Setting Boundaries with Delayed Children | www.agentsofspeech.com

Okay, welcome to our Monday Lives. Today's topic is going to be a little bit more not popular. You know, it's not going to get, like, a lot of people watching, and that's because it's something boring, okay? And. And something boring is always the most important thing that you need to learn about, right? But it's something that is very actionable, so I hope that you stick around and you listen up, okay? And for those who. Who are curious about my hair, it's just too long, so I've used a hairband. So anyways, so the first thing I want to talk about is how to set a boundary. And the reason why is just because, like, the backstory I just had, I was just watching a video about it, right? And I wanted to share about what I think. What makes it. What makes it, like, what was it easy for you to teach your own kid? All right? And if you're one of those people who would click on this kind of video, then great. Exactly. I could have made a more sexy title. You know, I could have made something like, oh, how to make your child talk, even if he's autistic or whatever, right? But setting boundaries is the number one thing you got to do. There's a reason why a child will be able to perform a lot better in a clinical setting, meaning at a speech therapy place rather than being inside of your house, right? There's a reason, and the biggest reason is because most of the time for speech delay, children or children who are on the spectrum, whatever. Whatever diagnosis is, is that they take you for granted and they treat you like a vending machine, whenever they want something, they click your buttons, right? They know how to make you want to give them something, all right? No matter if it's, you know, shouting, screaming, like, pretending to be adorable, whatever. They have their tactics, you know, like most children who are delayed, they have what we call compensate, compensatory compensation, whatever strategies, okay? So a lot of times they use their eyes, they look around, they try to gauge who is the person within the household who has the least power and go for them and kind of bully them into getting what they want, right? So that is out of the question, okay? That doesn't work. You know, try Mom. Try mom doesn't work. Try, you know, the grandparents. Grandparents don't work. If you're lucky enough to have a helper, then they will try to help us, right? So there. There's a. There's children who cannot speak, whose language isn't very good. They know who to. To seek for in order to get what they want, okay? And seeking a boundary is something. Something I learned just now was. It was very, very, very good, okay? And, you know, I'm still learning every day, but I try to put it together with the stuff that I know so that I can use it properly. So setting a boundary doesn't mean being angry at someone, all right? Being if you see me, I'm not saying I'm the best therapist in the world, right? I'm average, to be honest. Like, just. Just to let you know, right? Obviously there's loads of people who are below. But anyways, when you set a boundary, it doesn't mean that you need to be mean. You have to shout, you have to tell them, whatever. If you see me working, I'm always just being very neutral. But when a child does something correctly, I praise a lot, okay? So. So I am ignoring, you know, ignoring the rest and praising the best, okay? That's number one rule of any teaching, any therapy. In fact, I ignore whatever they're trying to do so that they cannot get whatever they want because I'm ignoring them instead of reacting and giving them a negative emotion or reaction. What I'm trying to do here is that what I'm doing instead is to wait for the chance for good behavior to come and then praise. And you're probably going to say, the good behavior never comes. Then what, what should I do? Right? So I'll talk about this in a second, all right? The first thing you have to understand, a reaction that isn't having a reaction towards something doesn't mean you're setting boundaries. Because once you don't have that reaction or you don't have that energy state, like I'm being a little woo woo now. The boundary doesn't exist. It disappears. And it's very true. So imagine like. So imagine that you're teaching a child something like. And. Or you're telling your child to do something. You find yourself having to raise your voice, shout at the kid, whatever, in order to tell them, hey, man, you've crossed the line. You're supposed to do this. You gotta listen to me, right? Then whatever you do, like, no matter how, no matter how you try other ways, the only way is that you raise your voice. And I've heard this from many, many parents, okay? Too many to count. Especially Asian. Asian parents, they would say, come up to me, man. Dude, I cannot. I need to raise my voice in order to get them to do what I want them to do. Sometimes I have to repeat like five or six Times and when I finally get them to do it, I'm so cross that, you know, my face is red. But they're like laughing and doing it right. So first of all, you have to understand, children who are delayed, especially those on the spectrum, do not read your emotions very well. Second of all, if it becomes a habit that they only listen to you by chance, when you raise your voice and higher, like make your high pitched or whatever in a certain tone, then they're going to think that, oh, I only need to listen when he's doing