Speech Therapist Reviews Ms Rachel - Is She Good for Your Child?

Hey, so let's talk about Ms. Rachel. We're looking at Ms. Rachel here and she's got like 5 million subscribers. And this video alone, I looked at the most popular one. It's around 425 million as of this recording. And a lot of parents are asking, oh, is Ms. Rachel okay? Is she proper? Is it good screen time or whatever? So I'm going to do a review about how it's actually helping toddlers, how it's actually helping children to develop speech. Because if you look at her website, right, if you look at her, her about page here, she will say that it's, you know, like she's using some techniques recommended by speech therapists, right? So let's see if that's true or not. Okay, so first of all, when you, when you see her, she's very energetic, right? She's, she's very slow and she has a very intense eye contact. When she says mama, pictures of moms come out.

Let's sing it.

And she sings it, right? So she's doing a few things, right? She's giving a picture, a visual representation of the word mama. And then she does a singing and then she claps it. What does clapping do? So clapping is a way to signify a child's ability. So like it's teaching a what a syllable is. So a lot of times when children, they have problems with saying a word, they usually cut the first syllable or the second syllable. They only say one syllable when there's, it's a two syllable word. So when you clap it out, it's easier for the kid to actually identify the different syllables that they are. Which is a good, good technique and I use it quite often. Let's keep on watching. And then she signs it and you see that her pictures are like different types of mom, different types of baby, which is very important because sometimes what happens is that children who are especially on the spectrum, they need more different types of a single thing or object or a person or whatever to understand the true meaning of a word, right? So that they can generalize. Good job.

Clap.

So clapping again is a gesture imitation that she's trying to do and she's showing a bunch of other children doing it alongside with parent or the adult doing it. And the reason is because there's research saying that if a child sees another child do something, then they will actually learn how to do that social activity. Because a lot of these things are social routines, right? And these type of actions. Research has shown that if a child is exposed to another kid doing the same thing at the correct context, at the correct time, at the correct meaning, there's a higher chance of them actually learning it. Right. So let's keep on watching.

This is clapping.

That's clapping. So here is more of a. What we call. Like, she signifies at the end, she gives a feedback, kind of, and she shows how the mama. This word is made. And she exaggerates the mouth shape like that to give more of a visual cue. And if I were you, and that you are using the techniques here from Ms. Rachel, you should also do it on the child. It's like to give a little more of a tactile cue for a tactile touch, sensory input for the kid to know that it's actually a bilabial meaning, like two lips putting together making that sound. All right. So up till now, the stuff that I've seen is very actually what we call mother Reese. So what does mother Reese mean? Like, as in Chinese, the ease just means a type of language. So mother ease means how a mom will exaggerate slowly with a lot of facial expressions. Right? And you can see it. I'll just mute it for a bit while I talk over her. So you see that she's very expressive. She's slow, she's engaging. These are all motherese things. Her intonation is very up and down. A lot of parents, especially in Asia, they're very flat.

So if you see this, let's sing it.

And she's singing a lot as well. That helps a lot with motherese. So motherese is also, like, clinically researched to help children to acquire language. And it's something like, obviously fathers don't really do it as often as mothers. That's why it's named after mothers. Like, not trying to be sexist or.

Whatever, but let's clap it.

So again, she's using the same routine and the same cues and the same ways of presenting a word. So it's easy for the kid to follow, right? And because the way that she presents it and the mother reads type of situation, it's easy for the kid to absorb because it's just like a mom doing it, right? So up till now, I think watching Ms. Rachel is actually quite good, I would say. But here's the caveat, right? The most important part of all this is that after she says stuff, things happen on the screen. And again she. She gives different photos of different types of parents of the same concept, right? So this one is again, it's like that prompt thing that we call. And it's like, here Meaning it's a D. So you don't have to learn all of these. It could be, like, all made up. As long as it signifies to the kid that it's a specific sound. Right. It doesn't need to be. As long as you are yourself very consistent with using the gestures, then it's fine.

Good job. Can you do this? Do this?

So you see, like, when she goes like. Like that, it's very, like, it's the pinnacle of Mother Reese, right? And it's very. She's not trying to force the kid to do it. She's like, can you do this? Can you do this? Can you roll your.

Whatever bus will come out.

A bus will come out. Yeah. And it does come out, right? So this is good for children because after she says something, the concept of that comes out. So it's easy for the kid to enjoy, number one and number two, to understand the concept of the word. Because right after the sound comes out, the picture of it comes out, and it's funny as well.

Can you say beep, beep?

So you see her facial expression, right? Yes.

Good job. You say beep, beep.

