Should You Get a Full Assessment for Your Speech Delayed Child? | www.agentsofspeech.com
Ming advises against expensive full assessments unless they target your child's specific bottleneck. Start with a pediatrician to identify the main problem, then see the right specialist. Accept free assessments when available, and choose therapists who actually engage your child.
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Should I get, should I go to Singapore when, you know, all this whole pandemic finishes to get a full assessment? So I was asking her, hey, okay, so you want to go to Singapore for assessment, that's cool, that's good. It's nice to have a full picture of a child, right? It's nice, it's totally correct thing to do. But my question is, why are you doing it? Why are you doing it? Why are you spending the money? Because on a practical level, it's going to set you back quite a bit of money because first of all, you have to fly there and with the pandemic like this, even if it dies off like next year, even if it does, then you're still going to have to be careful, right? So you're investing your time and your health just to get there. And, and then by the time you get there, you also need a place to stay because the assessment will take probably the whole day and you don't want to fly back instantly or else you'll be exhausted. So this is a lot of money and not to talk about the assessment fee. So I had a client who went to Singapore for an assessment, right, and it set her back for around like 4,000 Sing dollars. So that's quite a lot of money. And then if you're watching this in the usa, the uk, all those places, well, hallelujah, you got for uk. I know the NHS has it for free, it's for everyone. Then it, it's really good, same as Hong Kong, just because it's the same under the same, what's I called regime back then, right? It was a colony. And same with Singapore, if you were a, a citizen of which you could actually do it. But in Indonesia or Malaysia or wherever, sadly speaking, you know, if you want a full assessment to see the whole picture of your child, it's not the best, it's not the best place to be, right? So where, what can you do? Why should you do it? And so on, should you get it? My answer might be a little strange, okay? Like you might not want to do a full assessment if you don't have the reason behind to do it. And I've said this pretty much a few times during lives and other videos and like when parents talk to me, right, because for me, a speech therapist, I can only give an assessment, a diagnosis according to speech and language performance, which I will define, okay, which just means like, how well they communicate, right? How well they communicate. And just to clarify again, because I heard from another parent that they were talking about speech delay as interchangeably as, like, language delay. But, you know, speech delay is actually like a misused term. It's rather overgeneralized. What it really means is just like a communication disorder, right? Like, if you cannot talk well, then you're. Speech delay. It's actually, you cannot communicate well. Well, when you can't communicate well, there's two reasons. Number one, your speech, when you talk, the sounds aren't that correct, and no one can understand it, right? The other reason is the language problem. You don't have enough words. You don't have enough vocabulary. You don't understand the grammar well enough to actually speak in a coherent way. So these are all the reasons why you would do it. These are the stuff that I would do for assessment. Should you get a full assessment? The answer is actually no. And I want to tell you with a huge. What's that called? A huge caveat. You know, like a huge. You got to be careful, okay? When I tell you not to get a full assessment, I mean, you don't need assessment and like, behavioral. Whatever. You don't need assessments. And you know, the physical stuff. If your child can walk already, you know, like, you got to be careful. And sometimes when you're in countries where full assessments or child assessment is something that you have to pay for and have to seek help for, you have to be careful what they're selling you, all right? And I've seen it a few times. If I were the therapist, right? I'm saying what I would do. I'm not saying that what you should do, I'm saying that my opinion is this. And therefore you should use that thinking to help yourself, okay? And if you don't think it's useful, then don't use it. I don't mind it, okay? So, yeah, if right now the biggest problem, the biggest problem is their speech and language ability, then by all means, go do a speech and language assessment, right? If right now your child is having a lot of sensory problems, then go get an occupational therapist to take. Take a look at him, right? If your child has a genetic disorder and he's got multiple stuff going on, go see a doctor first, right? Go see a doctor. See what kind of interventions medically you can do. Because at the end of the day, that is the bottleneck. So this is what I wanted to talk about. Do an assessment according to the bottleneck of your child, of which you might not know. That's why you need someone generic to take a look, which is usually a pediatrician, like. Like a pediatric Doctor. A doctor for children. Right? So once you have that, Once you have that, you know, the bottleneck, Right. If your child cannot walk that well, physiotherapy is the way to go. Okay? It doesn't matter if your child has cerebral palsy, like, you know, or ADHD or whatever. You have to be careful. You know, you got to do it the most economically economical way that you can. Okay. And let's say, yeah, you found the bottleneck. And then what you should do is to find someone who knows the most about something now that you've gone to, like a generic person to see. Okay? So my son has. Probably has this. Where can I find