Monday Live: Speech Therapy Ideas at Home

All right. Hey, everyone. How are you guys doing on a Monday morning? So we're going live now, and today we want to talk about speech therapy ideas at home. And the reason why we're doing this is because it seems like parents always focus on the activity. And I wanted to talk about a few ideas that I have in mind for you and how you could actually do it at home. Okay. And. Yeah, and these in my channel and whatever. And if you've seen my videos before, you know that I really, really focus on just trying to create a better mindset for the parent or the therapist or anyone who is actually working with the child. But to today, let's talk about specific ideas. Okay? So practically, you would want to actually just only use five to 10 minutes, as I've been talking about, along a lot, Right. And within that kind of time, you want to use. You want to use some toys that can be like, that's very repetitive. Okay. So let's talk about, like, if you are teaching your child to speak words and you're focusing on speech, right. You're focusing on getting them to say the right sounds, getting them to say the right words, then, you know what I would do is to actually get a bunch of toys that are very repetitive. And what I mean by repetitive is, for instance. For instance, if you have a toy like puzzles, then you can actually do a whole hour in it. Right. So you need to make a routine. Okay. And you can target a few words. So before you even start at home, the difference between, like, a therapist and a parent is that they're very clear about what they want to do. Yeah. And although when you see a therapist at the clinic, they're, like, very freestyle. They're doing whatever they're doing. They actually have a few targets at heart. All right, so. So what kind of targets can you do? If you're working at single word levels? Single word level? Yeah. Meaning, like, you're only targeting one word at a time, especially for, like, two to three years old, then what you should do is basically just to think of two to three verbs that you can do with a certain object. So let's say that you're playing with this thing, okay. Even this. You can. This roller. You can make activity out of it, and you can make them talk with this thing. So there are a few things, right. First of all, you have roll, right? This one is quite cool. So when you roll, there's actually a different kind of toy or tool that rolls like that. Right. If you've seen it before, but you know you can use anything. Anything can be a toy, okay? And what. What I want you guys to understand is, I want you to understand is it's not like, oh, I always promote my checklist here, like www.agentsofspeechecklist. there's a bunch of tools and toys I use, but anything you can use for speech therapy or communication, intention. So this even goes on to like children who speak even more, right? So for instance, this thing, you can do a whole load of language stuff, okay? And I just want to tell you, I don't want to tell you like, what each thing can do. What I want to tell you is what goes through my mind when I see something like this, right? So for instance, when I roll it, you can target the word roll, right? That's one word. The next one is like, you can do, like this shake, or you can do spin if your child likes to spin it on the chair or on the table. So how you do it is usually you go like that. And then when you spin it like that, I think you cannot see it here. But anyways, what I would do is, like that I really need a table. So I'm going to get a table right here instead of just trying to talk nonsense, okay? I put it here. What I would usually do is, like what? That. So this is sticky still. So like that. So if it's not sticky, it will keep on rolling, right? So that's one of the things that we can do. We can, like, spin. What else can we do? We can do throw, all right? And throw is a really cool verb, all right? Because you can throw basically anything. It's highly generalized. So if you throw and then your child catches it for you, then it's great. And do something that your child cannot do. That's why they like playing with you. That's why they love it. It's because they can't do the things that you can actually do, right? Because you're more resourceful. So, for instance, if I juggle this and I catch it, then that's actually fun. All right, that's one. So you have roll, you have spin, you have throw. Those are already three verbs. You should stop there. Okay? So find an object in the house that's fun that you can use, okay? That you can find three verbs to do it. And you might ask me, hey, Ming, why are we targeting three verbs instead of, you know, like, all the speech therapists out there are not all, like, some of them that they use flashcards or, like nouns or whatever. Well, the thing is, it Needs to be generalized. So after I play with this rolling thing, which is nothing, I can actually do something else. Oh, good morning, guys. Lena asked, what if the child doesn't really care as he or she is busy with reciting? All right, so for this question, actually, the thing is, you know, you got to find something that your child cares. Obviously. That's number one. Number two, if they're busy with reciting, it means they're stimming, right? To some extent, they have some sort of sensory need to do something. Okay. And it might come in terms of verbal, right? So in that case, what I would do is to engage with what they were. They are reciting. Right? And that's