Monday Live: Challenging Behaviours 101

Hello, Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. This is Ming. Sorry for the messy hair. And this live on Monday morning, I really want to talk about challenging behaviors because throughout the weekend, I've been having a few comments and questions about, you know, my child is right now they're doing this, and you don't know what to do at home. So given the situation, still, we've been saying this for three months now. How crazy is this? Three months that we've been stuck in this pandemic, and we don't know what to do about it. So if you're still at home and you're thinking about, hey, whether should you go back to school or keep on going with homeschooling or whatever, still it's going. Still, it's still going to be very difficult for you to think about what to do at home, all right? And one of the biggest problems really is actually, it was actually just dealing with behavior, all right? It really, really is just to do with dealing with behavior. Because to be honest, if you can actually do. If you can actually deal with your child's behavior, it's going to be much, much easier to teach anything, all right? And that's just the truth of it. So let's just go on about a few rule of thumbs that I like to use, all right? And at any time, you can tell me, oh, no, I forgot to plug in the microphone. And if anytime you feel like you cannot, you have questions about it and you don't know what to do, please do tell me, all right? This is something that a lot of parents are struggling with. To be honest, you're not alone at all. There are very. A lot of instances of actual violence from the. The kids. So no matter the violence is towards you, towards the helper, towards anyone else, or towards themselves, these challenging behaviors become quite difficult to handle. So I want to talk about, first of all, identify what kind of behaviors can be fixed. Right? So the first one is, of course, as I said, violence, okay? And this is what we call aggressive, okay? When you go to a therapy center, you say, oh, yeah, yeah, this child is being very violent or being very aggressive. So if you have the same issue, please comment and let me know what's going on. And then at the same time, think about, you know, violence or aggression as a means to an end. There must be a means to an end, okay? That's number one. Number two is ignorance. So one of my clients, actually, I was teaching her how to read a book. If you're watching this again, you know who you are. Right. And she was, like, trying to get her daughter to listen to her and point to the words, to read the books one by one. But the thing is, to be honest, like, you have to think about why your child is ignoring you and why you have to, like, get their fingers and get them to point to a certain place in order to get them to. To hear you. Right? To actually listen to you. So ignoring is actually still a very, very bad. It's actually a very, very big issue at this moment in time. Right? So. And then what you want to do next is juggling a lot of things. Right? All right? So, yeah, other than that, there is a few more behaviors that I do want to talk about as uncompliance. And what that means is that you tell them to do something, to do something else, just being naughty. All right? So there's. There's the. I'll go through it again. There's, like, aggression, like. And then the second is, like, there's aggression towards themselves, to other people, to specific people, to furniture that, like objects that are just objects, like the table or something. And then there's also ignorance towards you or towards whatever, towards any kind of stimulus. That's ignorance. That's also behavior number three is like, they're not just not compliant. You can't get them to do whatever you want them to do. And sometimes all these three come together. All right? And that's something you have to tackle right now at this moment in time. I want to tell you a story. I want to tell you a story about me, all right? When I started off, my first kid, I can't tell you his name still, although it's a long time ago. I don't want to expose his name or anything. All right? So it was back in Hong Kong. I was working at institution or actually a clinic, a private clinic that does primarily, actually only children with autism, maybe, maybe not. Your child is on the spectrum. It doesn't matter. These things work, okay? You got to listen up. So this kid, let's call him Tom, all right? Tom, if you don't talk to him or you don't engage him, all he does is flap his hands and this cat hair and he just runs around and all that stuff, all right? But if you try to teach him anything, what happens is that he actually comes over and bites you. So for my very, very first kid, I already had a biter, okay? And to be honest, that isn't actually very common, right? That really isn't very common. So the thing is, that isn't actually very Oops, sorry. Yeah. So if you think about it, what are you going to do if a child bites you every time you try to teach him? Right? What can you even do? I mean, like, it's basically straight up refusing to, like, engage with you. So what should you do? So, I mean, you have heard about a lot of therapists talk about, hey, you should ignore, ignore, ignore, ignore, ignore, right? But you got to understand there are different levels of functions. Different levels of functions for children. All right? Different levels of functions. So you have to think about why that kid is biting. Okay. And if you think and how do we even, like, go about it? You first have to think about what's going on. What triggered that activity and how we solved it was actually. We understood that actually the biting was a form of protest because we were too close to the kid. It wasn't actually doing the task per se. It was actually being too close to the child. All right? Being too close to a child also will trigger. So you have to see what triggered the behavior. And one of them is actually, back then was touching physical distance and physical restriction that actually made the child unhappy. So we realized that we had to slowly increase our distance between us or else it's not going to work. Okay. And in the end, of course, he's like a very, very, like, very good, you know, like, he was so rigid. This first kid I ever had was so rigid that if I told. If I. If we