't want it to go down is because as it becomes very difficult to give you an answer and if you push for a verbal response every time it becomes stressful and it's unsustainable. Right. And it becomes a chore talking to you, then they will not communicate and therefore the whole language will not continue to develop because they don't use it. Right. Okay. So you have to remember that it's like there's no middle background for that for that person to like. You don't meet the child halfway to meet their communication needs. Right. So therefore for the first type, those who are have a severe speech disorder, but the language is rather. Okay, I would say keep on pushing during a structured setting like during speech therapy or like your table time with your child. Keep on trying new sounds. Right? Keep on trying new sounds. Keep on trying to make them say more syllables. Keep on making them do speech exercises. I'm not talking about oral motor. Okay. I will talk about that in a different live, which I have before. But you know, I've got some new ideas about it since I've been like thinking, reading and, and, and do, and seeing more kids over the Internet now and I know more, I can share more about that. Yeah. So I'm not doing oral motor. Right. And the other part is to continue to give them a system to teach them how to communicate with others with the things that they have. Okay. The other type of non verbal children, those who are globally developmentally delayed. Right. Obviously, yes. We should do pre linguistic skills. Right. What is prelingistic skills? You know, you search it on the Internet, there's like a whole thing like I'm not here to tell you things that you can search up like, like that, like that. That's ridiculous. Right. I mean, why would I become a walking textbook? Right. So pre linguistic skills are things that we work on for children who are below the age of two who are pre verbal. And we teach them the building blocks, the requirements to them being able to use verbal communication. Right. So what we do with these children usually in a special school setting, most of all because they are extreme. Right. They are rather, don't mind me saying, severe cases because they cannot communicate verbally. What you will see happen is that there's a lot of matching. Right. Matching skills. Not going to talk about how to do it. Okay. We're going to, we're going to see a lot more what we call receptive labeling, which means after they hear something, they retrieve something for you or like they point out something for you to say, oh, zebra, this one. Right. And then you might say it might be. You also have like how to say that there's not expressive, there's very little expressive components to it. Right. You also see a lot of packs being taught to these children. And that's because packs, the fundamental reason for teaching packs is to create more, more communication, intention, intent, sorry, always getting the word wrong. So that actually helps the child a lot because now they have a means to get something. So let's talk about a case that I've recently been trying to help the mother to coach her to become a better, you know, therapist slash parent in teaching the kid. Right. So for a very long time she's been following the child, has been following a I'm not going to say the name or whatever. Right. So they've been following some therapy and it hasn't been working. Okay. I talked about this last week, right. It's the same case. So the problem with that is that the child can actually imitate some sounds, but the, the effort was so low, it was really bad. You know, if you say something like water, she goes ah. Like that. At least she got the syllables right. Yeah. So we have to go down and know what type of sounds are missing, Right. And we have to go down to see if that is her true ability or not. Right. And what does that mean is that we're gonna do a lot more imitation, right. Just to get her imitation, her quality of imitation up. And that's really hard to tell the kid because she, she's nonverbal. So the key to teaching nonverbal children who are type two, the second type, in my mind, not. There's no book or whatever that says this. Those who are globally developmentally delayed is your ability to explain the task or explain to them non verbally what you want from them. Because most of the time when you push for something and the child doesn't understand and their cognitive level is rather, is lower than their peers, what's going to happen is that they're going to get pissed off at you, right? They're like, what are you doing, man? I don't understand. And I see that a lot when kids don't know what you want, even if you have a reward, even if you have something she wants or he wants, it's not going to end well. Okay? And the reason is because this is a skill that is rather lacking in the non verbal space, especially for parents because they don't know how to express and present a task so that they understand. And when I went to their house, well, obviously this is a special case for me because I didn't. They were leaving the country. I didn't want them to go without having like more skills under the parents belt, right. So I went to their house and I looked at what's going on, right? And when she was working with me, the mom was surprised. I'm not tubing my own horn, okay? Any old therapist can do it. I'm, I'm, I'm not saying that. I'm like better than everyone, okay? I'm, I'm not saying that. So basically what I mean is that when the mom saw me working with a kid, the kid was a lot more calmer, right? The kid had a lot more eye contact and that's because I've, I've had so much training. I've been lucky as a therapist to have lucky or unlucky, I don't know. There are so many non verbal children that I've taught. And the reason is because I'm a guy and nonverbal children who are a little bit bigger, right, A little bit older, they tend to be a little more physical. So usually they throw me towards that place. It's like, oh, Min can handle him. It's like, whatever. If you look around in my industry, especially in Hong Kong, there are nearly no guys like myself, you know, I'm like an outlier. Just to let you know, you won't see a guy like me working in this industry in an Asia setting, you know, everyone else is like 90% of women. The 10% left are skinny and nice guys, you know, really like very, how to say, very proper skinny dudes, right? Not, not saying anything bad about them. I'm saying bad about myself, right? I don't even fit the industry that I'm working in. So I'm really happy that you guys are watching me because I'm the total opposite of what you expect of a, of a person who teaches special needs children, right? So aside from that, how do you teach and make sure that your child knows what you want first of all to demonstrate over and over and over and over over again until you feel that they know it. And how do you know? It's because you're taking the hand and doing something. That's why it's very important. And I say a lot of times that you know, action imitation