So this actually like expressions, as far as I. I'm concerned. I use it a lot, and that's why I don't need to talk a lot when I. When I teach children. When I make silly expressions like that, kids really like it, and they tend to listen more. And that's because you are. When they're looking, right. You give this kind of expression. It promotes eye contact, Right? Whereas if this is where you should be learning from Ms. Rachel. Okay, and I'll talk about whether this is good or bad in a minute. All right? But listen first. If you're doing a lot of these expressions when your child looks at you, there is a higher chance that your child would look at you next time because they're seeking for this kind of silly expression, right? So instead of asking your child to look at you and stuff, the odd chance that when your child does look, you make these silly faces. It's like it's rewarding the kid to want to check you out instead of, hey, look first, look first, do this, do this. Right? So Ms. Rachel is very, very generous with her communication, and she uses a lot of what we speech therapists recommend when. When you are actually talking and interacting with the kid and you see that some goals are embedded inside this whole video is a whole hour long. And basically what she's doing. And now I'm talking about whether it's going to be like, whether she's good or not, right? So now I'm going to talk about whether it's good or not, right? So I'm just going to have it running and I'm going to talk a little bit. So the reason why this Ms. Rachel is good for your child is because she uses different methods to teach a child the concept. There's videos going on, there's stuff popping up and down. Her expressions are good, right? She has a lot of action. She's very dynamic. The more a child watches, the more engaged they are. She's basically a kindergarten teacher on steroids and she'll never stop for a whole hour. And that she uses a lot of what speech therapists talk about, you know, and at the same time, the thing about this is that you as a parent, you need to watch this, right? And learn from her. Because here's the biggest problem with Ms. Rachel is that she's on a 2D screen and you need to bring her to life. And the only way that you can bring her to life is that you become like her. All right? I'm not saying that you're going to put on a show like she is. Obviously when we go to work as therapists, this is exactly our mood. We go to Disney Channel this mood and we put on a show for like a whole eight hours a day. And it's really tiring. But at the same time, I'm not telling you to do this all day is going to kill you. What I'm trying to say is learn from her, right? Learn from her and try your best to imitate these things. And obviously you don't have so much like things popping up and down, right? And the other thing is that children on the spectrum may or may not actually benefit from Ms. Rachel as much as you think. Obviously, it's actually nice for a child to watch this, but not on a consistent basis because this is still a one way communication. As we talked about before, there are some merits of children Learning words from Ms. Rachel, obviously. And we see a lot of parents are saying, Dude, Ms. Rachel says a lot, right? You know, like she, she taught my children this word and that word. But at the same time, you are the person who needs to be bring that word into real life. Because at this Moment in time, Ms. Rachel, these videos cannot give the exact use of the language. So a lot of times when she talks about like the words, right, she will present a photo, she will present the concept, but at the same time, when is the child supposed to use it? She cannot do it here I mean, like, later on, maybe, like, in the dystopian world, we will have VR headsets, and we'll have, like, Ms. Rachel on VR or whatever. And it may or may not actually help the kid that way. But at the same time, to bring these techniques back to home, that's our job. Right? And she's doing a good job demonstrating of which. Yeah. And if you look on the Internet, there's loads of reviews about, like, Ms. Rachel. She's really successful, and I really admire her for what she's doing. So what you gotta do now is to learn from her. So in the last part of the video, I'm gonna talk about more what you can do. So this part is great. If you watch this.

Yay.

And she's gone.

Where did I go? Peekaboo. I was under the scarf.

So when you're doing peekaboo, are you doing any type of routine or you're doing any type of play? It's very important that you keep on repeating the same thing. But when things that you are repeating, the routines that you're repeating, they get a little bit too boring. You have to shake things up. Okay. The first thing is what she did was she covered her own eyes. Right. And what I would do as well is to cover the child's eyes. That's something that changes the routine on the basis that you've taught what peekaboo is, and they enjoy it. Right. But I don't think you can do peek a boo for, like, 10 minutes straight. But what Ms. Rachel has taught us a lot here is that you can use props. And props have a different sensory input to it. Right. They add a little more visual stuff that makes it fun for the kid. And it's like, if you use a scarf and it's like. And the child likes that texture, it actually helps a lot. And if you see. You go to kindergarten, when I grew up, we used to play, like, a parachute a lot. And we put, like, we start off with just a parachute, and we start putting balls in it. And. And afterwards, the teachers would, like, throw us in underneath the thing, underneath the parachute. And it was fun that way. Right. And you started adding even more things inside. Toys, bubbles, whatever. And, you know, like, any routine, you need to build on top, on top, on top of it to make it fun. So Ms. Rachel is demonstrating here, and something I want to point out, I want you to see as a parent or a teacher or whatever you're. You're watching this video for is how her pacing. Her pacing is very important. A Lot of times, especially us Asians. I'm not saying, like, Westerners don't do this, but I see a lot whenever I do parent consultations, right? Is that parents talk really fast. Parents want the result real quick and they're not, like, waiting enough. So if you look at her, she is so slow. She's like. And then she does it, right? And then pika.

I was under the scarf, blue scarf.