were inside a room, right, and then we decided to go out for like one second, he would instantly go on the floor and cry. It's very extreme. I'm very thankful. By my first ever case was that difficult. You know, it taught me a lot of things. So, yeah, you have to understand what is the trigger and you have to observe very closely. No one can tell you right now. I mean, I hope that I can. I can like help you out, but it's just if I don't see the whole context, even if you give me a video, it's best that I see a few of them, you know, like. And tell me what happened before, before, after, and what the aim is. So for instance, there's like I told you about the big four things that, you know, I've been talking about on my ig, by the way, you can go there. Mainfunk speech. I was on the live again with Blue Bridge. It was awesome. So we were talking about, like, functions of behavior again in a very ABA style. So functions of behavior, There are four. Basically. There's sensory, there's. I forgot what Does EE stand for escape? Yeah, sensory escape. Attention and tangibles, which means, like, they want something. So it spells out to S E A T seat. Right. So once you know the reason. So for my case, back then, the child was biting because I was physically too close. So that actually is kind of like a sensory. It's like a sensory tactile defensiveness. And this probably is learned when he was a kid. People were too close to him or tried to get really close to hug him or whatever, and he didn't like it. He didn't know how to say it. Therefore, he used biting, and it became a habit. All right, sorry about that sound. It's my cat. He just got a surgery. So he put this collar on. It's called Elizabeth collar or something, but he doesn't know it's there. So he's scratching it and it's making that noise. All right, at any time, please ask me any questions. And if you're watching this on the recording, which most of you are, just drop me a comment. I'll try to reply them as soon as possible. All right, so now you know, like that. Okay, So I want to keep on talking about examples to give you more inspiration, because obviously, even if we've interacted before you told me about your kid, the analysis for the function might be wrong because I haven't seen the full picture. These children I've seen day in day out back in the day for like two or three hours. Nowadays, I can see it faster. I can actually check and see what's the problem. All right. Yeah, don't mind him. He's a little lost. The function of his behavior here, my cat, is that he's a little lost and a little blind. Okay. That's my hypothesis, anyways. So when he gets lost, he blind. He. He smells me around, but he cannot see me. He'll go like that. All right, so another story for you guys. So I had another kid over here, over here. All right, So I had another kid whenever he. He stopped by cars. He stopped by cars. And if we don't let him, he will instantly go on the floor and mop the floor, you know, like. Like a spinning top and go. And he would speak in Cantonese, because he's from Hong Kong, he would say, like. That's the only word that he says consistently back then. And obviously after, like, four months of it, we finally got him to speak, like, three word sentences, which was hallelujah. But the process of which was very, very difficult. So the function for his behavior here is very, very obvious. Right? So when someone denies him of cars, he would mop the floor. So therefore, he wants to access certain tangibles. He wants certain things. All right? And that's the most common. This is the actual most common thing that they want. All right? The most common function is that they want something, you don't let them, and they go in berserk, right? That is the most common thing. Okay? So let's go on to another one, another kid. Whenever he couldn't get his message across and you didn't get him after, like three tries, he would shout and just run away. So actually, this kind of function does not fall inside the four main ones, right? It's not really sensory, it's not really escape, it's not really attention, it's not really access to tangibles. Right? It's not any of these. But actually what it is is frustration. Just genuine frustration, okay? And the reason why he was doing that, because he tried his best to tell what he wanted, right? But you just don't understand. Or he wanted to communicate with you and then he just didn't understand. He gets frustrated and it becomes like, just anger. All right? So sometimes what it really is, the function of it is that something is too hard, they can't do it, and they get frustrated, and therefore it becomes like maybe aggression, maybe violence, maybe whatever, all right? And we all have it. Haven't you tried that? It's just because, like, we're adults now and we can give up on certain things, but kids, the society gives them, like, certain tasks that are so hard sometimes, and if they can't do it, it's like, their fault. And we're trying to, like, show them, hey, other kids can do it too. And therefore, when they can't do it, it becomes very frustrating because there's nowhere to go. And by the way, this is just my opinion. I'm not saying in any sense this is the truth or anything, okay? You don't need to listen to me. I'm pretty stupid myself, so. And I think this is why there's so many suicides going on with, like, children or students in, in high school or in. In secondary school. That especially is happening in Asian countries, right? I mean, what are they going to do if they screw up in secondary school? They don't get a second chance, right? What are you gonna do nowadays? Like, you're gonna wash dishes. It's just impossible. Everyone thinks that you should go to uni, whereas, like, back in my dad's age, only, like 20% of people actually go to uni. And they can make a living without that. Okay? So just a little sidetrack. I just want you guys to bear in mind that not every kid, not everyone should actually go to uni or, like, should actually be given such high standards. All right? I remember one kid who came to the clinic, and then she's like. And this kid had pretty major apraxia of speech. We haven't talked about apraxia yet. We will make a video about it on the YouTube channel and also on Facebook. Just stay tuned if you want to talk about it and listen in. But I remember that that kid was, like, struggling