why I didn't tell you about Lena. I mean, what you should do is not to stop her, but to, like, do it with her so that it becomes a social activity and something that you can control. So let's say that, you know, sometimes we see a lot of kids who like to spin things, right? No matter what it is, once they see something spinning, like a wheel or like a pen or like a fidget spinner or whatever, they start to stim a lot. And a lot of us try to stop him or her, right? But what you should do is actually to engage it, to, like, to take it in and try to make it into an activity instead, right? So for your example, Leena, what you can do is actually to try. I know it repeats a thousand times, right? But try and say it with her, okay? Try to say it with her. If you can find that thing that she's reciting, that's even better. So once you do it with her a few times, and then what you want to do is start to make a task out of it, or you can try adding more stuff to it that makes it a little more acceptable rather than just like, trying to go over and over stuff. All right, so let me give you an example. So if your child likes to go. Likes to sing a nursery rhyme over and over, I know it's not your child, but what we do is, like, we start to. We start to sing it together, and I'll add some actions to it, right? We're adding more content to the whole reciting to the whole routine, okay? And when we do that, it becomes part of it. And slowly, without them knowing, we're actually doing some training, okay? We're actually doing some training, and we can stop and create suspense and all the things that we were talking about in previous videos. So when you create a suspense, you go, like, let me Think the wheels on the bus go, and then you stop and see if the child actually does the action. Right? So for your case, maybe you should do something like that too, right? Add some words to it in the middle to make it more fun or like to make it more. Make more sense, right? So back to the spinning example. For example, your child loves spinning. That's just stim with spinning stuff, right? Instead of stopping him and say, hey, hey, hey, that's not the right thing to do. Well, what you should do instead is to spin with him and show him that we can spin a lot of stuff, right? And then after that you want to make it into like a routine, a play routine, right? Can you find a toy that is like appropriate to be spun like a top? Like, you know, when we were kids, when I was a kid, I used to play something called Beyblades, right? So that, that kind of toys can help a lot, okay. And you can add more verbs and context to it, okay. And obviously if your child has a motor, motoric difficulties, then you can actually help to make it even more fun, right? You can use a longer, what's that called, gear thing that you can pull, you can use, you can pull it harder and make it faster as well. So these things make it more fun and make it more fun. And at the same time, when they ask for your help, it can actually help you to increase the language use over there. Okay, so what other things you can use at home? Okay, so, so there are a lot, there are a lot that you can use for speech therapy at home. Okay. And for some, for some, even hand cream works. So a lot of children, they have sensory issues here, right? And some of them love to play with hand cream. There was one child who I taught for brief time when I was like first in Indonesia. She loved hand cream, the hand sanitizer, because you like to smell it. I don't know why, but you can use the hand cream if your child loves it. Okay? So there's a. Like, let's think of three verbs again, okay? So always think of verbs because afterwards you can generalize to other items. All right? So for instance, there's a hand gel, not, not sponsored or anything. It's just on my table. Okay. And then you can do open, right? Squeeze. Yeah. And then at this time you can also teach more, right? Because you might give that just a bit, but they want a lot, right? So you might do more. And then after that you can say close, right? That's already a lot of words. And last one, you can do like, you can do rub. So you can go. And when you rub it hard with. With the child is actually. It creates heat and it's fun. Okay, so this is what I would recommend. Okay, just fine. You don't need toys that are, like, expensive or anything. You can use anything at home, right? And once you've done it with, like, the hand cream, you can use other hand creams. It's not only this one, right? And after that, you can use it during, like, your toothbrushing, right? When you're actually, like, brushing your teeth, it's time to brush your teeth. You can use the same verbs for toothpaste, right? You can use the same verbs for putting ketchup. If you got a squeezy bottle once, right? You've got squeezy bottles for honey, right? You can use the same things, the same verbs. You can use it over and over for different types of stuff. Okay? So let's continue. Okay. If you have any questions, keep on asking. That's really great. And yeah, you really don't need any toys, really? And why I really say this is because a lot of parents ask me, oh, what toys do I buy? They see me use a toy in the clinic, and they already want to buy it and use it over and over at home, which kind of sucks for me because if they get bored of it, they come back. I don't get to play with it anymore. All right, so, for instance, what else can we do? What else can we do? Okay, let's see what we have