So she's also doing a bunch of, like, techniques as well. So other than if you look, watch this whole one hour, there's not a lot where she says, say something. It's only at the front. Only when she's introducing a new word. When she's doing a routine, she's not asking the kid to talk, which is very, very important. So what she did just now is she does a lot of quote unquote, what we call self talk, right? Is that when she's doing the activity, she demonstrates and talks according and describes the situation. Right. I was under the scarf, blue scarf. And then she does another description that talks about the blue scarf. So this is pretty basic stuff that you would see on the Internet if you were searching, like, there's self talk, parallel talk. Hanan center does a lot of this stuff for parent coaching, for naturalistic interventions. Right. You see this in action here. And. And that's actually pretty well done.

Where is Rachel? Where is her?

And then now, like, she. She says play games like peekaboo. But what she didn't include was that she included a song inside of Peekaboo. And then she put two routines together. So singing a song is one routine, Right? Putting a scarf on the head is one routine. And then peekaboo is another routine. She's like, layering up really well.

Peekaboo. I see you. Peekaboo. Peekaboo.

And we do this a lot, actually, in speech therapy. If we're teaching some daily activity stuff, we're playing a play routine. And it involves like a child, like, brushing their teeth or whatever. We will sing songs, right? And you know something like, now it's time I brush your teeth. Whatever. Okay, I'm not gonna sing on. On a video that much, but you know what I'm saying? Whenever there's a chance we're gonna put in some songs.

No, I see your tiny toes.

And again, she also talks about and giving some examples from, like, children doing the same thing, hoping that the kid will start to generalize this same situation here. And they do it like, different race, different people, you know, different ages, so to speak.

Flow a kiss Flow a kiss.

So the more you watch, the more you see that Ms. Rachel has a structure and a system to how she teaches children on a video, right? But that doesn't. Like, if you translate it into, like, real life, what happens is that your child starts to, like, just walk off, right? So instead, what you should be doing with Ms. Rachel is like, you should watch, pause, do it with your child, and play again.

Maybe if we blow a kiss to.

The teddy bear and they tell you what Ms. Rachel is doing really well is like, she's telling you the milestones, right? She's telling you exactly around when. When it's supposed to for children to have this skill to kiss back.

Let's try it. Blow a kiss to the teddy bear and see what happens.

So if you're watching together with your child, you can totally pause it at that point, prompt your child to do a blow kiss, and then give a response like this. And use Ms. Rachel's videos as a reward, right? It can serve as an instruction, a reward, and also a feedback mechanism. And you're the person who's mediating the whole communication with Ms. Rachel and also that you're prompting a child to do it and you're doing it at the same time. And it will help a lot. So all in all, I want to say Ms. Rachel is awesome. And how you should be doing using Ms. Rachel, this real good resource is not just to let your child watch it themselves. Obviously, it's still okay. But the best way to use Ms. Rachel is to, number one, use her videos as a reward, so to speak. If you're doing something and you want your child to do something like, oh, I'll let you watch it at least. This is educational, right? Number two is that you are using Ms. Rachel's videos as a means of teaching something. So it might be blow, kiss or peekaboo, but you use her videos as a basis, as a foundation for you to build up that routine with your kid, right? What you do is you play it, you pause it, you do it with your child. You, at least you prompt, blow, kiss, you play it again, and same as Peekaboo. Like, all throughout this whole hour, you've basically been guided to do what we call a very naturalistic approach with children, right? And if you do this over and over again, you start to pick up how to speak like Ms. Rachel, how to make pauses, how to make those expressions, how to structure something and layer on to different routines to make it a little more fun. And you see that these routines are very short because on A video. The attention span can be very, very short. But if you're doing in real life, you can add more input, like sensory input. If you were using a scarf with Peekaboo. If you're using, like, tissue with peekaboo, Right. It would actually last a lot longer because then the child can actually feel the tissue, you know, like, they actually like it. And you can play longer. But the thing is, why Ms. Rachel is doing this very short is because, like, children, if a child is watching this and he's like 1 year old or whatever, his attention span is probably like, what, 15 seconds. So that's why she's doing it this way. Right? So Ms. Rachel is a great resource. Please use it nicely and the correct way. She's demonstrating basically how you should be interacting with your child at home. I think she's doing a really good job because having this kind of energy and having this kind of pacing and knowing what she's supposed to do is the hardest thing. Right. That's why when we are doing agents of speech, when we're teaching parents, we usually start off with structured activities so that the parent feels like they can do it. Whereas this one is a lot more. How to say is a lot more. Takes a lot more skill and knowledge. Right. I'm sure Ms. Rachel studied and she had consultants teaching her how to do all these. And she's done a really good job. Right. But the best thing is that if I don't know, I didn't really look at her channel in a deep dive. But if it would be cool if she would do a few sessions with children demonstrating how doing these things will actually make children talk, I think it'll be awesome. Right, that's it for this video. I'll see you in the next video. And if you haven't, please go to agentsofspeech. Com checklist to grab a free list of tools and toys for you to start home therapy. All right, that's it. Bye. Bye.