with, like, vowels. And the first thing that she told me, is she gonna have. Is he gonna have problems in uni? And I'm like, whoa, relax. We haven't even gone through kindergarten yet. We haven't even gone through any of the exercises I want him to, like, start with because he cannot really talk yet. So why are mothers thinking so far ahead? And it's very difficult for. For me to understand because I haven't been a parent yet. So when you guys have to bear in mind, like, the now. Okay, the now, be present. Because also, we also put pressure on ourselves as therapists, right? We see. We ask around, and then we try to find cases that are similar between, like, our colleagues. And then we say that, oh, I have this case. Oh, you have this case. Cool. What are you doing? Oh, really? Oh, really? Oh, I'm at this stage. You're at this stage. Cool, Cool, cool, cool, cool. But there is some form of invisible competitiveness. Okay, I get it. I understand. Although I'm not as emotionally invested as you, because you are the mother. You're the father, you're the parent. All right? Oh, and by the way, happy Father's Day if any of you guys are fathers, but I realize that 90% are women who watch this stuff, so. But anyways, happy Father's Day. So, yeah, let me go back to the function. So you really have to nail down on what function your child is actually doing. I see that Fonny is watching again. She's so cool. Kudos to you, Bonnie. So for your child, basically, it's access to tangibles and escaping. Those two are the biggest. And the third. And the third for your child is, like, is for sensory issues. And for sensory issues, you have to be careful. Because a lot of. A lot of people tell me that my child's very sensitive. They're going to ot. They're doing, like, sensory integration, which, by the way, I don't understand, because right now I'm in Southeast Asia. I'm in Indonesia. Right. In particular, I'm stuck here because I don't want to fly back to Hong Kong. Anyways, so sensory integration is a part of ot. Like, you don't call sensory integration or they call it sensory intergrassi or something, as a separate entity. Right. It's a part of ot. So the thing is. Yeah, funny. Hi. Yeah, so you have to be careful. You have to understand what is sensory. Are they really sensitive or did they have a bad experience? Like my first ever client with sense, they do have sensory issues, but it's heightened. It's, like, made psychological by, you know, overexposing them and having a bad experience. Right. So this is also the case with. With one of my clients in Jakarta who. Who didn't like to cut his hair. But the problem is that every time the parents would cut the hair, they would lock them down. Like, you know, the dad would actually show me. Like, it was like a bicep choke, you know what I'm saying? Like, it was like going across the neck and going like that. And the two helpers would hold their sides, and he was like, in a mental ward, and then he was like, ah. And he was getting cut by razor. So if you were in that situation, you were a kid, you didn't know better, no matter what stimulus it is, right. You pair bad experiences with a certain sound, you're going to be scared of it. And that's why when we were kids, we were scared of the dentist. We weren't scared of the drill. We were scared of the potential hurt that it would give us. It wasn't that, like, it didn't hurt that much anyways, but it reminded us that it hurts, all right? The sound reminded us that it would hurt. Okay? And if you think about it, the things that we are scared about are pretty much traumas of the past. If, like, I have a few friends that cannot swim to the state with the same age as I am. I'm 20. Crap, I forgot. I'm 29. Yeah, I'm 29. I'm nearly 30. So they can't swim. And the reason, because they cannot swim, it's not because they don't know how to. It's because when they were young, they actually were, like, they were suffocating and they kind of mini drowned or something in the water, and they got, like, water in their, like, throat or something, and it was a very bad experience. So whenever they went to the swimming pool and tried to, like, put the head under the Water it. It actually reminded them of that bad experience. So for this stuff, it's like a trauma. And if your kid is having this kind of reaction whenever you present any kind of thing to them that makes them go that way, then it is actually. Then it's actually something that you have to look into, all right? You really have to be careful because it becomes something what we call, like, defensiveness. And most of the time, it's something called tactile defensiveness. It's learned. It's a learned behavior, all right? So you have to check. You have to check. And how you check is you see if you can systematically increase. Systematically increase the distance between that thing that they're scared of and themselves. All right? So. Yep. Let me know what your. Your children are scared of in the comments. Okay, so I was talking about Vonnie's kid, right? And basically, there are a few things that you have to work on right now. The access to tangibles, the wanting of something, just. It basically means that it's a stupid long word for it. You have to be able to give them an easier way to get it instead of screaming and shouting. So that's what we're working on with funny, right? The open palm escapism. Don't let them escape, right? No matter what. Even if they kick you in the face. Still cannot. I had a kid, the first one ever, if I rejected him from leaving the seat, he would actually, like, bang his head on my thighs, and it would get very close to my private parts. And it was pretty scary. And a few times he got it. It's not that funny. When I got home, my first job ever, my mom would wash my clothes, right? And then my trousers that I have to wear at the clinic, because I was a professional, was one of those, you know, those suit ones, those khaki chino pants. And sometimes it might be like just straight up suit pants. The fill was alive, man. So you have to know how much you have to restrict when denying your child from leaving the seat. And something I like to do is to wrap my. It's something I. I learned from my supervisor back then. I still use it to this day. I still teach to new therapists. I still teach to moms. So what you do is you wrap your legs around the chair. So in