Stop Quizzing Children. Best Way to Teach Toddlers to Speak
Ming at Agents of Speech explains why quizzing toddlers on words they don't know backfires: it stresses them out and teaches them to tune you out. Instead, say the word once, do the action, and repeat it several times in one go so they connect the word to what happens.
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Stop quizzing your child. And I know you're doing it. You're watching videos from our channel because you want to teach your child to speak more, speak clearly, speak better, catch up, so on and so forth. So if you're quizzing your kid, you're putting stress on your child without really teaching him or her anything. Okay, I'm saying this from a place of love because I've seen this too many times. I've been that person too in the beginning, asking questions over and over, hoping the child would answer. And just the other day, I was talking to a client from Indonesia over the Internet, and she was like, oh, our therapist asked us to quiz the child until we get a response. But I'm like, if he doesn't know the response, how, what's the point of repeating? Because if you repeat without teaching the response, then what's going to happen? And she said, he's very stressed. Exactly. You don't want the kid to be stressed. If it's stressful to communicate with you, why would anyone want to communicate with you? Right? So number one is you're annoying your kid. You're annoying living hell out of your child. Okay, excuse my language, but why are you doing this? It's because you're coming from a place of your need, not their need. Right? If you're coming from a place that you're thinking about the child's need, the need for learning language is just to fulfill so that you'll shut up and be quiet and stop asking, then they will learn that as the means to the communication. And they will think that, oh, you. In order for my mom to be quiet, all I got to do is to run off, throw a tantrum, or copy what they say. Right? So if the child does learn how to copy what you say, they will stay there for a very long time because they thought that was the point. Okay, so, and the second point is you're teaching your child to ignore you. To ignore you means if you keep on quizzing your kid over and over and you don't get a response, what does that mean? Right. It means that whatever you say, it doesn't matter. And why does it not matter? It's like the car siren down there that you have no control over or someone who's, like, trapped in the lift and you're inside of your apartment hearing that buzz, there's nothing you can do, so it becomes background noise and you learn to ignore it. Right? So therefore, you don't want your child to think that way. You want them to think why is it my mom is asking me to do something? What should I do now? Like, they need to know exactly what they're supposed to do instead of just waiting it out. Okay. Okay. And the third point I want to talk about is why does the iPad work better teaching words than you? Why does it work? Why does your child learn words from the iPad? Why does he or her not learn any words from you, so to speak? So I need to think about why. First of all, the iPad has no commands, no things that they want the child to do. It's all giving. That's number one. Number two is that when they teach a word, they keep on repeating it. You are repeating it and they keep on repeating it. Number three, it's rewarding and it's fun. It's entertaining to watch. Is it the same way for you? It turns out it's pretty stressful talking to a lot of us. I think I also run into this problem whenever it's someone that I care about. I tend to ask too many questions that I know they cannot answer and therefore they have to surrender to me. Right. That's something I do personally and I don't like it as well. But what parents are doing is a little more different, is that they ask questions that, you know, the child cannot answer anyways, and the only way they can get out of it is to throw a tantrum. So the iPad never does. That lamp is very giving. It's very entertaining. It keeps on going, really repeating over and over again, Create routines and so on and so forth. So we have to learn from the iPad because it's doing a better job than us. So instead, what you need to do is, number one, say what you want to hear and do the action. Provide the thing that your child wants. Say it right. So if the child is holding on to a fork, all you got to say is holding fork, Right? Or if your child wants the phone from you, you say, I give phone. That's. That's. I give phone. Ah, unlock phone. Right. Turn up, volume, turn up, turn down. Right. All these things. Say what you want to hear and do the action. Because if your child can learn from the iPad, they can earn from you. So what's difference here is that you need to provide many successful repetitions. What does that mean? A lot of times parents do provide a lot of repetitions, but it's not successful. A lot of times after you say something, nothing happens. So therefore the word doesn't get linked to the action or the concept, so to speak. So that's why it's getting ignored. So what I mean by successful action is if you say open and you do open the box, then that's one successful action. And many times parents, after they say that they don't do it once only. You need to do it many times in one instance. Keep on repeating. So think about the iPad. What happens when they show a. They show a again. They show a three times. So you need to show open three times as well. You, you open, you give something to your kid and it's a. Of a small amount. You, you close it and then you wait again and then they want it and you say open again. So you do. In a sitting, you might be doing like three or five times of doing open or like doing anything, like even sitting up, throwing something, right? It's fun. It's like playing catch with your child. Then you throw many, many times in one sitting, right? You're doing like up with your child, throwing them up and down. One, two, three, up. Come down already. One, two, three, Up. Come down. One, two, three,. And you do it many times as. As much as your, your body can take off, obviously. And that's what we mean by successful repetitions. A lot of times it's ignored repetitions and it's not going to work. All right, so that's what I wanted to share with you. Stop quizzing your child right now and think about what you should be doing. The best way is to provide the word and give the result already. Right? And also, in between the word and the action, you should give a gesture so that the child knows what's going on. So we always say one action, one gesture and one action. Right, sorry. One word, one action, one gesture. So why do we do that? Is because once the child understands the whole thing, the linear relationship between the word to the meaning, and you add a gesture in between, then it becomes very easy for the child to talk. When you provide the gesture when the thing is not around. Right? When the thing is not around. Yeah. So you get what I mean, right? If I'm talking about this, you know what I'm talking about. When I'm talking about this, you know what I'm talking about. You know when I do this, you know what I'm talking about? The reason is because I don't need words, there's already a gesture that has gone with the action and the concept. And therefore when I do this, they will know what word to say. And therefore we don't have to use words to prompt again. Okay, that's it for today. I think I've wrecked your brain a little bit. But anyways, that's good, right? So if you want to learn more, go to agentsofspeech. Com Checklist. There's a list of tools and toys that we recommend you to get when you're starting therapy. All right, so that's it. See you guys in the next video.