someone who's more specialized to get a better assessment and to take a better look, Right? So for instance, if your child has a problem with autism spectrum disorder, like autism, then the best case scenario, the best place to go is actually to some. To a clinical psychologist or a center that does. That helps autistic children specialty go there. From my experience, my first job was an autism partnership. When they do assessment is pretty thorough for autistic children, which is great because they know what they're doing, but at the same time, it's very expensive. Right. But I'm sure that you can find someone who is specialized in autism to help you do an assessment. Whereas if your child is suffering from adhd, you wouldn't want to go to a speech therapist for an assessment. To be honest, don't come to me. Because first of all, you have to find someone who knows what they're doing, right? Who knows what they're doing. So when you find that person, just listen to them. All right? And usually most of the time, that might be a clinical psychologist or a doctor who can prescribe some medicine for your child, because ADHD can be. Can be treated medically. Okay? So that's something that you should see. Okay, let's say that your child. You have already gone to a generic person to see what kind of bottlenecks your child has, and you find out that, oh, no, my child actually just does speech delay or something. Most probably they're not talking well. Well, the next thing you should do is to see someone like myself to get a speech and language assessment to see what kind of things can be done at home before you commit into a therapy. Okay? That's the thing that a lot of parents are actually scared about is that committing to therapy, I mean, when they come to me, they're already half committed. They already want to do it, but at the same time, it's Just, it's just. How to say. It's just. It's just gonna be. You know, a lot of people think that it's gonna be on the premise of I'm gonna sell something to someone, but it's not actually the case. Okay, so just. A lot of parents already are committed before. When they come to me, they already think that they want to. They want to actually start therapy. But sometimes you need to do the assessment first. Just take a look. Don't over commit. You know, I've seen parents who have done like three to four assessments before settling down on a therapist. If you have the resources to do so, then go do it, because more opinion is better, obviously. But once you find someone who you can trust, just trust 100%. And I'm not saying that. How to say this, There will be people who think that I'm more trustworthy than someone with 20 years of experience, right? There will be some people who will look at me and think that, dude, this guy's in a T shirt. I shouldn't listen to him. Well, and there will be other people who will think that, you know, what I say makes a whole load of sense, whereas other. What other people say aren't that great. Then it doesn't matter. Okay? It doesn't matter. As long as you feel like one of the professionals that you see makes sense, then just listen to them, okay? Just follow your gut. There's no science behind it. It's because if you listen to them and they do what they say and it works, then great. Yeah, but the thing is, if you don't listen and you don't do anything, you don't know, you won't know if it works or not. That's the case in point. I'm trying to point you towards. Okay, so when should you do a full assessment? Right? So you might be saying, yeah, Ming, I get it. Yeah, Get a generic person, look at them, see where the biggest problem is, and then find someone who knows that problem well to do an assessment. Right? So when should you do a full assessment? All right, so a full assessment is usually if you have a free service, you should take advantage of it. Totally. Right? If you're in Singapore, Hong Kong, usa, uk, Australia, they give you, like, assessment for free, and they ask you if, oh, do you want to do, like, everything? And then your answer would be yes, because you do want to do everything. Okay, you should do a full assessment. Because in those countries with the reports from the assessment center, usually it's called Child Assessment center. Cac Is that you will get more service. You will get more service that way. If your child down the line needs more help, then that is actually evidence to justify your child to actually get that service. Because to be honest, there aren't enough therapists in the world as much as every year is just pumping out therapists. Right. In every developed country, there's not enough people, so not to talk about undeveloped ones. Right. So you, yeah, you have to get as many resources as you can to ask for service. Whereas if you're in somewhere that, you know, assessment, a full assessment costs you a fortune and you might not even know if it works or not, if it's like valid or not, then it doesn't matter. You're gonna have to pay for therapy anyways. So once you pay, you don't need to think about whether, you know, it's just about the money. Yeah. You don't need to justify it. No one in this, in like a country like Indonesia would ask for a full assessment to look at before they accept you. Most probably they will do their own full assessment. Right? Yeah. So should you do a full assessment? Well, the thing is, you should win. And if your child is going to like a, A school, a primary school, I think a primary school is a cutoff point usually for a lot of countries from what I hear from my clients. Right. So if you're going to a primary school, a mainstream school, and they know that there is like after, I don't know, after they interview your child or like they ask you and they feel like they need some sort of evidence to show that, hey, should I let your son in? That's number one. Question number two is how much of a degree of help