essence, what you're doing is if they're sitting here, your leg needs to go around and hook on the legs of the chair so that they cannot leave, all right? No matter how they push, no matter what they do, they can't leave. All Right. And only do this, by the way. Only do this if they have a tendency to run away. All right? Don't do it. If they're okay with sitting, you know, it would just be very, very, very, very inappropriate. And I'll say it again. If your child has a tendency to, like, stand up, what you want to do is not to push on the shoulder, all right? Because if you think about the mechanics of a human being, right? If you push on the shoulder, when we're very good at it, we, like, wear, not wear. We put on backpacks. And if we're putting something really heavy, we tend to put on our shoulders, and we're able to squat up and push the weight up. That's why it's difficult to push your child down on the seat. What you should do instead is to find a hinge between the hip. All right? On the hip. So, you know, when you push on the hip, it's a hinge. It's very easy to push them down because it's very weak there. So you just push them down and then just secure them on the seat like that. On the hinge. Like here, Right? Like here, here. And then you push them down and you place them on the seats and wrap your legs around the chair, and it makes it 100,000% easier to keep them in place. Okay? I like to do a lot. Yeah. So with that said, that is how you get rid of escapism. And you might ask me, hey, what about the sensory stuff? Right? So, sensory stuff. Go see an OT that is very, like, qualified. Don't, like, just see whoever. I like to start off with just letting. Just teaching your child that it's okay to be. For you to touch him or her. All right? Sometimes I use the whole session just to let them manipulate their hands. Sometimes if your child is like this, like most children like this, if they have some sort of tactile defensiveness, when you hold their hands and you, like, kind of shake them or, like, help them, Dubai. There's, like, a strong resistance. They don't want to be touched. Okay? And that. That is not cool. Because down the line, we want to be able to manipulate their hands, to show them how to do gestures, number one. Number two is if we're teaching them certain tasks on the table that require them to listen where they cannot use their voices or speech to tell you the answer, most of the time, they're going to point to the right one. So, for instance, if we're teaching a bunch of vocabs and we need them to catch Up. The easiest way is to use objects and pictures, and when you say the word, they point to it. Right? So if you cannot manipulate their hand, then you can't teach them. Right. So we're actually doing it with Tenor, one of our members. Actually, we're catching up on a bunch of vocabs. And if you're not able to tell him to get what you want and it's very stiff, then it's very hard to teach. All right? So you have to make sure that at the very least, she or he is okay with you actually moving the hands. Okay, that's what I wanted to say. So let's go back to the violent behavior stuff. So let's talk about the client that I was thinking about first. The violent behavior. You can think about it in a few levels. First of all, like, what's the trigger? What's the trigger? You have to be crystal clear about the trigger. You need to be totally. And you can totally anticipate that it will happen, because children who are below six. Okay. Who are below six are rather simple. They have, like, a straight line towards something that will happen. Right. As I told you, if I. The first client I ever had, if I held him physically tight, he would be mad. I know that. For truth. What can you find as a truth for you, for your child? Can you know? Do you know? Can you. Can you. Can you tell me that, you know, if I do something. If you do something specific, a specific behavior will happen, all right? And it's very unfair, by the way. If I do it, usually I get away with it. If someone else, a stranger, a doctor or whatever does it, they get away with it. But with you, especially the mom, you get bullied, all right? That's just the end of the conversation. You know, you really do get bullied. So is there something that when you do it specifically, the child will have a specific behavior? If you do. If you know this, then great, then we have something to work on. We know that antecedent. Then you know, we know that the trigger for it. So once you know the trigger, we have to think about why. Okay? Think about why. So there might be a few reasons in your head that you're thinking that might be the case. Most of them that parents report to me are, hey, my child's just really angry. I think they're trying to talk to me. You know what? Those are totally valid points, but usually, in my understanding is that if a child is, like, violent, and they want to. And they want to be violent and throw things around, I Think actually they want something, all right? They really do want something. Every behavior has a reason behind really does. So you really have to think about what is going on and what they want before, okay? And the more that you don't understand, as they increase their, their behavior, their. Their protest, the more you don't get it, the more frustrated they become and it becomes more violent. All right? So how do you even. Go ahead and try, okay? So first of all, you have to really, really, really, really observe very slowly. Whenever violence happens or whenever aggression happens, you have to stay quiet, all right? Because it's just a waste of. A waste of your voice. There's no way they're going to listen anyways because they're shouting, they're screaming, they're unhappy already. People who are angry do not listen to reason. And that's the same with anyone, all right? You have to let them to calm down first. So the first things first is that they need to understand this kind of behavior does not work. All right? And what I mean by don't work? Well, first of all, the thing you have to do is to shut up, right? Number one, do not talk. Place them somewhere that is safe. Put them somewhere that's safe. I mean, I've actually said all this advice before, I believe, but for my client, it's still happening. So I think what's happening is just a relapse in terms of behavior. And I'll show you guys