Speech Therapy Techniques for Autism | Step by Step Guide

We're going to talk about speech therapy techniques for ASD children, children who are on the spectrum. And just a disclaimer, I'm sharing what has been working for us with the parents that we coach and what I've been doing in my clinic back in the day. So I'm just going to talk about it right now. So the first thing is to find interest. The hallmark of children who is on the spectrum is that the interests are very diverse. Like some of them are very ritualistic, sometimes ritualistic. Okay. Some of them are very quote unquote mainstream as well. And some of them are very like narrowed down of niche, depending how you say it. So finding an interest is finding a window where is, it's a common thing that you can share with your child to go inside of their world and try to talk to them. Right. And a lot of times I guess when I talk about rewards and stuff, there are a lot of people on the Internet who will type away and say that's ABA stuff, that's applied behavioral analysis. That is, you know, it's very tormenting, it's torture, so on and so forth. But at the same time I would like to see someone do therapy without anything that the child wants. Right. So don't go into the other camp and like go to extreme and tell me, Ming, you are, you know, like you support child torture and you know, like trauma and stuff. Well, the thing is finding an interest, it's in everyday life you try to connect with someone, you need to have a common interest. And of course we're not going to have like me, a 30 year old man, I'm not going to have a common interest with a toddler who's on the spectrum. It's very difficult. So then I have to go and find interest and explore and assess different types of rewards, different types of toys, different types of activities and, and you keep on finding. So why do we need to find this? Because if we don't have it, a lot of some therapists will call, oh, that's our weapon to get into the child's world. I don't like to say that. I, I'm trying to say is what can I show this person, this kid, the best time of their life so that they want to talk to me. Right. Can I be more resourceful than the kid by himself, you know, spinning in a corner or like lining up toys? All the hallmarks of the autistic things that a lot of parents are so scared about. Oh my God, my, my kid's looking at fans is he autistic? Well, maybe not like fan spinning is quite fascinating, to be honest. But what I'm trying to say here is you got to keep on going. You got to assess. Assess. Sometimes it means you are borrowing toys. I'm not a big proponent of buying toys, but if you're in the usa, the return policy is good. Yeah, by all means, try it. Return it. Try it, Return it. Try it. Return it. Right. Different textures, different smell, different whatever. Different temperatures. Need to think outside the box. And one time, just to give you a example, this is like my third case in Indonesia. And she actually. And it wasn't me who found it, it was another therapist. I'm very thankful because. Or else it's very hard to get into her world. So this particular autistic girl, her interest was to smell different things, especially hand sanitizers and mosquito repellents. So then we use that to bridge it towards activities and toys. That has a strong scent as well. And then we could start to at least teach some functional skills and some play skills. Right. Or else it's very difficult. All day long, she was just either swimming, jumping with a lot of sensory needs, or, you know, like taking a walk. She would never like to sit down. She would never like to do work. She would never like to play with toys. Finding interest is very super. I say important, okay? And it's easier. Like for speech therapy and other types of therapy that require the kid to sit at the table, it's actually very important for other therapies, such as occupational therapy or physical therapy. Those are more physical and they get to move and there's like, stuff going around. Like, it's more fascinating, it's less boring. And therefore, using a reward is not, as, so to speak, important. Okay, after we get the rewards, what do we do next? Usually speaking, when we have a reward, we want to use that reward to increase the child's, like, language abilities, social skills, play skills, whatever. And that requires a kid walking outside of his or her comfort zone, which is quite difficult for a child who is on the spectrum, because every time going outside of one's comfort zone, you must break some of the rules that you set for yourself. And rules are very important for autistic people. So they tell themselves a story. I'm talking to some adult autistic people who are functional, and they tell me that, you know, in my mind, I just need to do that. I cannot take it when someone moves so far in a particular way. And I get it. I also have this kind of thing for some of the Things, but obviously I'm not going to identify myself as autistic or whatever. Right. So when we have those rewards, the next step is to create communication opportunities according to those rewards. So I'm saying long words and I hopefully I'm not making it very difficult for you to understand, but basically, when you find a reward, what you do next is to think about how to use that reward to create situations where the child has to communicate with you. Okay. So one of the ways that we like to do is get the child to, like, then this is a super structured method. Like you put the reward, so to speak, inside of a container. You give it to the kid, can't open it, he has to give it back. He will have to communicate some sort of thing to you with a gesture or whatnot. And then afterwards you give the reward to your kid. So that's a very structured way. The second or. There's loads of ways to do this. Right. You hear a lot of therapists online will say, make it difficult for them to get access to it. You know, put it on top of a shelf so that they need to tell you, like, lock it up, like I just said. Then create obstacles and whatnot. For me, I don't really like it. I like to be more active instead of trying to create difficult situations. So for me. All right. Which I'll talk about later on. I like to give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give. I keep on giving and I slowly increase the demand like that. And I feel like that's a better way because it creates a better relationship between you and your kid. And how you create communication opportunities is that maybe if your child likes puzzles. Yeah. And you give the first piece, you give the second piece, the third piece, you hide it. And then they have to, like, at least touch you or look at you and you'll tell them where it is. Right. Or they might just have to follow your pointing, whatever. Or they. You teach them to tap you and then you give it. So you. It's better that you give in the beginning for free. And then you create that opportunity. You create a routine that the child like. It's kind of like if you. It