Social Games for ASD Children | www.agentsofspeech.com

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our Monday lives. Today we'll be talking about social games. All right? And so I wanted to say Merry Christmas and hopefully we'll have a happy new year very soon. 2021 has been crazy and, you know, like, it's been a great year for all of us. But anyways, I'll cut to the chase. Social games is something that is very, very difficult to teach a child, especially if they're on the spectrum and you want to teach them to, like, there are so many goals going on, right? Because if you teach a child to play a game, there are so many things that you're doing, right? Number one thing you're doing is you're teaching them to comprehend instructions in a group setting, which is very difficult, very different from. From being on the table like you and I like. One on one like this right now is very difficult to achieve. All right? So that's something that you have to remember. The group setting and the one on one setting, that's number one. Are they able to comprehend commands at that place with a bunch of people? Right? That's the first thing. Second of all, do they understand the rules? Like, understanding rules is also something you have to realize that it's quite difficult. And if you think about how long does it take for a child to be on the floor or be at the table to learn something with you and the rules, so on, so forth, and think about how hard it is for a bunch of children, right? And with a bunch of teachers as well, learning together and knowing the rules, that's super hard, okay? And once you get them off the table, the third thing is behavior, right? You can get a child who is on the spectrum to listen nicely and hands still not going around touching everything when they're learning with you at the table, right? But once you get them off, it usually becomes pretty difficult. They start running around, they start tapping on stuff, they start stimming. All things that can happen will happen, all right? And anyone who has. Has been doing therapy will tell you that group. Group therapy is one of the hardest things ever. High water pistols. What's up? So sometimes holding a social game might be what parents really want. Like, I always get emails saying, hey, Ming, can you teach me? Like, how do I get a kid to be more social with me? Right? And yeah, that's not the real, like, the goal that you can aim for yourself, right? So all these caveats aside, right? You still have to. If you still want to try, then I'm willing to teach, right? So that's why we're probably doing a workshop on this and you know, at the very least you will learn the basics, right? And the best thing is that, you know, like you, someone does it in front of you and someone hosts it for you. Because most the most important thing for teaching social skills or social games is that you're able to host the game effectively. Okay. And that takes the skill, number one and number two, compliant children. So that's why most of the time when we start, we have a bunch of adults playing together first. And throughout the last week, I've been sending out emails teaching like throughout three kinds of social games. The number one is Stop Go, which is just anyone who has been in therapy, especially aba, would have done it before. And the other one is called Duck Duck Goose. If you learned that goose before, if you played with it, it's pretty fun with a bunch of kids. And the last one is what I call touch this, right? So you can say, oh, everyone touch the blue. Something blue or something. And then they have to scan the room and take a look and touch something blue. And whoever stats this gets a point, right? I've gone through detail in the emails for the past week. If you're on our emailing list, check your emails and read it. Because I'm not going to post this online because there's so much thing. I don't want to misguide anyone who comes across my content, right? That's something I'm aware of. That's why I want to. If you want to know about the workshop we're going to do, Please go to agents of Speech.com and then scroll down and subscribe to our email newsletter and then I'll tell you when it's going to happen. All right? Most probably we will try our best to get examples, but it's very difficult at this moment in time because of the pandemic. I haven't been able to see a bunch of children in one go. So I haven't had any, like, real life examples of videos. And you know, it's just a nightmare hosting real life therapy for the past year and a year or two. Okay, so let's talk about, like, I'll just give you some guidelines as to how to do it because most of the parents who email back are like, oh, I'm interested. I want to do it, but it's only me and my son. Only. What can I do? Well, don't do it. You know, like, don't do it, number one. Number two is if it's like only you and your child can you ask another parent to come over to help? Yeah. Is that a possibility? Can you do a play date A lot of the times? What? Group