next time or next time on a graph that behaviors do come back. They're extinct. There's extinct curve for certain behaviors, and it's kind of true for nearly everything. Okay, so basically I think that what happened was the child reverted to the old ways and thought that, okay, I'm going to try it out, and maybe he got some thrill out of it, and that's why it keeps on happening. It was rather reportedly it was reported that it wasn't the case anymore. Right. But anyways, so you have to calm down, you have to be quiet. You have to put them in a place where you can control them. And usually what the best way to. Best place to control them is actually on the ground with a mat that is padded. All right? And preferably the wall is also padded. And we just put them there. Okay. It's kind of like a safe jail. Okay. And then a lot of therapists will say, hey, you should ignore bad behavior. Yes, you should. You really should. But sometimes the ignoring is like ill defined. They didn't tell you exactly how to ignore. So how I would ignore is actually just to put my hand out here and then just put. And just touch them on the chest, right? Because when you touch them on the chest, this. This length is longer than any part of their body, so they cannot touch you at all, right? They can't even, like, they can't punch you. They can't pinch you. They can't hit you because it's just so far away from them. They're not long enough. Their arms. They're not long enough. Their legs. His head isn't flexible enough to bite you because you put it at the chest level. You try biting your chest is impossible. So it's just simple physics. Push them on the chest and then put them on the floor. Slowly ignore them by not acknowledging them that they're angry. And what I mean by that is you should stay by their side but not give a reaction. It should be all neutral. Very neutral. Very, very, very neutral. Because most children who are speech delayed, language delayed, autism, whatever, they take on the cues of our tones a lot because they don't understand the words, the content. So if we go like, angry, we're like, we're calling. For instance, my. My cat is very good at listening to my tones. When I go like, slade. And then she kind of like goes like. Like that. But if I say in unusual tones, like, hey, Slade. And then she'll go like, wow, like that. So they don't understand the language, so therefore, they pick on the tone. So when you ignore, your tone has to be neutral. There's no. Like, you. How to say this? Like, parents get increasingly, increasingly, increasingly impatient and scared when these things happen. But the thing is, you don't. You really don't have to be scared, all right? When you feel that you have this heat coming up of your chest, and you feel like, oh, no, I got to do something about it, that's when you should do the opposite and do nothing. Okay? You should put them on the floor. Just look at them, and whenever they come at you, just push them on the chest, and they will never reach you. I promise you. I promise you. Because look at my hands. I've got a lot of bite marks here. I know what I'm talking about. This might not be scientifically proven, but it's proven by war marks, like war scars right here. So push them on the chest. Don't let them touch you. Wait. When the child has nothing, gains nothing from a situation, it's very, very easy for them to understand. Okay, this doesn't help at all. Okay, so this is the way that we want to do it. Right. This is actually an active way. Whenever it happens, we resort to a mat and we push them there and we do nothing about it. That's the first step. The second step is once you understand what's the trigger, you actively try to prevent it. You try to prevent it. Whenever a child is able to do certain things, the behavior will continue to actually exist. This is true on all levels. If you are able to slack in the office, it's more likely that you will slack. If you are right now in the pandemic and you're able to work at home as a behavior and after the pandemic, it's more likely that you will be able to work at home. If you let your child watch TV whilst eating, the more likely when they grow up, they will also eat whilst they're watching. It's just a matter of fact that the more you do it, the more likely it will happen again. Same with drinking, same with smoking, same with the drug situations in certain areas in the world, same with everything. The more likely, the more you can do it, the more likely it will happen again. Okay? And that's why people are protesting about racism, right? You don't want them to keep on being able to do the things that they're doing or else it's gonna be more likely to happen. Okay? So you have to be. You have to actively prevent it. And let me give you example for it. Let's go back to the kid with likes to bite me, okay. And I likes to headbutt me in all places on my body. Okay. My first ever client taught me a lot of things, so hope that it can give you some inspirations, but it really takes a tough personality. All right? Some. That client was only given to me because I'm an outlier in my industry. You know, like I'm a male. I'm like rather, okay, you know, built, you know, as at least I have some sort of muscle. Most of the guys in Hong Kong who are in this industry are like skinny, very like proper. I don't know how to say this, like, just very sensible looking and not very playful, you know, and. And 90 of our of people in our field are women, right? So when you deal with children who are aggressive and stuff, instantly the first thing that pops in people's mind is to find someone who is suitable to handle physical activities. And then that's why I got that kid in the beginning. All right? So I understand that that might not be the case for you, but you cannot give yourself this kind of fallacy. And it's it's just if you're. You're an adult, you're much stronger than your kid. That's just the end of it, okay? As long as you know where to push. All right? Remember the hips. Hips. All right? Chest, shortest distance. Some martial arts stuff there, all right? So prevent it. Prevent it by. If your child is triggered by touching them, by, you know, holding them and like physically restraining them, don't do it. Don't do it. I'll show you. Like, let's say this cat here, her name is Slay, she hates it when I hug her like this. If you