do they need in the, in the school? Right? That's question number two. Question number three is, does your child need like a special treatment? Like for instance, do they need more time during an exam, do they need more help during, like PE lessons, do they need learning support, which are all resources from the school and these things you need to have an assessment from, a full assessment to give them the full picture. Okay. And usually that's how I give a whole recommendation, is that if you need to use it, then go get it. Right. And usually that happens right when your child needs to get into primary school. Okay. No matter if mainstream or special, because if you're going to a special school, they're gonna want to do assessment themselves anyways. Right? But you wouldn't even get warrant, be warranted to get into a special needs school if you didn't do a Full assessment before, okay? So by the time Your child is 6 or 7 and you want them to go into a primary school or special school that requires you to have more info, then, you know, go get it, Go get the info. Okay? But before that, before that, just follow what I've said just now, okay? If your child is like two or something, they're not talking or like two or something, and they're showing signs of autism or like they're looking kind of. They're looking special, as they call it, which is a bad term, I think, then go see someone generic, see what they think. And then afterwards, afterwards see someone who is better at their specialty, okay? So if your child is like, on the spectrum, if you think, then go find someone who has. Has been doing a lot of work with, like, children on the spectrum. If your child is just labeled as speech delay, see someone like me, okay? It doesn't need to be me. Anyone will do as long as they know what they're doing. And then if your child is having cerebral palsy or something, you'll see someone who I would think should be a clinical psychologist to see what's happening over there. Generic, just genetic disorder or any type of, type of, like, biological, like, you know, the cause of their ability. Then go see a doctor, right? See what kind of medicines that. Or some kind of medical interventions you can do, right? So that you can help your child to make informed decision of what the next steps are. All right? So I would say from 2 to around 6 and 7, this is your period of which you try stuff, you know, you try what kind of therapy works, what kind of therapy doesn't work, okay? And if your child is showing, like, a lot of sensory issues, like, for instance, let me tell you, one of my clients, they cannot actually hold on to stuff. She cannot physically touch stuff. Another client, she. He doesn't like to brush his teeth, anything that touches his mouth, he becomes repulsive. So that's actually a hypersensitivity, hypersensitive issue, right? So, yeah, this is something that you should, you should be aware of. You should go to occupational therapists when there's a sensory issue, right? So why I'm talking about all this kind of stuff, right? Because it's not the most sexiest stuff. Usually when I talk about, like, okay, three tips to make your child talk or whatever, this kind of content, this. This kind of, like videos, we'll get a lot more people to watch, right? But should, if you're. This is actually a very practical thing. And to be honest, even if you don't have a child who is, you don't have a child who needs more help than usual parent. There are parents who have these kind of friends and families that around them who have children of these needs. So whenever they need that kind of info and you know, you've heard it from here and then you will have some sort of idea how to kind of tell them, right? Kind of tell them and what you can say at those kind of points. Like especially parents who are, who have special needs children, they always get asked by new, new parents just to see what they want, right like and to know more about the situation. So what you can say then is like, oh dude, my child is different from yours. I don't know if this is right or wrong but at the same time if you get a full assessment, it means that you get like a full on report. Doesn't mean you know how to read it, man. Like it's all figures and numbers and long paragraphs that are copy and pasted. You know, that's how we do it and that's how I used to do it when I, when I wrote like 60 something reports in one term. You know, it's just impossible not to copy and paste. And you would think that if you pay up to like 4k 5k sing dollars or USD for assessment report, it's not copy and pasted, you will be out of your mind. Because no one in the right mind would take so much time to actually write a report. And I might be like this is my view, my opinion, right? It's not, is not the truth here but I'm telling you that you're paying so much for a report that no one knows how to read other than people who have been through that, you know, it's stupid to actually pay for it. That's what I'm saying. So yeah, and that's what actually happened on the sidetrack is that recently I had my client being assessed by another therapist that I'm trying to work with and in the end we got a, in the end she made a report for me. And you know, as much as I know the amount, I know there was some stuff inside. I didn't know what the reason why she did it, you know, in the report. So when you're paying for a full assessment and no one is guiding you through like 30 pages of like intense report, you know, it's kind of a waste of money because you don't know what's going on, right? So the next time when you have a family friend or whatever. Who asks you about, oh, should I, what should I do with like special needs children and whatnot? Well, you can, first of all, you can like point them towards like this channel, this Facebook page, my website. And at the same time, because you've watched this, you