around in this house. Okay, so, for instance, let's see if my cable's long enough, right? So, for instance, we can use. Yeah, we can use a blanket, right? This Winnie the Pooh thing, this blanket. So how do we use a blanket? Well, similarly, actually, a lot of kindergarten teachers and therapists use, like, parachutes to play, right? So when we use that kind of stuff, we use that kind of stuff. There's a lot we can do. All right, so for instance, all right, we've got a blanket here. And then you can do a few verbs as well. Let's think of a few verbs together. Okay? So this thing I can do whilst I'm. I can think whilst I'm doing, okay, but for you, if you're doing at home and you have some toys that you don't know how to use, take some everyday items and make it fun, right? So you can just use this one. What kind of verbs can we do? Right, so first of all, we can do cover, right? And do cover. I'M going to cover my cat. And then whilst you're covering your child, you can't see anything. And they can tickle, right? And you can ask them to ask for a tickle cover. Tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle. And then you say open, and then 1, 2, 3, fly or something, because you can make the whole blanket like that, and it's gone. Right? So you can do. You can do a few things like that. And you make a routine out of it. So first you cover, and then you tickle, and then you open, and then 1, 2, 3, fly and gone. So you need to do it, like, a lot of times, like 100 times. All right? Don't give up. You need to do 100 times. Keep on doing it until you can actually. You can. He can actually say it. Right. You can actually at least do some, like, gestures or pull down the blanket and tell you that he really wants to do what you are trying to do with him. Right. Okay. So you might ask me, hey, Ming, I get it. This is for, like, beginner kids. A lot moms like to tell me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What you're telling me, telling me is for beginner kids, Right? And I don't understand what that term is. Okay. Meaning that, oh, are they just talking? Is that what you mean? And then they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like, my kid is more advanced. He's been doing therapy for a long time. Yeah, sure. So what we are doing here is not basically, we're targeting one word at a time. We're targeting his or her willingness to communicate. Right. Is there a structure that will help your child to want to talk? Okay, so all these things you can actually make into longer sentences. It's up to you. It's not beginner or not. It's according to the language level. All right, so let's say, like, we're back to this one, right? We're back to this one. We can actually do a higher language task with a hand cream. Okay. We don't need to say, like, dude, this only works for children who speak one words or, like, two words. Ming, you're teaching something too easy to my child. Use flashcards, tell stories. Yeah. But at the same time, this one we can do verbal reasoning. Okay. So for instance. For instance, look, I'm going to squeeze it out, but I can't. So I'm going to ask. Oh, you want some hand cream? Here we go. Oh, no, I can't. Let me try again. Oh, no. And then you can ask. And then your child Might say like, oh, no, no, no. They try to open it and you're like, oh, please tell me in words, right? And then they're like, open. And I'm like, why open? Oh, because. And then I will say, like, there's a why, because there, right? And there you can jump in to teach a little bit verbal reasoning. And you say, oh, you want to open because you can't squeeze it when it's closed. So it's a really long sentence, right? So if your child is like, he understands the reasoning behind why I have to open it. And he says like one to two words, right? It's like, like open, close, cannot, right? And then you can make the sentence for him or her by telling him exactly what's happening. And then you can try to generalize with other things too. Okay? And then after that you open it. Oh, I opened it. And this is where you play dumb all the time. This is what I always tell parents to do or therapist that I'm training to do, right? So basically you, you, you do a lot of. Other than, you know, squeezing out, you know. Okay, so what other verbal reasonings can you do with a, with a hand cream, right? So for instance, you give them a very little, very little. Like that. Yeah. And then they're like, more. And you're like, why? And then they're like, I want more. Yeah, I know, I know you want more. I gave you already. See, I gave it to you already. And then smarter kids will say like, oh, not smarter, but, you know, more verbal kids will say, it's not enough. And then you can use the why because. Structure again. Oh, why do you want more? Because it's not enough hand cream for me. My hand's too big. There's too little cream, right? So even for this one, there's a lot of why. Because that you can do, right? And other than that, you can also, you can also teach a lot of stuff here. For instance, you can just give your child this thing and ask them what it is. This is what we do in secondary school, by the way. We give a child something novel, something new, and ask them what it is. What do you think is going on? How do you know? For instance, I give this to a teenager, let's say, and it's like a verbal reasoning task. And I say, hey, look, check this out. Can you tell me what it is? And they're like, ah, it's a hand cream. I'm like, how do you