hear she's a little growling, right? See, she's protesting. So how do I prevent her from scratching me? I don't do it. I just let her go, right? I don't do it. You're not supposed to do it. All right? If you want to, you need to teach her slowly. In the beginning when I did that, she would scratch me. But because I taught her using structured reinforcement, you know, I'll take a piece of food and I'll tell her, and I'll hug her and I'll give it to her. And then it tells her that, you know, it's good, that it's good to listen to me, right? But to prevent it, don't do it. All right? If you do it, be very, very active to try to teach them why, okay? Give them an incentive. So some children, they get angry when their moms ask them certain questions. Don't do it, don't do it. There's one that one of my clients who likes to play jokes, like talk about jokes to us, to her daughter. And her daughter's like a matured asd child, right? Okay. And whenever she would make a joke, the child doesn't understand because it's not literal language, she would get mad. So I'm like, so why are you doing it? Just avoid it. Avoid it. Prevent it. Don't do it, man. Don't trigger them unnecessarily unless you're doing training, but don't trigger them. If you know that you put things at a certain place, it would make them mad. Don't do it. All right? I know that for a fact. Some clients, if the TV remote isn't put in a certain place, they get mad. So don't put it there or put it at the right place. Just let them be. These aren't life changing things. It's just at that situation at home, they want it that way. Doesn't mean they're gonna be like that at School. All right? These things, you don't have to break yet. Slowly prevent it. The less they get angry, the less likely they will get angry. All right? So at all cost prevented. So you might ask me. Okay, so I get it. So prevent it. Ignoring. Whenever they're angry, put them in a safe place. Push on the chest. Don't let them near you. Look at them. Let them calm down. No matter what they do, don't let them hit you. Do not let them hit you. Do not let them slap you. Do not let them Whatever. If in doubt, push them on the chest. All right? Don't let them near you. Remember again, if they're able to hit you, bite you, spit on you, and do whatever, it's more likely that it will happen. I had a case who. Because he's very naughty, right? And he has, like, hemiplegia. And what that means is, like, half of his body can't move because he has cerebral palsy. And then what happened was that because one of his hands are, like. All you have to do is, like, hold on to one of his hands. The other part cannot move. He's like, he's trying to hit you, and he's. And then in the end, he spits on you because he just has nothing else to do to make you angry. And the reason why he does it is because he's escaping. And also, whenever he sees that you're in pain or you're like, oh, like that, he thinks it's funny, right? So don't let that. Don't even let them do it, right? So in the end, whenever he spat at me, I just gave no reaction. Like, there's like, I'm just. Whatever. And I gave them the tissue, and I made him wipe it off for me, right? So there really isn't a better way to do it, you know? Like, it's just. It's just that's. That ignoring is very hard. You have to be neutral. You cannot give a reaction. It's very, very difficult. And sometimes it might be. It hurts. It's disgusting. Like a spit. It might be getting. Getting physically abused, emotionally abused. But you have to stay neutral, okay? Because we're dealing with a scientific experiment to limit the variables. If you add variables of you screaming and shouting inside, you don't know whether if they like it or not. And if they parrot you're screaming and shouting as them being successful, then that's even worse, all right? So don't give any reaction when tantrums happen, all right? Okay. So some tips about how to avoid Getting hit and scratched. Do not hold the hand, because once you hold the hand, it's very close for him to pinch. See these kind of marks? All right, this is not from a kid, okay? But anyways, like, around the wrist is a high, high danger zone for pinching. Because if you hold them like that and he's like, oh, please calm down. And then they're like pinching you already. So don't hold them, just push them on the chest. Okay? Another problem. What if they come up to you and slap you? Well, the thing is, they shouldn't even be within one meter of you. Like, it should be like arm's length away from you. Don't even let them come over. And then you might say, okay, I get it. So what if they never calm down? So this is where it becomes interesting. So if they never calm down, if they don't calm down for like five minutes straight, then this is something that you might need to work on. So what I learned from my supervisor back then, my first ever client, let's just call him Tom again. So Tom would get very mad. And we put them on the mat and we wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Still nothing happens. You know, he doesn't get to hit, spit or anything at us already. But it's just that he's been able to do that for a long time. So it's actually like a very well reinforced behavior, right? So for instance, if you have a guy who smokes all the time and then you don't let him smoke, he's gonna have jitters. And he's like, he must smoke. And it's kind of like that kid, like, if he gets angry, he must get angry. He must punch something. So cool. We just put him there. Nothing's happening. So what do we do? We know that for a fact that after a certain period of time that he kind of forgets about why he was angry sometimes, right? It will happen. I mean, you must have seen it before. They get very angry for a certain purpose. But then sooner or later, because they've been angry for so long, they forget what it is and then it just becomes them, like just having a brawl, you know? So what happens then is that you can now start to introduce some play, okay? Some toys that aren't very, like super, super, super fun to them. And some of them are like, I'll give you some examples. So you can use like the wooden trains that are very boring. You just like make them and spin. You know the one from Ikea, that's great. Balls are cool. Cars and trains. I've talked about trains. You just play by yourself and see if they want to