can tell them that, hey, a full assessment might not be the best idea. You should think about what's the key thing that your child is lacking in and then find someone who knows how to do it. So for an instance, my old boss in Hong Kong, he's actually like specialized. Specialized. This term is like, it's a taboo inside the therapy world. If you say you're specialized, you gotta have something to show for it. But anyways, so he's specialized in apraxia of speech, child apraxia, childhood apraxia of speech, which is what they call CAs, right? And whenever I can see, I can tell and I can understand that, that when he does assessment for children with apraxia is very different from a generic assessment itself. So finding someone who knows what they're doing about a subject that they know deeply about is very different from finding someone who knows nothing. Like just generically, okay, let's say I were to do like, if I didn't know anything about apraxis of speech, if I didn't work with that old boss, if I did assessment right now with none of that knowledge, I would make a mess of it. I mean, like just being honest with you, right? I wouldn't be able to pinpoint the deficits, the problems, what kind of things are happening within the child if I haven't had that knowledge that is shared by someone who has expertise or a specialized taxation with. So you have to keep that in mind. It's very, very different. A generic speech therapist and a specialized speech therapist. There's already a big gap in knowledge, okay? Not to mention that, you know, it's a cross profession. If you ask me about sensory stuff, I can only give you my two cents, right? I can only tell you, okay, like something like this, right? I'm not too sure. Go see a professional. That's what I would say. So pinpoint, what's the biggest problem right now? Find the expert. Who knows? Usually you might have to ask around, especially within other therapists, other moms, and you can use all the resources you need. There's a lot of mommy groups on WhatsApp, on Telegram, on Facebook, that there's a lot of moms that are more than willing to share so that you don't need to go through the information gathering Stage So she get a full assessment? Not really. When she get a full assessment, maybe right before mainstream primary or special. If you want your child again to special, special schools. Right. And don't worry about it because actually you will worry about it. And when I say don't worry, it doesn't make sense. But what I'm trying to say is you should look out for other moms who have done the same things as you did. And I asked them, hey, what are the steps to get my child into like a special school? What are the steps to get my child into a mainstream school? Because that's how I gather my information too. If I didn't ask my clients and other parents who are, who are going all through this, I can't share this kind of information with you. Right. So it really takes to takes. You need to take time to talk to people. Okay. You really need to take your time to talk to people, see what, what their information is at this moment in time. Right. What kind of schools will accept your child? What kind of therapy will make sense for a child? What should you try? Who are the experts in the field for autism? Inside the city. Inside your city? Who are the people who will help you out with certain problems? Right. And by the way, we're doing a toilet training workshop on 17 June this month. If you haven't, you should go check it out. Okay. Because it's the method that I use to help my clients get to actually, actually, like without, without any Pampers, you know, like it's, it's very, very tested. You know, it's not just one time or two times. So go there and check it out. So we're doing on the 17th, like two more weeks, less than two weeks now. I pasted it in the comment section. You should go check it out. And why I'm sharing this now is because I've been sharing it with all my clients and recently I've been helping a rather adolescent ASD woman to actually toilet train with this method. It worked with 2 1/2 years old. It works with like 20 something years old. So this method works. So go check it out if you are having troubles with actually doing toilet training. Okay? So that was a promotion of my workshop. Okay, let's get back to the main topic. So at any time, if you have any questions, do let me know about anything, even for the toilet training or what kind of topics you want me to talk about or what kind of workshops you want me to make. So a question I got asked from email is like, hey, why are you doing a workshop? Why don't you just do it in a Facebook Live? Because I need to prepare a lot for this workshop, and I'm going to make it into a really nice PDF, really nice worksheets that you can use at home so that you can actually do it yourself. There will also be a live Q and A for that one. I feel like when I make an online course for parents, you guys don't even watch that much because there's no deadline to it. Whereas a live workshop is just live 90 minutes. And if you're there, you're there. Of course the recording is going to be there, but people are more likely to watch when you put it live like this. So go to Anxious Speech Toilet training workshop. It's already in the comment section. Go click it and take a look. And yeah, that's the end of this promotion. Let's get back to our little topic about should you get a full assessment? Okay, so I already told you guys, the answer is not really. Okay, so what kind of. I think I'm trying to reconnect on Facebook, but I'm just going to keep on talking because I'm on YouTube as well. So. Yeah, how about, like, how do you even see if a person knows how to assess your child? Okay, so first of all, I can only talk about, like, speech therapists, right? If I were, I'm saying that what I would do is my opinion. Doesn't mean it's the truth