Teaching Speech Delayed Children to Use Words and Sentences | www.agentsofspeech.com/micro

Hey, guys, thank you for tuning in. Okay, sorry, just now there's something wrong with the live. The live button and all that. I wasn't going live in one of the destinations. I wanted to. But anyways, let's keep on going. Let's just make this lower a little bit, okay? So today's topic is about teaching your child how to use sentences. And I get this question all the time. They say, maybe my child isn't talking in sentences yet. You know, my child is like two or three. And then, you know, other parents, their children, all those children are speaking in like phrases and sentences. And I feel like my child is lacking behind. And that's why you're watching these kind of videos. You're seeing therapists, and that's why you're tuning in right now, right? So the thing is, number one, okay, maybe we can put our discussion points somewhere in the comments right now. I'm just going to copy and paste it real quick. Is that, first of all, maybe you shouldn't be teaching words or sentences in the beginning, okay? Maybe that's not something that you should be doing at all, okay? If your child right now isn't even using words or, you know, or even, let's say, like very short sentences or phrases like mommy, eat or eat something like eat apple or whatever, okay, Doing this kind of stuff or using words regularly, or they're just babbling and saying, mama, mama for everything, then maybe first of all, you should not be teaching words or sentences in the beginning, all right? It might not be something that you want to do. In fact, this is something that I teach all the time. Like, maybe the first thing is to use gestures, right? Teach them to imitate some actions, okay? And there's strong study evidence, okay, I know you're going to quote me on this, but if you want to see the research, you just message me or something, okay? I'm not going to bore you with the details, but basically, who, like kids who can imitate actions, gestures and different types of, like in a song or whatever, whatever context, they have a higher correlation towards their ability to communicate later on, okay? That means teaching imitation of actions actually helps them develop. Develop speech sounds, okay? Or using language. All right, so why. Why you should not focus on, you know, talking in the beginning is because of that. And number two reason is because if a child cannot use speech to talk to you, let's say, like words and sentences out of the picture and then rarely use it, then, you know, you should focus on getting them to talk to you or communicate with you in the easiest way possible, which is gestures, all right? I know a lot of, like, parents, they tell me, I know that the child can do it, but when I tell them to, they don't want to. Or, like, they're lazy, right? There's no such thing as lazy. It's just a human being, right? Maybe we are sometimes, like, we call ourselves lazy, but sometimes it's because it's either too hard or we don't want to do it. It's not. There's no incentive for us to do it, okay? Like any boring task, there's no incentive for us to do it, right? If we're paid to do it, maybe we'll do it. And it's part of our jobs, right? So you need to remember there's only two reasons. Always when someone doesn't do something, either it's too hard or, you know, or it's not rewarding. Doesn't want to, right? So keep that in mind. There are no lazy children. They didn't ask, put up their hand, you know, when they came into the world and say, I want to be speech delayed. No one ever said that. No kid ever tries to do it. So when they don't talk, don't take it personally, right? Don't think that. Oh, God, they're not saying because they don't want you to have that satisfaction. That's not the case, okay? A lot of parents, especially mothers, they really take it personally, and I understand how that feels, okay? Because what happens is that when they don't talk, people point fingers to the mother and say, oh, how? How can you do that? Right? And I made a separate video on YouTube and also put on Facebook about, like, blaming parents about, like, screen time, something that I really do not like, okay? Because, hey, everyone, like, in this modern society, whenever I go out, a lot of parents, a lot of mothers and fathers, they give their kids a screen time, right? But does it mean that they will have language delay or speech delay? No, that's not the case, okay? So enough of my rant. You can watch that video in your own spare time. What I want to say is don't take it personally. Attack. Not attack. Teach the lowest hanging fruit possible, which is gestures man. There isn't like, a word like, you can't put your. I always say, you cannot put your hand inside your child's mouth and move it like a puppet, right? You can't. Even if you can, the sound doesn't come out, okay? So the easiest way to get them to do something 100% correct. That you can control is gestures, okay? And slowly, as they understand the communication, like, there needs to have some intention. This is what I'm taught. I talk a lot about inside of the micro