that. When you're doing that. So I don't know if you heard of a dog whistle before. So basically a dog whistle is like, when you blow the whistle, the frequency is so like high or different that human ears cannot detect it. But for dogs to hear it and then they're like, oh, they're freaking out and they know that someone is talking to them and no one else can hear. So it's the same as like you using your voice, your tone, going up that level. The kid only responds to that. Okay? And other like, whatever other things you say, he doesn't respond. Right. So let me get into something really practical now, all right? I know it's like five minutes into this video and you're like, what, what the heck's going on, man? You're talking about something totally different today. Um, but setting boundary is very, very super important. And it's, in fact, it's one of the hardest things that a mom can do. And I can do it because I'm slightly emotionally detached, especially in the first few months. And after that I kind of like the kid a little bit more. And it becomes hard for me as well. But anyways, well, not to go there. So practically speaking, if a child want something from you, what do they do? They pull your hand, right? They pull your hand towards the desired item or desired place. Right? And what happens is that you ask a question such as, what do you want? Tell me what you want. And what do you get more pulling going. Like that is actually basically telling you to shut up and give it to them. How do you create a boundary here? Because that is not the, that is not the behavior that you wanna, you wanna receive, right? You want them to talk, you want them to ask nicely, you want them to wait nice and patiently. So what you need to do is to create the situation into something that they won't fail, number one, as a desired outcome. And that's something you can praise. Okay, Any, any other way. If you're trying like over and over something that doesn't work. What that tells you is that if you keep on doing it, you're crazy. You know, I'm saying like that's, that's just impossible. It's going to work. And I'm not trying to sugarcoat it because every time he crosses a line, you didn't pull them. Like you didn't politely tell them that's not the way. So a very, very good practical tip here is that when your child tries to snatch something from you, the worst response you can do is to evade it is to pull back. Why? Because it's saying that, look, this is my boundary. You cannot come crosses it. You, you move the goal post back here. So what's going to happen is that they're going to pounce at you because they think, oh, I can reach for it, but you're just not letting me, right? I can reach for it, but I just, it can't, can't I? You're just not allowing me, right? So I have to try harder. This way is working. So what a subtle change in telling and explaining. Like last week in the, in our life we were talking about how to teach a nonverbal child is to let them understand non verbally without like with the instructions and so on. So if you want to watch that live from before, you can. Right? So what is the, what's, what's the difference between pulling back? What, what's a better proposition is that you block the child's hand. Okay? Why is it this subtle difference from like a screaming child to like a common patient kid? Okay. And this is something that no one really talks about because all day like all, all the parent guides are like, especially from the western countries which, you know, like, dude, I, I learned everything from western stuff. You know, all my books are in English. There aren't any like speech therapy or therapy books in Chinese that or in another language, Japanese or whatever. We don't read that in Masters, right? So we don't read that for our practical tips. All, everything is in English. But yet everything that has been emphasized is that, oh, we have to wait, we have to observe, we have to like listen. That's all correct. This is all correct. But the most important thing that what has been missing is that don't let your child fail. Okay? Let them know what you want, right? Explain to them exactly what they need to do and what is the boundary that you have to set. So if they're trying to grab you, you block them and let them know cannot. The item stays at the Same place, all right? It cannot go front, back, front, back like that because you're moving the goal post and the kid gets confused and they don't know what's going on. Okay? So when, you know, like when people tell you owl right O W L is hand and center, like gold advice, but at the same time, how about when they want something from you and they're coming at you and trying to grab you and stuff, right? So I'm teaching you that part of the equation when they're playing and being naturalistic, just read the hand and center stuff, right? But for me, whenever a kid wants something to get aggressive, whatever, this is what you have to do as a parent, right? Hold it right in front of them, don't let them snatch, you know, hold down their hands, block them, and for sure the mentality changes. Okay? So it's different. Why? Because imagine a toll gate, right? Imagine I don't have any images or videos I can share with you right now. It's just not nice for me. I have permission, but only in the courses, you know, And I don't want to share it here because it's out on Facebook and YouTube, whatever. But anyways, what I mean is I'm just going to use analogies and tell