therapy is glorified play dates, right? And you need one to one guidance. Like you need one kid and then another person to prompt. So it's best that if you have a play date then you need to get that other parent to help, right? Because remember like two weeks ago I went to like another city to see some children just before, you know, the pandemic gets worse. I don't know how it's going to be. So I'm going to stay put for now and say no to a lot of the, the stuff that parents are asking me to do in real life. But anyways, when I told the parents to do something like to let's play games, right, she didn't realize she had to help. And then she even asked me like this, what is your aim of doing this game? Right? Well, what are you trying to achieve, Ming? Like I don't get it. Well, the thing is if a child cannot play a simple game with us, think about how he or she is going to perform at school, right? If it's at a therapy like setting and they know I have to listen to the therapist and the parent and when I say oh, let's do this first, and the first reaction they have is to like run around and not listen or whatever, then you know, we got some work to do, right? So the parents and the caregivers need to be crystal clear about their jobs. The jobs are to prompt right away because why social games? At the end of it, everyone's, everyone gets rewarded, right? So remember when we were kids, at least when I was a kid when there was a lot of like group games, at the end we have like this like snack party, that kind of thing to reward everyone and say ah, good job, whatever and we share our food and whatnot. I think that's something you should, you guys should implement as well if you're doing social games. And I know quite a few like therapists are actually watching my stuff and I'm very happy about that. So remember, you guys have to use rewards no matter if you're a therapist or a parent. At the end of the day that's the best thing that can help them learn, right? Because remember in the beginning how they learn to like interact with us one on one is because we've got something they wanted and then by communicating with us to get what they, what they want and need, right? So same with social games. If you want them to play, you have to have a goal at the end, right? And every reward needs to be like customized to each child. Okay, so maybe child A likes trains, child B likes whatever, child C likes whatever. And then you have all the rewards with you. And when you play Stop Go, which is basically like what's the time is to wolf or you know what's that called? Stop Go is the same as traffic lights in Chinese. We call it like red, red green light or whatever it's called, right? And how you play is just you put up this thing like go, stop and go. Maybe I have it here. Wait, Yes I do. So like it looks like this, right? But make it a little bit bigger so I haven't cut this out even. So basically someone at the front needs to be. What's that called? The sign. And then when someone does it, when someone does it, when the host does it like go, all the kids have to go towards the host. And when they press stop like they show stop, they need to stop. So there's a motivation for them to come to you because you have all the rewards, right? So, so the parents who are prompters, they have to stop the kids when they say stop. And usually it takes like three to four times for the kid to really understand it. Even non verbal children will get it. Okay, this is a super simple game. If your child cannot do Stop Go, then think about how they're going to operate in the kindergarten where is like it's not one to one, first of all. Second of all, when it's like balls flying around, whatever, you need a. You need a lineup for certain activities. If they can't even do a Stop go very simply, in a very independent way, it's very difficult for them to learn how to do other tasks. Right? So I would. I always say social games should be a part of like getting ready for school. And these stuff need to be done in a group. You cannot do it one on one, right? Because there's no school outside. That's one on one. All one on ones are like tutorial, like what's that called? Tutoring tuition as some people call it. And you know, like, so you need the social game. So okay, Stop Go and Duck Duck Goose. If you haven't played this before, where have you been in your life? Actually I haven't really played Duck Goose until primary school most probably. And I only played it once. We, when we were young, we didn't play this kind of stuff. But you know, we played like what's the time is the wolf that kind. Right. We can also play what's the Time as the wolf, but it's harder because the child needs to know how to count. And that's one more, one more thing child needs to learn. Right. In order to do that kind of stuff. Okay, so guys, if you're watching this and you want to learn more, we're doing a workshop and you just started to watch. You can go to agents of Speech.com, sign up for the email newsletter, scroll down and go there, and