know? And the answers I'm looking for from a person who understands like hey, I'm going to tell you, hey, look, there's a hand here. There's a flower in the middle. It means like, it's scented. It's like, it's. It smells good. Right? There's verbal reasoning. It's called inferencing here. Right? So Leena asks, how long should the sentences be? 3 to 5 words. Always worry that I speak too long. Yeah, as long as you need to. Because you're at a level where if you're talking about verbal reasoning. Right, Leena? So if it's. If you're up to verbal reasoning, it doesn't matter how long it is, as long as it's natural, okay? It doesn't need to be like, we don't need to be scared that it's too long already, because we're already over the phase where we're teaching sentence length. We're teaching verbal reasoning, and the reasoning is the most important part. And do we need to care about the word, the number of words inside the sentence? Yeah, but as long as it's natural, okay? Because this is how we usually speak to everyone when we're describing something. Okay? So when we're up to this part, when we. Let's go. Let's recap a little bit. I give it to the child. Hey, what was this? And then they say, oh, it's a hand cream. How do you know? That's the question. How do you know? So how do you know if they cannot read? If they can read things like, dude, it says hand cream, right? And I'm like, okay, how. How can you trust it? And then he's like, oh, well, there's a hand and there's a flower. The flower means it smells good, whatever. And then I'm like, okay, so it's. It's for hand creams. Cool. Can you tell me how to use it? So this is like. This might be a stupid question, right? But it becomes a task for children who cannot describe how to use something. Okay? But you have to give a good context, okay? You have to pretend that he needs to teach someone else to use a product or something or that he's doing a YouTube video. Okay? The YouTube video thing works very nice because it gives a good context that they understand. So, for instance, it's like, oh, can you do a review of this hand cream on YouTube and tell people how to use it and why they should use it? And then we would script it before and we would try to do it. So for instance, like, you could say, like, yeah, this hand cream, how you use it basically is you open first, you open the lid, you take a little bit out, and they need to define what is a little bit. Right. Or it's the size of a pea. And then you rub it until your hands feel hot and spread it all across your hands. And that's it. That's how you do it. Okay. And then this is how I would do a language task if I were in secondary school. Because, hey, to be honest, in secondary school you don't need toys. You're not going to use toys. And are you going to use academic materials? Not really either. Because if they were able to do that at such a high level, they won't need to see you. See me. I'm sorry. Yeah, so, yeah, so anything, any item, you can target very high language goals or very low ones. Okay. And from one word, two words to three words, you can do like, for like the hand cream, you can say, open the, open the lid. That's already like two to three, right? Some would argue that's two. The third is like a functional thing word, so it doesn't count. But what you can say is like, I open the lid or something. Even if it's not that natural, that's still cool. As long as you're doing like a language goal to it and you're adding sentences onto it. Right. And the most important thing is that there's a contrast, right? So if you say I, I open the lid, he, she or he can probably say like, mom opened the bottle or like, as long as they know that sentence structure, then it's fine. So this is something that we do that I've tried before and it works. What else can you do? What else in the world can we do? So for instance, a watch can also be a language function, can also be a language tool that you can use to teach. All right, so how do you even do that? All right, so for instance, a very low level is low level language tasks, obviously, to play with the light, man. I mean, like if you have a Casio, you turn on the light. Sorry, my one is kind of dim, so you can't see. Right? So when you do that and you do the light thing, you can target a few verbs and words. So for instance, it could be turn on the lights or turn on or press, right? These kind of things are cool. You can also do the beep sound. Beep, beep, beep, beep. Like that, right? So by targeting these kind of words or verbs, you can do a few things, and these things are too small for them to press. Right. I've actually done a whole 45 minutes just using a watch. That's how little you can prepare for actually doing therapy at home. Okay. As long as you know what you're doing, then it's fine. All right, so let's say that, okay, fine, my child is above those words or levels that you're doing. And most of the time the function of these verbs and words is to request for something to happen. Right? It might be like me flipping the watch like that. Yeah. Or I could like do whatever. So a higher language task for a watch is like, hey, you tell the kid, maybe he's called Stephen, right? Hey, Steven, look, I've got this watch here, but I want to put it on the table. Okay? This might be a primary school or like a secondary school kids task. It's still kind of verbal reasoning, right? And they have to think about it. So I'm saying, hey, Stephen, I want to put this watch on the table in a