sounds bad me saying it, that's this way, but you're kind of using the rigidity of their. Of that, oh, I must finish this puzzle against them. And they must have to, like, communicate with you now, because now they understand, oh, you have the puzzles. You know where they are. And that's why I need help. Right. And that's why I'm going to Talk to you. So let's move on to play routines. So what I talked about creating the opportunities are very linked to play routines. Play routines are something that we must be teaching children at speech therapy. The reason why is because if we don't have play, then we have no context to teach language. Sometimes when you see speech therapy with children, there's a lot of cards, visuals, you know, those work flashcards, those work with autistic children very well. And that's because there's no change in it, right? It's very factual and that's why it's easy. But for myself and the parents that I teach, right, I try not to use flashcards so early because if we use flashcards right away and we don't care about play routines and play skills, what's going to happen is I'm sure if you've been inside of Google Rabbit hole or on YouTube watching about speech therapy, you'll be hearing about Gestalt Language processing disorder. So we have a whole video about that. You can search it inside of our channel. But basically what it means is that, you know, a flashcard doesn't change, right? So it's very easy to memorize the whole thing. So if you see a picture of, let's say, a boy kicking a ball, so you can't change the face of that boy into a girl, you can't change the ball into a pineapple, so to speak. So it's for that picture, it's always going to be that sentence, and they start to memorize it and it becomes frozen phrases. And then you're teaching that behavior of, oh, then all you got to do is just to memorize things and you don't have to interchange the language units. And you never get to a point where the child is able to use words differently. So play routines are very important. We have a bunch of play routines that you can check out inside of this channel. And if you're looking for more of us demonstrating how to use toys and other parents doing it, you should go to agentsofspeech.com course, like put in your email and then apply to get inside of our free course platform on school spelled S K O L. And then we have all the free courses inside that we used to sell. And then we also talk about how to do K routines. But I'm just going to allude to you a little bit here. And it's the same as using the structures and the routines that autistic children like a lot, kind of against them again. So you're basically Teaching them a sequence of how to use a tool or a toy, and then you want to reward at the end. The reason why is because during the play, the play itself wasn't even rewarding. Allowing you to touch their hand and do it in a certain way is already very difficult for the kid. So that's why we had to reward at the end, which is very important. Secondly is that once the child learns this routine, they want to stick to it. They want to stick to it. So then when you don't allow them to do it, or like, you stop or you, like, delay access or whatever, it creates a communication opportunity for them to speak. When they speak, they get faster, they get more of it, they get better of it. That's why it's economical. Meaning it's to their benefit to start talking. Because if they talk, you act a little more playful, you add a little more effects, you make it better, you make it more fun. All right, so what kind of routines can we do? Obviously, watch the videos on the channel and inside of our community link in the. In the description below and go on with that. And the next thing you also want to do with, like, children on the spectrum from a speech therapy kind of perspective is to build very strong social routines. So what, what are social routines like? When you see therapists or, you know, professionals describe children on the spectrum, they would say, oh, children, they don't care about socializing, they don't have eye contact, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's not like that. It's more like being social isn't even fun for them. Right. There's no reason why they want to, like, hang out with you. So social routines are just very physical games in the beginning that include, like, jumping around on trampolines with you creating like a set routine. For instance, skipping rope, playing hula hoops that involve, with you around, it can increase the magnitude. And you can jump higher, you can do peekaboo. Even I do a lot of peekaboo. You can play some, like, falling game. You know, the dads like to throw the babies up and down. You can do that if you're strong enough. There are loads of social routines that you can do. And not only that, there's also games such as what's the time is the wolf. We also do something D Duck. Go. You can also do stop and go games like traffic light games, basically. And you can do it one on one, and later, later on, move on to a group level. But you have to remember, these social routines, they're not supposed to promote language. So to speak just yet. If it's not rewarding for them or fun for them, they wouldn't even want to start talking. So it's the same concept. When you're building a routine, don't expect language to come because you're building routine as a routine. Okay, the last thing I want to talk because this video is longer than I expected. But when you are teaching anyone, especially those who are on a spectrum, the rule of thumb is to give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give. Keep on giving in terms of reward, fun, socializing, you know, toys, whatever, keep on giving. And then you can start receiving language because then you are in the position to ask because the child now trusts you. No one talks about this. If your child doesn't trust you and you are ruling your child over with fear and with prompting questions, what you say, whatever, then you know, like your child will always be need based the language because they will only talk to you when they need something and not one day feel like they're having fun with you. All right, so what do I mean by give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give. We, we have loads of classes on that inside of our community platform for free courses. It's called language facilitation. You can also search on YouTube. We also did some videos on that. And when you're giving so much, it's natural for someone to reciprocate, even for a person who is on the spectrum. All right, so that's it for today's video. If you have any more questions, put them in the comment section. And lastly, if you haven't, Please go to agentsofspeech.com Course put in your email to get into our free courses platform that we talk about. We have courses from no words all the way to sentences. And we're adding more and more every single month there. All right, so that's it for today. I'll see you guys in the next one. Bye. Bye.