you what to do. Hopefully you understand. So a toll gate that can move in and like keep on going back and going back, what you're going to do is you get to that toll gate, you'll keep on driving. That's what I mean. It's going to keep on grabbing. So if it blocks you, then you have to think how to make it open, right? How to, how to go through that toll gate and get what I want, which is the same as the kid. So what do you do here is that you teach the, the child right away how to get it. And I see far too many parents and also educators most of the time because they don't understand how to set clear expectations and boundaries to kids, right? If you expect that a child will be should be able to talk whenever you say something, then you are in the wrong party, my friend. It's impossible. And I know sometimes like parents will say, I've heard him or like him or her say words themselves. They just don't use it. They're just too lazy. Whatever. There's no lazy kid. It's just that, okay, they are lazy kids. But what I mean is what's harder to snatch from you or to say something obviously is to say something, right? Say something like, or else why would we have like Voice control and like, you know, I don't want to activate your voice assistance or whatever. You know what I mean? Right? Why do we have that instead of typing, instead of grabbing our phone instead of whatever? It's because it's easier to talk. So if it's easier to talk, then why the lazier thing is to talk. And then if they cannot do that, then if they're grabbing with their hands, it means talking is out of the equation for them, right? So to set expectations to them, I want you to communicate, right? I want you to tell me nicely. This is the rule that I'm going to say. No snatching. Your hands need to be down, right? When they come up to you, put their hands down. If they come close to you, use this hand to flick them away nicely. Don't be like, don't do that. Like, you know, softly, you know, and then instead of going backwards, make sure it's at the same place. Even if you turn your wrist like that. That's fine. You know, this is a very, very good maneuver, to be honest. Like, these are the soft skills that, you know, I learned from, you know, like just doing therapy, you know, if you twist your wrist like that, it's impossible for them to get it. You know, it's this basic martial arts, you know. So what do you need to do now is to like, I just got off of a call from one of our members from Agent of Speech, and she said that, hey man, I tried that the whole sequence from the course and it's not really working that much. And I told her that, hey man, she doesn't. He doesn't understand. He's not taking initiative. He doesn't know the, like, the rules that you set. He's crossing the boundaries by crying and telling you that, hey man, I don't understand. Whatever, right? So the thing about it is that you've been moving that thing back and back and back. And when he's moving back, he's trying to grab, grab, grab, grab, cannot grab. And then he'll cry. So keep at one place, put his hands down immediately, immediately. Before he even tries, tell him how to achieve it, which is you usually open palm, you know, as we talk in the course, if you haven't joined, go to agents of speech.com, go to like, you know, like courses and then usually join the micro course first, right? It'll take me like a whole hour to tell you what to do. Like there's, there's better videos inside. That's why I don't, I don't show it here, right? So before they even can react, tell them what to do so that they can get it. Because once they try and initiate something with you that's a little bit too late, you know, it's better to, oh, you want this? Okay, do this. Okay, Here you go. Eat or whatever. Play or, like, watch or what, Whatever it is, right? And then when you need to keep on doing it, keep on teaching them until they understand the, the con. The concept of what boundary you're looking for. Look, look, I don't want you to snatch. I don't want you to scream. Do this. I'll give it to you. And the only way to teach them correctly is to keep on showing him. What's the requirement? Keep on showing him. And if he isn't good enough to achieve that requirement, you're the one who should take his hands and do it for you. That's why we always talk about gestures in the beginning, right? We always talk about gestures instead of talking. Because kids, humans aren't puppets. We can't put our hands in their mouth and start talking. Yap, yap, yap. It's impossible, right? So it just hurts my brain sometimes because I've repeated many, many times, why gesture is important. Why gesture is important? Because we're teaching communication. We're setting boundaries, setting rules, we're teaching kids what to do, so on and so forth. Even if the child is verbal, we still use gestures a lot to help them, like, link the words together. And even later on, like, even now I'm talking when I'm using gestures, it helps me think, right? So it creates a better way for children to express themselves when they cannot. Okay? And a lot of parents will think I mean, a lot. I mean a lot. Okay? You know, I'm not, I'm not using, like, hyperbole here, you know? You know, I'm saying a lot of, like the, the biggest objection that I get from parents saying that, oh, I don't want to teach my child to use, like, sign language. I don't want them to use pecs, like picture exchange system or whatever. They're going to rely