then I'll tell you guys when I'm going to do it. It's gonna be like something that I want to do, like closed doors and teach you guys with like two to three hours. I don't want to do it here on Live because, you know, I might have some sensitive stuff I want to talk to you about. Like about, you know, parents want to share or whatever or other therapists want to share, but they don't want to show publicly and so on. Yeah, so. Oh, that's this Tang Qiyao says student SLP from Malaysia. That's great. Excellent. Guys, tell me where you're from. I know a lot of students are watching me and they ask me a lot of questions, which I find it quite cool. Right. Because usually if you ask someone senior to you, it's kind of difficult in our field. But anyways, I also learn a lot from my seniors. I Also still like WhatsApp or like email them and ask them a lot of stuff that I need to learn. And anyways, so let me keep on going. Right. So I would want to talk more about the last one, which is the last social game that I mentioned in the. In the email that I sent out today. And that is touch this. That's what I call it. I don't know what it's called. Maybe it's called like, I don't know, Simon says probably, I guess. I don't know. Not duck. Duck. Wolf. Duckduckgoose. Melissa, you're from Peru and living in Canada. Yeah. I think Duck, Duck goose is the one that. Sorry, I kind of switched my topic here. But anyway, Datuk goose is the one where you, like, sit in a circle and you go around, go g. And then you hit each other's head as you go around the circle. Like hit on the head and use something soft so like, you know, the kids won't whack the kids by accident. You know, it happens a lot. So use something as soft as possible, like a plush toy or whatever or hammer that, you know that the Ones made out of cushions and stuff. And then whenever you say duck, duck, duck, whoever says, like, when you hit on someone's head and you say goose, that goose needs to run around, like, and catch you and sit down before the other person sits. You got. I mean, so it's kind of like musical chairs as well. Like, you have to, like, attack you. I run, someone runs over. If you catch you, if they catch you, then you need to continue to be the goose. Right? If you get. If the goose catches the person, then he's safe. If you go. I mean, right. So if the goose can sit down, then the person who was called the goose is now the goose is now it. All right, I'm not doing a good job explaining. I usually show it instead of telling it. All right, okay, so the last one is. Last one is about kind of like Simon says or I see with my little eyes that kind. Right. But that one is rather hard. And it's for, like, children who have a little bit better language. So, for instance, if you say touch something made of would, you know, and the kids have to think and they have to observe other children doing something to guess the answer if it's something that is outside of their, like, knowledge. I find that one pretty fun because it teaches a lot, but at the same time, it's also very difficult if they don't have the world knowledge to do so. So, yeah, that's pretty much it, guys. Like, go ahead and let me know if you have any questions. I'm gonna go off now really quick live. And if you need more, go to agentsofspeech.com okay, go sign up for the email. Because I email quite often just because I like writing rather than talking. It's easier for me and I can explain things like, in detail there. Whereas, like, these are more ad hoc and if I wanted to, like, do something, it's rather diff, like the courses, you know, Like, I don't know how many times I had to, like, reiterate and, like, refilm those things, right? So writing is much easier for me. Go there and check out the email because a lot of the parents, you know, like, you would think that email is dead, right? But, you know, like, I get a lot of replies there and I'm truly grateful. So hop on to agents of Speech.com, sign up for our newsletter, and then look out for when I talk about the social workshop, the social skills play, whatever, workshop. Okay, that's it, guys. I'll see you in the next live, which is next week, and have a great Christmas. I hope you had a great Christmas weekend. And next Monday it would be already for. What's that called? It would be already next year 2022, just before we leave. Kuyan. Kuyan says game shouldn't be suit for nonv. Not really. Not really. I would say it depends. Just now, if you scroll back, if you see the stop. Go. Anyone can play that, you know, literally anyone can play that. But of course you cannot have. Oh, yeah, Kuyan, you have three kids, so that's good. So it's nice that if you have more children at home, it's easier to teach that way. But I don't think that's the. That's your. Your focus right now, Kuyan. You can learn about it, of course, and try it later on. It's going to be beneficial anyways and you have to do it anyways later on. Okay? Either you or a therapist. All right, so that's it, guys. I'll see you next Monday and bye bye.