way that I can see it, I can see the time, right? So they try and they cannot. It's like if you put on the table, it goes like that, right? And like, and he, he puts it like this. Hey, There you go, Mr. Ming. There you go. You can see the timeline. I'm like, no, I can't. You look. And then they're like, okay. And I'm like, why can I, why can I not see? And this is some like theory of mine. He has to put his perception, his perception, his, his perspective onto me. It's like, oh, you can't see because it's sideways. So that's one part. The next part is like, I will ask, keep on asking him how so how? I want it like this, see? Oh no. Why? What happened? And then he would have to say that, oh, it rolled off, it rolled off. And I was like, why did it roll off? Because the base is round. It doesn't need to be that difficult. The words, okay? If, if you're doing this kind of language goal, it means it's already like he or she is already talking in full sentences. It's just that he has some problems with like verbal reasoning, right? So when you can do that, just keep on asking. Just keep on asking. You're like interrogator in this kind of situations, right? So you can also target like them asking you questions too. So at this point in time, you might cue them, you might say, hey man, if you don't know, you can always ask. Or like, who can you ask in this room? Or something like that. So if there's someone else you can teach them to ask, like the Mrs. I mean, the Mrs. As in like the teacher or like our Mr. Whoever over there. Or you could go out and ask someone else. Right? And that's actually one of the key things that a lot of speech delayed. Children in, like, academics, they don't know how to ask for help, right. In a certain situation. So you want to teach them that. Then you, you want to tell them, oh, you know, to put a watch on the table so that you can watch it so you can see the time nicely is by putting the long end through this little. I don't know what this is called. Right. And this is what we do as well. If we don't know what it's called, we search online and we teach the child how to find that word, that vocab on the Internet. Okay. Or come up with something that we both agree on. Okay. And this is very high level already. So once you, oh, you put the long end of the strap into the buckle or whatever it's called. I don't know what this is called. Right. And then once you have that, you can lay it on flat on the table. There you go. There you can do it. And I can ask, oh, why does it stand? And he can. And then the child, the kid, the student should be able to say, oh, well, because now the base is not round anymore and there's also the tail here that provides support. Right? So like this, you are teaching them to speak really functionally about stuff that. That's very every day. Okay. It's not from a picture, it's not from whatever. It's like real life. Okay. And then after that you can go on to words. That's much harder. You can go on. Actually, we should go on to pictures first and then words and then academic stuff. Okay. So we're actually doing a lot of things with very simple everyday stuff. Right. But at the end of the day, you still have to make it fun, right? You still have to make it fun or else you will sound like an interrogator. Okay? So, yeah, this is what I would do for. In terms of using like, everyday thing as a speech therapy idea. From very low level, you can just choose two to three verbs. And you should do verbs because it's highly visual. Okay. If we're doing nouns, I mean, how much can you do? Like, you cannot really teach much, Right. You need a lot of items. That's why when parents or like therapists are doing late, what they call labeling, they have a whole box of stuff. And they go, what's this? What's this good? What's this good? What's this good? Yeah. At one point in time, that is not. That is a very good goal to. To teach vocabulary, right? But it's not really activity. It's drilling, right? So when you do verbs, it's more activity, like, because they get to do something after they say something. All right? So for instance, they can open, they can spin, they can turn on, they can. They can put. Right? They can squeeze, they can push, they can pull. So when you think about verbs, it makes therapy much, much easier. Okay? Other than labeling. Other than labeling. Labeling is hard. You can label your body. Okay? So for instance, the roller thing, Once you've taught the verb roll, or whatever you like to call it in bahasa and Chinese or whatever, it's still the same. You can always do the verb first, right? So once you do the verb first and then you add labels, it would make a lot of sense. So for instance, you can say roll. Okay, cool. Roll. Where. Okay, roll the shoulder, like that. Or you can say, like, roll your hair. I'm not going to do it. Roll the glasses, roll the neck. And then you can understand that, hey, actually, once you teach the verb, you add the noun afterwards. It becomes more specific. And that's why we talk in long sentences, right? It's because it's more specific. We don't want to talk in, like, stupid long sentences just because it's long, right? And that's a lot of. And that's the thing that's been haunting a lot of parents, is like, oh, I want them to sing this full sentence. They always say, oh, please. Longer, please. Full sentence, please. And that's where people get stuck, right? Because what do you mean by long? You didn't. Maybe you demonstrated it a few times. But in a