join. Right? Usually if you do that, they would like, oh, I want to play. And then. And then when they come over, you invite them and you say, nice calming down. And you just let them play with you. All right. There's no other demand. I just wanted to calm down. Okay, if that doesn't work. If that doesn't work, that usually does work. Okay, what you want to do is to introduce some sort of token. So talk about it before, right? This kind of stuff. So if your child has been through therapy, you must have done some sort of token, but like 90, 90% of people don't use it to the full potential. I think it's rigid. But to be honest, if you use it nicely, you know how to fade it away. Like, it's an intuitive piece of tool. It's literally money, you know, so. And why is it money? Because after you get three, you can buy something. Buy something, right? You can exchange it for something that they want. And isn't that the same as our salary? This is basically debt in advance. I'll give you some debt. IOUs. Three IOUs. You get three of these, I'll give you what you want. You'll have the train, same as your salary. You have 10k in dollars. And then you can buy something. I don't know what it is. Okay, so whenever your child calms a little bit down, where you're not touching, you're just looking at them, you're keeping them on the floor, they're not able to touch you. Whenever they calm down a little bit, you want to make a board just for calm, right? And you say, oh, nice being calm. Nice being calm. Whenever they like, just you tell them, nice being calm. You give them, right? Nice being calm. Give them. And the last one, when they're about to, like just being so tired of being so angry, you can give it to them and say, nice being calm. Stick it. And then get one of their favorite stuff ever. Favorite, favorite stuff. I've used ice cream before. All right, so what happens is they take this and you tell them, oh, see, you got six stars. That's been very calm. Good boy. And you exchange it for the ice cream. Okay. All right. And you might ask me, hey, doesn't that reinforce them for being angry? No, it reinforces them being calm. Right? So. And then people might ask as well, isn't that going to make the child want to become angry so that they can go through this uncom Token Thing just to get what they want. Well, the thing is, you give them an easier method to get them what they want, okay? And this is where structured tasks are very, very important, okay? Where you can sit them down and do, like, very easy tasks. Give them all these tokens on another board, right? Very easily, within five minutes, they get what they want the most. And therefore, inside their brain, they're like juggling which one is more economically friendly, Right? Crying, screaming on the floor, waiting to calm down just to get the ice cream, or listening on the chair for like three or five minutes and get what they want, Right? So that's the thing. That's the thing. You really have to give your child a reason to listen to you. All right? At the end of the day, that's that. So you have to be careful when they're screaming and shouting, do not bribe, do not use the ice cream, do not use their favorite toy to say, stop crying. I'll give it to you. That never works. If it works, then you're just teaching your child to cry because it means that if I cry and I stop, I'll get it right. Don't do that. A better way is that we wait till they're calm and then when they've been calm for a certain period of time, and then you say, oh, nice being calm. Here you go. Right? So they're being reinforced for being calm and not being angry, if you understand what I'm saying. Okay. If you don't, leave me a comment and tell me what's going on. Okay? So with that said, let's go on to. We only have around like five to 10 minutes left to answer any questions. If you watching this on a recording and if you're live right now, thanks so much for watching. I really appreciate it. If you haven't, go to agents of Speech.com. check out more information there. If you haven't, go to go get the checklist. Agentsofspeech.com checklist. Okay? All this stuff will help you answer questions, right? And if any of those information doesn't answer questions, you can just send me an email@mingagentsofspeech.com okay? Okay. So let's talk about ignoring you. Ignoring this is troublesome behavior because if they ignore you, it's very hurtful to hear you. Okay? So you have to understand why your child has to give, you know, I'm not going to say the word. You know, they have to give a thing to you, you know, give their attention to you. Right? So how you would do it is to give them a reason to listen. Okay? And most of the time. Most of the time, the reason why kids don't listen is because they don't understand. Like, oh, you've already repeated a hundred times that what you're essentially teaching is that no matter how many times you say it, they don't need to listen. Or if they're super rigid, they think that on the seventh go, they have to listen. I've seen that before firsthand. So a child actually learned from a mother that he thinks he needs to do it the fourth time. You know, he would say, pick that up, pick that up, pick that up, pick that up. Four times he does it. It's a nightmare. So you never know what they're picking up in their minds. You know, like, they're just so smart, but at the same time so rigid. So you have to be careful about your instructions. Okay? What I tell parents to do and when they say, like, how come when you tell them, they do it on the first go? All right? The reason is this. I do micro commitments. Excuse me. And what I mean by that, if you need. I cannot go through everything. So, you know, it's in our online course. You can go check it out. It's agentsofspeech.com course, agents of speech course. Let me just write it down. I can't even type whilst I'm typing. I'm going to talk about micro commitments. So what is that? What is that essentially is me telling them to do small, small things for me, and I make them do it for me. Oh, no, I spelled it wrong. My bad. Small, small tasks that I can manipulate them into doing. I can manipulate them into doing, and then I tell them to do it, and I help them do it. For instance, if I tell them to open the door, I will physically get them to the door and hold their hand to make them open the door. Okay? That is something