course, right? So if you understand that, then it'll be very easy for you to. It'll be very easy for you to understand. Okay? I want my child to have an intention to talk to me, right? Therefore, it doesn't matter how he does it. It doesn't matter if it's speech, a gesture, you know, like if parents here are listening, like, are using, like, pecs, you know, picture exchange communication system. That's the whole word for it, right? Doesn't matter if it's like using an iPad, like using. It doesn't matter. It all comes down to if they want to talk to you or not. And how are you going to make that happen? Is basically using, like, rewards, making things fun. Remember me saying that, you know, I was. A lot of kids, they love to imitate you talking on the phone. They pick it up and go, hello. And they're having a lot of fun. Right. The reason behind why they like to model after you is because it's funny. You're being like, so dramatic on the phone. Maybe. I don't know. It's just funny to them. And you're speaking so fast. Okay? And what were you doing then? You were not asking questions. You were not telling them to repeat. You're not teaching them anything, but yet they're learning that from you. Okay? So remember that when you try not to. Like children who are delayed, when they sense that you're trying to make them do something and teach them something that they don't want, they can smell it, they can, like, sense it, and they don't want to do it anymore. Okay? So just drink. Thumbs up. Someone says, all right, that's great. Okay. So anyways, so number two is how you should prompt and teach. Okay? So I talked about maybe words and sentences is not the thing that you should shoot for for now. Okay? I know it's very difficult for you to understand. Very difficult for you to understand. It's all about if they want to talk to you or not. And then you can teach the appropriate ways to talk to you. Okay, so how do you prompt and teach? Right. A lot of the time, especially for us therapists, we love using verbal prompts. Like, for instance, if we like one of our coaching clients, and she really is very into it because it's just second nature to say something and then go up in tone, you know, like for Instance, I want the child to say a black cup. Again, I don't have a lot of stuff here. So it's always this Starbucks cup. Yeah. So you're telling the kid, okay, say this one, black, black, black. And then you get no reply. Right. It's frustrating. You keep on repeating and. And you're hoping that he will fill in the blanks. Okay, so what you're doing there is that you're repeating a prompt that is not effective. And you know what happens when you repeat a prompt that isn't effective, Right. You get the same result, which is nothing. You don't get anything. And by the way, if your child does reply you using that method you were talking about, then. Then what? What's going to happen is that they're going to learn that they can ignore you and they can talk to you whenever their mood is. Right. As a lot of parents say. So you don't want that. You don't want to repeat yourself. You don't want to always make them fill in the blanks or whatever. Right. So what are you going to do with it? With that? Okay, so first of all, sometimes it's easier to just model it, meaning direct invitation. Just give them the whole thing. Just give them the whole thing. All right? Don't expect them to know how to fill in the blank, because sometimes it's too hard to guess for them. So just give them the whole thing. So Tope is saying, I hope I am getting it right. Motherhood. I'm not sure if you are the same person I'm thinking about. So anyways, she says, if your child is already using two to three words and verbs, how to improve that? Okay, so I'm guessing two words, like two to three words in a sentence. I guess that's what you're saying. Right. So I would see how much verbs that he can do. Right. And then I would try to expand that vocab. So a lot of times children who are. Oh, you are the same person. Hallelujah. So cool. So most of the time when a child cannot go, like, increase the sentence length is a few reasons. Number one. Number one is that they don't have enough of like a. They don't have good command of language to put things into place. Okay, so to them maybe like go back to this one again, that black cup is one thing for us is one chunk for us, but for them it's two chunks. So therefore, to them, it's rather difficult to think in that way. Okay, so that's number one. Number two is that it's not enough vocab to say a longer sentence that they don't know what to put afterwards. Right? So what I want, like, what you should do, and we're gonna make, like, a course for this later on. Because I just cannot, like, put everything, like, in. In the whole sequence nicely. It will take me like 10 hours talking on. On live, and it wouldn't make any sense. Right, so what you need to do here is that you need to expand the number of structures that he has. So, for instance in English is subject, verb, object. You know, there's like verb check, object, adjunct, all that kind of. All that jazz, right? But it doesn't matter