very natural sense, they don't need to. And they don't want to speak in long sentences according to what you do, according to what you say, basically, right? So, yeah, that's. That's what I wanted to talk about as well. Just don't tell your child to say full sentence, please, or like long sentence, please. I know a lot of therapists do it. I do it sometimes, but that's because I've got something to reward them at the end, right? So I. And it's highly unnatural to do so. So I'm fully aware of that, and I'm willing to take. I'm willing to take that because later on I'm going to try to generalize it towards other stuff, right? So once you have the roll done, you can roll plenty of stuff around the house, okay? Because this is sticky, you can put some papers or whatever around the house and you start rolling it, okay? So for instance, if you have a cat like me, you can roll the cat, right? You can roll the cat's head, right? And this is where you can make even longer sentences. You can say, oh, roll the head. And you're like, who's. Whose head? Mr. Ming's head? No, no, no, the cat's head. Okay, cool. Roll the cat's head. That's. You're already doing three, three word sentences with the cats or like moms. That's a possessive. So it's really long now with a very specific function, right? So therefore. Therefore, yeah, it makes sense for that to happen. Okay? So find something that you can use for a verb and then expand it so that it will make sense, okay? This is for children who are still building sentences, for higher level children, higher language level. They're older, they're doing verbal reasoning, they're telling stories, they're making sequences. You can also use the roller for a whole different stuff, a whole bunch of stuff as well. Lena asks, should I decrease screen time to eliminate the scripting a bit? This is a trick question, Leena, because for a little context here, Leena's child is actually my client. But the, the answer is yes. If I didn't know your child, but because I know your child, right, I would say that it depends on whether it's gonna make her angry or not. You know what I'm saying, Leena? So if it's gonna make him make her angry, when you decrease the screen time and she's not, she's actually like super smart as well. So she knows what you're doing and she knows what she's doing herself. She knows that she's repeating, right? She's having fun. So what is going to happen if you eliminate the screen time? You better have something else for her to do, right? So something that she finds also entertaining, okay? So it's cool that you eliminate it so that you can eliminate the scripting, but you need something else for her to do or else it's just gonna be angry. She's just gonna be angry, okay? So find something that's nice. Maybe tell her to go cook something that she enjoys, play Lego, I don't know, go sing, right? But since she's her own boss, you know, it's very difficult to do that. And you can, you can try with the sausages. Leena, by the way, you can see, say, like, you can say that, oh, if she's not watching it or she's not scripting, you can give a sausage to see if it helps. Right. You cannot stop her from scripting. You cannot close her mouth. It wouldn't work. So what I would say was, maybe today I'll talk to Anna about it a little bit, is to catch her when she's not scripting and then give her a sausage. Right. And say, oh, good, you're not repeating. You're not being noisy or something, and just give her a sausage. Okay. That would work. Okay. I'm not sure if decreasing the screen time would actually eliminate the scripting, because she has impeccable memory. Right. She will remember it after, like, watching it two or three times. Okay. So what I would do instead is to. When she's quiet, just give her a sausage if she's willing to. If she has the appetite, if she wants it. Okay. Hope that's helpful. I hope that works. Okay, I'll talk to Anna a little bit later on today. Yeah. So I'm gonna go on. I'm gonna tell you anything in the house you can do for speech therapy. Okay. So roller. Okay. How can you do it for higher language goals such as, you know, verbal reasoning or whatever? So when you see this kind of roller is from Ikea, right? It's for, like, getting off lint and, like, fur from cats and pets and stuff. So first of all, you can, like, roll it around, and then you see, like, oh, it's dirty. See, it's dirty. And then you can ask why it's dirty. And then they will have to think about why. And then most kids will just say, oh, because it's dirty. Okay. And the reason why is because it's sticky, right? It's sticky. It's sticking up all the things on the table. So you need to think about what's a good answer. Right. It might be, oh, because the table was dirty and I was rolling on it. That's fair. That's fair. So when you talk about verbal reasoning, there needs. There can be a lot of different answers. Okay. And the reason why a lot of children can answer. Excuse me. The reason why a lot of children can answer why? And a set way like, oh, why is the floor wet? Because Mommy spilled water and. Or like, they're using cars to answer why. Questions like, oh, why is the boy hurt because he fell on the floor? Those kind of cards. Yeah, I can even. I can memorize it. Like, let's say that Your child is on the spectrum. Hey, they're gonna remember everything. So is it functional to them? Can they remember that kind of stuff? Can they generalize the pictures into real life? Right, so if you're using cards to do