on it and become lazy and don't want to talk. Right? Well, the thing is, how do you know? Have you ever tried, Have you ever tried not being able to talk? Right. You know, have you been somewhere that you're unable to communicate verbally? What's the first thing you do? The first thing you do is that you start using your gestures and you try to point stuff, right? You try alternate methods. For me, I Use Google Translate. I try my best to understand what the heck the person in front of me is saying. Right. So if you don't give a child an alternative way, what's that? What is that? Telling the kid that talking or communicating is of no use, and therefore they shouldn't use it. And therefore they should go back to the ways that they should be doing before. Which breaches. Which breaches the. The boundary that you set. Because you set your boundary like your standard is here. I don't like screaming, I don't like pulling whatever, but I don't accept anything. Like, I don't. I cannot achieve the requirement. So what happens is that there's a discrepancy, right? And when that happens, who's suffering? Your kid is suffering the most. Yeah, obviously the person teaching your kid who's like, just keep on repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating over and over again. That's suffering too. But at the end of the day, your kid suffers the most. If. Or a child on the span who's that might not be your kid, your student, whatever. He's the person or she's the person who's suffering the most. And the reason why is because they cannot achieve what you want them to do, and they're set up to fail. It's like. And there's no way to go. Okay. That's why in the beginning, when you're teaching a child or teaching anyone, don't wait. I know we've been set up to a standard where we think teaching is like quizzing someone. It's never the case like that. And I've become like a broken record. Talk about this. And I wanted to use a different angle to talk about the same thing today again. Okay. So I really thank everyone to listen and click in even if the topic sounds crazy. And I know, like today I talk about setting boundaries with like, nonverbal children. Let's. If you guys are interested, I can talk more about how to do it with verbal kits. Because when you're teaching verbal kids, right? What? Like, they can talk and then they say, no, I don't want, no this, no that, no whatever. Like you teach them. No. I have so many students who I start with non verbal, and then like after a year or two. After a year, right? And then they start knowing how to say no. Everything like that. Everything is no, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want no, Mr. Ming, no, no, no. Like that. And it just breaks my head. And then. And then parents are also like that. Right? So how do you set boundaries with those Children maybe I'll talk about in the next live. And that one is slightly easier, I would believe because now that they already have a language basis that you can work with and you can tell them and whatever and describe and try to teach and everything, it's actually easier, in my opinion. And how you create that is not from one one to one work most of the time for those children and why they say no is basically a power struggle at times. And what you need to do for those children is to ignore and not to like to remove things that you would give to her or him, but not remove the love, obviously, you know, like remove it so that they know. Okay, so is this question. Let me see. Hi, I'm from India. Oh, hi. Hi. Deal with my. Oh, okay, great. All right, excellent. So he's getting better. So you see. Okay. Well, you know, scripting to, to some extent really helps with language development. You know, it's a two way street. It's like a double edged sword. That, that, that's what I'm trying to say. Like scripting might get a child getting really, really. It would look like that your child would be having a. What's that called? Like stimming. Right. Having an echolalia or whatever. But actually it's also a central part of the language learning. So don't worry about that. What you need now is to give them more and more language scripts to use. Okay. Rasm asks, how can I teach my son to talk fast? No idea. If you don't show me something. Raz, I believe you're in a membership. Like use it and let me know. Like show me a video of. What do you mean by him talking slow? A little bit faster. Well, you can tap, you can go like you need to talk to the beat of this clap. But then at the same time that's a little bit artificial. Right? So you got to show me so that I know what to tell you what to do, right? Sure, sure. You upload. So for those initiated, we don't publicize this on the site. We have a membership at the back end of our website and it's just for coaching parents, that's all. Okay. So I just wanted to share all this today, get this off my chest and use a different angle to talk to parents around the world. It's a true blessing that I can talk to just people all over, you know, just now is talking. There's someone from Malaysia, someone from like Sweden today. It's crazy to me. So thanks for everything and I'll talk to you in the next one. So for this Mary Chris. You're from Philippines. Nice. Non verbal. Okay. How can you help her? Well, you can watch the videos about how to teach nonverbal child on YouTube. If you need more help, you can go get the micro course. All right, that's all for tonight. See you guys next week. Bye.