or anything. I need to make this disclaimer many times, all right? Parents go out and say, oh, you know what Ming said? Ming said, this is the truth. No, don't do that to me, man. You can quote what I like. Ming's opinion is then, yeah, you can say that. So my opinion, Ming's opinion is when I try to hire a therapist or whatever, what I look into or if I want to work with them or not is like, basically, are they able to engage the child? Right? Are they able to talk to a child and calm them down and, like, you know, make them sit down and everything? Okay? That's the number one thing. If your therapist who's doing the assessment or like, doing therapy for you in general isn't child friendly, doesn't know how to communicate with children, cannot make them sit down, cannot tell them to do something and the child doesn't do it, then there's no way that they can assess the true ability. You know what I'm saying? So if the child's all over the place and the therapist is getting Very, very. How to say, very scared, very. Don't know, very worried, or using a method that doesn't suit the child, doesn't like change, doesn't change their methods fast enough, then there's going to be a problem. There really is going to be a problem. So once you see that, I think you can give the benefit of the doubt to the therapist for like two or three times more. And to be fair, it happened to me as well when I just started out. I lost clients left and right when I just started as a therapist. And that's basically because I wasn't confident enough. I didn't think that I was worth 100 USD an hour. But the matter of fact is that, you know, I've actually had much more training than a lot of people, including my peers, for some reason, because of my background. So I had to get through that mentally. All right? And a lot of junior therapists go through that. It's called imposter syndrome. And especially when you look young, right? Like, I don't really look young for my. My age. People think that I'm like five or six years older than I am. So that's actually an advantage on my part. But what I'm trying to say is that when you're looking for a therapist to do an assessment for you or do therapy for you or to do a full assessment for you, try not to look them at face value, you know, trust your gut and see if your child is connecting with them or not. Right. So I've totally lost Facebook. So whatever. I'm just gonna just go on and do it and just continue on YouTube, because why not? And then I'm gonna end this live, like, in five minutes. Because I basically answered the question for the live, but you know, it. If I'm sticking around, if you guys have any questions and see if, you know, the Facebook peeps would, like, pop onto, like, YouTube, because I see that happening sometimes. But anyways, yeah, I'm saying that give them the benefit of the doubt. Like, give them two or three times before, you know, you try another therapist. And the reason why I say this is because it takes time for a child to get used to it. Especially if your child is, like, rigid, you know, Especially if they're on the spectrum. If you don't give them, give the therapist a second try, you might be missing a gold mine. Because rapport. Rapport is built by, like, you know, have seeing someone over and over again. Yeah, yeah, Lena. So, yeah, I was interrupted on Facebook. Oh. Even on. On YouTube as well. That Sucks. Yeah. Anyways, so, yeah, so give them a benefit of the doubts. Don't see them by face value. You see that I wear T shirts and whatnot. That actually is a tactic on my end, especially here because in Hong Kong, I wear a shirt, sometimes I wear a suit. And because I have to look professional and I have to be a salesperson, I have to do the assessment in 30 minutes, tell the parents what they want to hear and sound like a genius and at the same time a fortune teller. Like, oh, does your child hold your hand when he wants something or something? And then he was like, oh my God, how did you know? And I'm like, yeah, I've done this a million times. You know, all this kind of stuff. Not a lot of therapists know how to do this. Right? They don't know how to. They don't know how to like sound like a genius or like a fortune teller in front of a parent after asking a series of questions that narrows down to like a few, a few possibilities about your kid. Right. And that's only because I've been working in Hong Kong at like on Nathan Road. You know what, if you've been in Hong Kong, you would know like, Nathan Road is like pretty much the most expensive. Not really the most expensive. But you know, whoever works on Nathan Road as a therapist, they have like 10 plus to 20 years of experience. Right. I was like one year experience and I was there. So I had to really step up my game in terms of talking to parents. So don't be discouraged if a therapist doesn't know how to talk to you. Maybe their therapeutical skills are nice. You would never know until you try. Right. You need to give them an opportunity to grow. But you also have to be careful of therapists who talk well, who but don't do well. Right. And I used to think that I was one of those in the beginning, but as I progressed I feel like, ah, not really. I can actually do quite a good job sometimes, depending on how it is. Right. So yeah, that concludes my live video for today. I know it's like a very mundane, very mundane topic. And if you need any more help, you can always email me@mingagentsofspeech.com and also these questions also give me ideas to what to talk about on lives. And also like making YouTube videos, making workshops, and ultimately asking experts to come on when the audience grows bigger. And then we can get experts to come over to talk about topics that I'm not familiar about to help you guys out. Thanks, Lena. You're always so nice to me. Yeah. So, with that said, thank you so much. I'm going to head off now. Goodbye.
