Ming from Agents of Speech shows how bubbles teach communication in speech therapy. Let the child struggle with the bottle, then offer help so they hand it back to you. This creates an exchange that counts as intentional communication before they say a word.
If you've been to speech therapy or any type of early intervention, you will realize that they use a lot of bubbles. I've got some bubbles here. It's very hard for them to handle it. It's very heavy. They can't open it. So they must play with me. Whenever you're trying to communicate or make a child to start talking to you, give them something for free. In this instance, it's bubbles. Let them pop it. Let them have fun. Then when he wants more, I am in the position to ask for more from him. So I would start off with getting him to start giving me this bubble back to me. I would give the whole thing to him. And then he will try to open, or she's going to open. She cannot. And then I put my hand out as a helping hand, and he'll give it back to me. And then I will open it and I'll blow again. So I do this a few times. He quickly knows that he needs to give this to me. That's already communication. So that's what we're teaching. We're not teaching a child to speak per se. We're teaching a child to communicate. Slowly, we will upgrade the communication.