that's called a micro commitment. It's easy to do. You help them finish it. There's no anything, and you do it the first go. Okay? You do it the first go. You don't need to repeat yourself. Say it and help them do it. For instance, stomp your feet. Grab their legs. Stomp it for them. Good job. Praise them. Give them some sort of reward, no matter social or anything. Okay? So micro commitments. And why we want to do this, because it's scientifically and psychological. It's a psychological theory that as you get them to do, like, small tasks, you can move on to big tasks. Right? You maybe I'll show it next time in an experiment is that. Have you heard of, like, how to kill a frog inside, like, a boiling water? You can't put them in the boiling water. I'm not saying that your child is boiling water. It's a metaphor, okay? I'm not saying your child is a frog or your methods are killing them. But basically, it's a Chinese proverb that means if you want to cook a frog, you put them in cold water, put them inside, and slowly add up the heat, and then it dies, right? So it's kind of like that. But. But the social phenomenon is that if you get them to do something very easy, you get them to say yes to certain small commitments, it can add up to bigger ones. And a very good example of this is dating. All right? It's really dating. I mean, like, you start off with just chatting, getting a phone number. That's a very low entry point. Now it's even lower. You use Tinder, right? There's no strings attached. You just say, hi. You don't like it, you swipe left or something. So there's small, small commitments. The smallest commitment now, right now, in the history of mankind is to swipe, I don't know, left or right. I haven't used it for Tinder. To say yes or no, you say yes, and then you go up one level, you talk, then you go one more level, right? You might exchange your WhatsApp number or something, and you talk there. And then you might go one more level and you go out for a date, right? So it's the same. As you get more committed and more committed, it becomes easier to ask for big things. And that's the same reason why corporations ask for your email address to send you promotions, and they even entice you to do it. I'll give you 50% off for your information. And you're like, okay, yeah, fair enough. I just won't care. But they do the math, right? They know that for each email received on average, they will make some sort of sales. So they're very okay with losing out in the short run. And that's what we should think about as well. And we should think in the long run what things you can do to do micro commitments to make your child get used to listening to you. All right, what kind of things can you do? It's very, very easy. The first one is, of course, the open palm that takes zero effort nearly from your child, okay? Other than that, if you have already have a habit, which all, all parents have, just to nag them to do something. Tell them one time and make them do it. Tell them one time and make them do it. So that your words mean something. It goes in a straight line. It doesn't go like. Because the instruction is very unclear if you think about it. If you keep on saying certain things over and over and over again and then expect some sort of action. First of all, you have a whole list of instructions. Which one do they listen to? All right? It should be one instruction, one action. No matter how unnatural that is, you have to keep it going. You have to let them know that when mom, when dad says something, it means action. You have to do something. And that's why it's easy to control within my clinic room, because when I say something, they have to do it, okay? It's just the end of the story. All right? So this is how you get rid of ignoring. This is how you get rid of them ignoring you. This is how you get rid of them going slow on you as well, all right? You have to be consistent. And if your child has already been through therapy and you've done that for a long time, well, the news is not actually. It's not news at all. The thing is, you have to do it long enough to see it through, to break the patterns, all right? If you can't do that, you'll be stuck there for a long, long time. All right? So that's for getting rid of ignoring in compliance. You can do it the same way. Micro commitments. I cannot do this justice. I cannot tell you the whole thing right here in the course, the introduction course of Asians of Speech. We do talk about the same things, all right? We do talk about calming your child down, what you should do. We do talk about micro commitments, how to do it. We do talk about haircuts, tactile defensiveness. We do talk about what to say, what to do, how to implement certain things, how to teach them gestures, how to structure tasks. We do talk about in the introduction course, okay? So go ahead there and check it out if you want to. If you're already a member, if you're already inside the course, hallelujah, go, go watch those certain things again. Sometimes when I go live, I digress a little bit, but on there, it's much. It's easier for you to actually go through in a systematic way. Okay? And actually, I want to say, like, I have another parent who sent me a video via email of, you know, them trying out the stuff. We were talking in the course, and I'm gonna share it with you guys soon. I got the permission. Yay. So that usually doesn't really happen. Right. So I'm pretty happy to show you, like, with the right information, what you can do with it. All right. And consistent action. You have to be consistent about it. All right? So with that said, thank you so much for tuning in. It's been a whole hour, and if you like this kind of format, let me know, because I'm also learning about how to serve you guys better. Okay. So, yeah, that's pretty much it. So thank you. Put your questions in the comments if you would like to. And like the video. Like the video. Okay. It helps me a lot to send it to, like, more parents like yourself, because social media right now or YouTube, Facebook, whatever, they're really smart like, you like it. And then I'll show it to other parents who are going through the same things. All right. So thank you so much. I'll see you on Wednesday at the same time in the morning from where I am. Okay. At night if you're in US A and midnight if you're in uk. Okay, Bye. Bye.