is very important. It's not only I know most of the children can do it, it's just that they don't understand they have to do it or they understand the concept of imitation or the concept of I want, you have to have this quality of imitation, right? This level of imitation. I want your full attention and try your hardest, right? So many non verbal children, or those who are like a parrot or whatever, so to speak. I'm not saying this to be like, I'm trying to be politically correct here, okay? Is that they foresee or guess what you want from them and they get away with it, right? But for non verbal children especially, you cannot let them guess and get away with it. So therefore you need to take their hands and keep on doing the thing over and over again until you feel that they understand, okay? Once you have that you want them, you want to pause, you have, you need to put their hands down and Wait like this and give the instruction and then let go so that they cannot do, perform something before your instruction. So this is a very like behavioral approach, right. The instruction must precede the behavior. Okay. And some people might say, oh, this is like, is robotic or whatever. Yeah, but well, I want to see if you can do better than that. You know, like last time I checked, someone who tried another type of approach with that kid, it didn't end well. You know, bite marks and pinch marks. Right. And the reason is because she doesn't know what's going on. And when she doesn't know what, what's going on, fear kicks in. Right? When fear kicks in, she wants to get out. And when you stop her from getting out without telling her why, you know, her brain, the fear, your part of the brain called amygdala is going to light up and it's going to like going to be like get out of my way. You know, you don't want to see me hold my cat here, right. If I hold her down without any reason particular and she's feeling scared, she's going to scratch me. No matter how much you, how much she trusts me. Right. And you know, she's sleeping right here in front of me. I put my hand on top of her. She's not, she doesn't attack me. But if I do something outside of her comfort zone without enough explanation to her, she's going to freak out. And it's the same for non verbal children. Not saying that they are as if they are animals and not don't mean that. Okay. So at the end of the day, what's the key thing you need to learn about teaching children is to explain the task correctly. Okay. And this is something that no one talks about, I guess, especially to parents. Okay. When you teach a nonverbal child, you don't need to say one word, not even one word, and you can get them to do what you want them to do. And if I wish I could demonstrate this right in front of you. Right. And because of parents consent, there's a lot of things I cannot do and I will not do in fact because you know, it's just, it's just hard to share this kind of knowledge through video format. You know, I can write about it, I, I can show you in person if you come. But at the same time, until I feel like it's, it's ethical to like for, for a parent to be vulnerable enough to, to show their, their, their children being taught by myself, which I have. Right. I think it's some of the time it's okay. But you know, like the more how to say the, the lower the ability of a kid, the more emotional baggage the parent has. And that's no way around that, you know, like it's very difficult to ask someone, oh, can you show me? Like no one in their right mind would say, oh, you can take a look at my non verbal child and learn from her. Come on. Right. So it's kind of difficult, right? So that's it for, for tonight, I guess that's all I want to share, which I don't think anyone has been talking about. And if you want to know more about like how to teach non verbal children, you can go to the link below or above wherever it is, like asiansofspeech.com non verbal guide or something. I'm not, I forgot already. Anyways, just click the link above and you'll, you'll see a whole flowchart that I use. It's very general, but it's a general good guideline for you to, to take a look. Okay, go see it. All right. And if you're already in the from zero to words course in agents of speech.com, then great. That's how I usually approach. No matter if I'm teaching someone to do it, like a new therapist or a parent, I always go through that flowchart that I give them and it is an over generalized piece of art. But at the same time you need to have that like you have to have that format in your head in order to go forward. And the only way to get better at communicating and telling like non verbal children what you want from them effectively is to do it. There's no way, there's no things that you can, there's no other way other than doing it right. You know, like it's about the people, it's about the kid, how she reacts to you or he reacts to you and how you react to how they react. So it's a meta thing, is a meta reaction, you know, and keeping it cool because sometimes, truth be told, when a nonverbal child doesn't listen to you, I see the fire in the mom's eyes and you just want to smack them, right? I mean they've been trying so hard and all you want to do is escape and bite them. Of course. And if you keep on trying and nothing works, then of course you're going to get angry. It's just human, right? So at the end of the day you have to remind yourself that you cannot use your own ruler to measure their progress. Right. Especially for children who have like cognitive delays or disorders or multiple complex disorders going on. We cannot use our own ruler to think, oh, dude, it's so easy. Just making a sound is so hard for them already. So remember that. And I know it's tough to. It's a tough pill to swallow right there. Are you think. You might think that my kid is like this and you would compare with other people, but when there's a comparison that goes lower, then that comparison is not valid anymore. Right? Just remember that there are a lot more. You know, I've seen very hard cases, very difficult cases, and I've seen very easy cases too. Right? It doesn't matter what type of case it is, as long as you don't give up. You will see some results. Okay? There will be some improvements. And each former non verbal kid that I've been able to speak to, they all said one thing. They all said, well, thank God someone didn't give up on me, you know, that's what, that's what they all say, right? If you talk to someone who was in their adulthood or teenage years that they used to cannot speak properly, I was like, thank God someone didn't give up on me, you know, you never know. If you leave them alone, what would happen? Like, would they still be verbal? Who knows, right? So this is like the type of work that I do. I don't know if my work is 100% useful sometimes. Right? But at the same time, you gotta, you gotta deal with what you got to deal with. Right? Okay, so that's all for tonight and I'll see you guys in the next, in next week. Okay? That's it. And I'll see you. Bye bye.