to you. It doesn't matter to you in terms of structure, what you can do at home is to model in a fun and interactive way the different types of structures you can think of with two to three words. So you can think about different ways of saying the same thing. Okay. For instance, if your child is playing with the car, and then you can say, like, oh, you're playing with a car. And then you can say, like, you're playing with a big black car, right? And then you can keep on talking and describing in different ways. The wheels are rolling, you're rolling the car on the floor, like, different ways. Okay? And this is going to be like a long, long, long, long, long, long way because it's too. It's very naturalistic and you're not sure how much your child can get. But, you know, this is a very good way to actually do it. Okay. Number two way is to, like, expand his vocabs using, like, flashcards or whatever that we do talk in a micro course that you have tope and how you do that, or tope. I'm not sure how to. Not entirely sure how to pronounce your name. But anyways, um, and then after that, you can use those verbs and then put them into, like, you know, a picture sequence. I don't usually do this a lot, but it makes sense for parents because it's more structured and it's easier if you know what you're teaching, right? So if you. You and your child, you both know what you're. You're trying to achieve, it'll be much easier to achieve it. Okay. Whereas when you see, like, therapists do it, it might be using toys, might be doing. Using whatever. It's a little more freestyle. Okay? So for you guys, I really think that using, you know, flashcards are easy. Expand the vocab, make sure they know whatever the things are, and then Target some, like using those vocabs you just taught, right? To target certain sentence structures and such as, like, you know, the boy is kicking the ball, you know, someone is doing something, that kind of structure, you can use it, okay, after teaching, kicking, after teaching, like, ball, whatever. And then you basically just go on Google and just find it. Okay, and that's how I would teach. If that's how I would tell you to teach, actually. Okay, so you could do that. You could do that. But the problem is you need to know how much vocabulary your child has. You know, that's really. Is the. Is one of the biggest hurdles, I feel. And without the enough vocabs, children just get stuck because they don't know how to chop up sentences when they hear you, right? When they hear you say, like, oh, mommy wants to go to the supermarket. So children can go, go to supermarket, but they cannot say, like, go to whatever, something else, right? Because they don't have the knowledge of, you know, the verb go. And it happens sometimes, especially when children learn a lot from, like, videos and, like, just you talking and the stuff that they like, they cannot chop up the sentences and the relevant parts. So therefore, I would improve the number of verbs and number of vocabs they have. And then I would use some flashcards to tell them to describe something in a particular sentence structure, such as someone is doing something or go to somewhere to do some. Go to the supermarket to whatever. Keep the structure the same, but switch the vocabs around so that they understand the underlying principles and language per se. That's what we're trying to do all the time. So other than that, given that what I just answered, right? So how do you teach and prompt something? What you can do is you need a prompt verbs, what I think with a little more gestures. And I feel like that's an easier way because if we always use, like, if we always use verbal cues, that will never be like, faded away. What we want to do instead is that when you are like, when you're teaching, of course you're going to start off with, like, just giving them the whole sentence and telling them to repeat, right? But slowly you need to decrease the help that you give. And by like, doing the very, you know, fill in the blank way that a lot of people do it. That doesn't, like, how are you going to. How are you going to. In the end, how are you going to be like 100% just himself talking? It's impossible. So what I'm trying to say is when you're giving the Model, you should use some gestures. For instance, if you're using like a card, like, I don't know, flashcards, then you can point, the boy is kicking the ball, you know, and slowly next time, as you associate those gestures towards the words, you can just not say the words and use the gestures. Okay, that's what I'm trying to say. All right. So as always, you know, when you're prompting and teaching, the most important thing is to get rid of the prompts. Okay. Most important thing. And you have to think about that. It depends on the kid as well. Right? Okay, so here's 16 verb vocabs and 162 words so far. Well, you count a lot. So I would increase the number of. Like, can you use the verbs in all the correct places? You know, like you can make up a bunch of sentences that uses the verb F. The verbs that he knows already. Right. And you could, like, if he's okay with you drawing, then