why questions right now, you. You need to act it out in real life so that you check if they know the picture to, like, the real action life thing. Okay, so this is what I would recommend. But if you're doing verbal reasoning, like why questions with everyday item, then it becomes very easy for them to generalize. Because after I wrote on the table, let's say that they give an answer like, oh, the table. Why is the roller dirty? I would ask, oh, because the table was dirty and you were rolling on it. Cool, that's a great answer. So I will peel it off. So this is also a language goal. So for smaller children, I will say like, yeah, peel, peel. Just like that. It's fun. See, peel. And you can give it to them and they can play. Okay, scrunch it up. Scrunch. And then throw. What do we have to do? Throw in the bin. And then you can ask some questions. Why do you need to throw it? Because it's dirty. Fair enough. Where do you throw it? In the bin. And I'm like, okay, in the bin. Cool. And then you don't need to ask why because it's just. It's difficult to answer why? Yeah, because rubbish goes in the bin. I don't know. And then after you roll on the table, it's dirty, you can roll somewhere else, right? And it might be a sofa that's dirty. Or your sofa has like the pieces of paper that you prepared. So you roll it and then you say, oh, look, it's dirty again, why? And then they cannot say that's the table's dirty because they have. They cannot script anymore. They have to change. So it's like, oh, because the sofa's dirty this time. And you're like, that's correct. Very good. Yeah, yeah, it's not the table anymore. See, when you roll on any surface, on anything, as long as it's dirty, your roller becomes dirty too. Right? So it becomes, it becomes easy to generalize when you're doing something in situ, not in real life. Okay, so this is what I would do for verbal reasoning. So a lot of parents jump. They jump towards using pictures to do it instantly. Okay, and that's not. That's cool. That's very good. I mean, if your child is already at like 10 plus years old, pictures and words are very appropriate. Okay, don't get me wrong, but if you're like, a child is around, like, five or six years old when you're doing this kind of task, I think it's better to do it, like, in real life first and then switch on to, like, using pictures. It's always a good idea to do this kind of stuff. Okay. So even if your child right now is having. If your child right now is having troubles with doing, like, pictures, words, or, like, even, like, images, like drawings, then you should consider using something more realistic to do therapy with your child. Is it harder? Yes. Does it take more preparation? Not really. It takes someone who has thought this through. Right. If you have thought it through, you have looked at that item and thought about, okay, what kind of words can I do? Okay, what kind of questions can I ask? Okay, and then you need to think it through. Maybe you need to write it down a little bit. This is what I tell my clients who are going through online coaching with me. Sometimes I tell them exactly what to do. Right. Sometimes I ask them, okay, write down on a piece of paper what your child likes, and then some verbs or some words you can use with it. Just two or three is fine. So once you can do that, it becomes super easy, super, super easy to do therapy at home because you already have a set of goals you want to achieve. That's how therapy is. It's like, oh, I've got 1, 2, 3. These three words I'm gonna just tackle today. I'm just gonna go into it. I'm gonna try, right? So there's a lot of stuff as well, you know, you can do around here. Like, even keys, you can make. What's that called? You can make a language thing out of it. So for instance, what can we do with keys? Let's think about keys. Needs to be for unlocking something. So if your child wants something, you can put something in the box that has a key locked to it, and then you can teach them to use the key. Right? So at word levels, like one level, one word, two or three words, you teach them to put in your key, turn the key, open the box, something like that that is actually sequence. So as we get harder and harder and harder, you can ask them, okay, teach me how to use the key. Okay, first you need to get the key. You need to make sure it's the right one. And then you put it inside the keyhole. Okay. And then you try which. Which key is correct? Is. Is this key correct? Yes, because you can turn it. That's a question Just a why question. How do you know it's the wrong key? Because you can't turn it. Cool. So we're changing the key then. So we put it in. Can it turn? Yes. How do you know it's the right key? Because you can turn it. Good. Turn it, unlock it, open it, take it. Right. So you can, you can make a whole sequence out of it and you can ask why questions. And another question you can ask is, oh, why can't I open it? Because it's locked. So what do you do when it's locked? You need a key. Right. So where do you find the key? Oh, and you ask mom or whatever. And when you put the key in, how do you know the key is correct when you can turn it? Great. So there's so much you can do every day. And remember in the When I tell you guys that, hey, don't ask questions when you're doing speech therapy, I'm referring to children who are like struggling, like with one word, two words, three words, or even four. Okay, four. Maybe you can start asking some questions. But if you're dealing with like verbal reasoning, most of the time you're actually doing question comprehension. So you should ask a lot of why questions and keep on bombarding them and give them the correct answer. And. And it's also fun and rewarding. Okay. Because at the end of the day, if it's at this activity doesn't teach them something like functional number one. Number two is like, it's. You guys are doing a project together at home. Like for instance, opening something, putting on hand cream or like rolling stuff to as a chore, you know, and if you have pets at home, actually makes it very easy to do a lot of language goals. Right. So sit down, think about what items you have at home. Okay. If you're watching this on the recording, this is the most important part. Or right now you are live watching me on Facebook or YouTube. You need to sit down, think about what kind of things you have at home. It might be like a roller, a hand cream, a watch, a light here. Doesn't matter. You know, tissue cones, like, you know, the things that, you know, tissue tissue rolls, the toilet paper rolls that are empty. Use that keys, that kind of stuff. Write it on a piece of paper, think which one they would like, and then write some goals according to your child's ability. Okay, so if your child right now is doing like words or like phrases and sentences that you need to achieve those sentence lengths that you really want as a parent. Right. Write down what Kind of words you can use for this one. Squeeze, open, close, rub, write it down. And then you think about, okay, so can I put it in a sequence? Yes. Okay, so put it in the sequence, and then teach that sequence to your child over and over and over again until they get it. Okay, that's one word. And if you're able to put the verbs in and then you can just add the nouns and stuff afterwards, right? Just add it more like squeeze, squeeze the container or like squeeze the bottle or whatever, open the lid. Right, Squeeze it on my hand, these are like, you're just making it longer and longer that are appropriate to that situation. And they will learn different types of sentence structures. Right? Because you're teaching it at the right context. You're teaching them how to use this one if they like it. That is right. If your child likes sanitizer, hand sanitizer, then use that as well. If your child likes to roll stuff and throw stuff, use that. So you really don't need a whole lot of toys at home. In fact, sometimes if the toys, they don't have a functional use to it, it's pretty hard to teach them to generalize towards anything. All right, so I'm going to go. This is the end of my video here. I'm going to stop here. And I want to say thank you for hanging out with me here. And I also want to give my best, like, my greatest gratitude to everyone who joined the toilet training we did last week on Friday. I'm in the process of cutting that up. And so, yeah, it has been, you know, we had around 20 people joining. And it was really, really cool because I was going through what I. What worked for me and everything, and parents were kept on asking me about, like, how should apply to their children. It was a pretty fun experience. So am I gonna do another workshop? I don't know. Let's see about it. But at the same time, workshops are difficult because when I say something, parents think it doesn't apply to them. Or like, they think that, oh, there's not this too general, it's not individualized enough. Well, yes and no. So you need to take it with a grain of salt. Right. How can you apply the same thing to your child? When I say something about, like, for instance, the toilet training, I'm teaching, like, how to initiate, how to make your child initiate. Does your child already check all the boxes, or is your child already, like, what we call disordered, meaning it's out of order, knows how to do something, but don't know how to do something else. So when something is disordered, there's two methods. Number one, you can start all the way from the beginning. Right? You can start all the way from the beginning. Or if you have a therapist with you, you can analyze what the situation is and then systematically change the behavior so that it's in order again. So without me or any therapist around you who has done this before, I would strongly recommend you start from the very beginning for a lot of stuff so that you just build it up slowly. It makes sense for you and the child. Most importantly, it needs to make sense for you. Okay? If you don't know what you're doing, then the child will see it. They will understand. They will know that something's wrong. Or like, hey, I don't understand. You're not making it easy for me to understand. That's what the child thinks. That's why tantrums happen. Right. Because we're unable to make it clear to the child because we don't know exactly what you want them to do. Yeah. So just make sure if you don't understand the full steps or you cannot, like, chop those stuff, chop those behaviors, chop those. Those things into smaller pieces. And then to teach your child, do it from the beginning so that you know what to do. Okay? So with that said, thank you so much for hanging out with me. It's been, like nearly an hour now, and I just want to tell you guys, I'll talk to you guys on Wednesday live at the same time, 9am and please send me some questions if you have to. My email mingtsofspeech.com and that's pretty much it for today. Okay? So thank you for hanging out and I'll see you on Wednesday.