that's very good because you don't need to prepare anything. But other than that, Google is one of our best friends. Okay. Okay, I'm gonna answer real quick and then I'm gonna head on to the next part about systematically teaching. Okay. Someone says, I have no idea who, because that's from the Facebook group. Let me just take a look. Who is it? I do not know. Okay. Anyways, all right, so someone says, my son is three years old now. Now two years start abc. Some work hardcore, but not doesn't say anything again. Okay. Another thing, he doesn't make eye contact with other. Okay, cool. This person go sign up for the Michael course. All right? Because that's going to tell you exactly what's the problem is he doesn't have initiative to talk to you. He has no intention to talk to you. Okay. The reason why he doesn't say anything is because he doesn't want to. He has the ability to. He just doesn't want to. Okay? So to get that out of the way, all you need to do is to reward. Okay. And to tell him that you need to talk to me. Right. So I go through this a lot more in the micro course just because I don't want to repeat myself. Okay. Someone says, Isa says, my two year old has no vocabulary and we're doing speech therapy. What ways can I better teach my child at home? Cool. Again, most of the stuff is covered in the micro course. Just basically, if she has no vocab, then you have to teach. Right? You have to find something that she likes, preferably a toy, because that'd be much more natural, right? Because she's only two. You still have some time. So I would like find toys such as the stuff that lights up the ball rolling stuff and so on. And then you would teach some verbs such as, you can teach the word ball, you can teach the word fall, you can teach the word roll. As long as she wants to do it. As long as she wants to do it. And when you stop, she can. The only way that you continue to play is by her talking. Okay? So. Oh, oh, you haven't. You're not able to attend the course. You go to agentsofspeech.com and then you log in there. I mean, a lot of parents have this issue. I don't know why. And you should get an email and then you will have a login details agents of speech.com. you go there and you sign up. And for this person in particular, you should watch from start to finish, okay? Especially the one about like communication intention, about using like gestures and whatnot, right? So let's head on to talking about systematically teaching according to your child's ability. Okay? So your child's ability. Your child's ability is something that you have to be not egotistic about, okay? You have to face the facts and you have to think about, okay? This is the fact that she can only use this amount of words, right? And you don't want to push it too much. You don't want to say, yeah, I know that she understands a lot. I know that she can do it because I've heard her done it before. But you need to understand it needs to be consistent, all right? Needs to be very consistent. Okay? So it doesn't matter, as I always say, right? It doesn't matter. I can sing like, you know, Bruno Mars or something in the shower, but when I see someone, I cannot do it. Then what's the point? Right? What's the point? As we self entertaining, same as children who self entertain by singing ABC and stuff. So what's the point if you're not using it to communicate, Right? So my, my advice is to systematically look at how much your child can say. If it's one word, then model more. One word stuff, right? One word words. One like one word at a time. You're modeling you should talk in a matter. In a matter of like, manner, of like one word at a time, right? If your child is speaking in like two words sometimes you should be modeling two to three word sentences that are easy to understand and you're using a whole vocab that he already knows. If he doesn't know the vocab, don't say it in a sentence. Say the word only. Okay? How confusing would it be if I talked to you in Cantonese and I was trying to teach you some vocab, but I spoke in full sentences? You wouldn't even know anything. You cannot even, like, chop up. Which word is which word? You need to have some reference. Okay? So if your child doesn't understand that vocabulary, you know it. Just say that word in one, one go. All right, so how do you systematically teach. Is what I was talking about just now. Okay, Teach vocabs and then try to use those vocabs in sentence structures that he already has. Okay, let's say that your child already has, like, mom, you eat biscuit, like that, right? Then you can teach other verbs, such as slide, swing, jump, sleep, you know, swimming, cook, cut, chop. I don't know, different kind of verbs. And try to stick it into that svo structure. Okay? Can she say, mommy, chop, vegetable, or daddy, slide in the pool? I don't know that kind of. That kind of way. Okay, teach them. Make sure they know the vocab. Teach them all those vocabs as much as you can, and then put them into the structures that you're trying to teach. All right? So that's all I want to talk about during this live today. I know it's rather. It's a little shorter. And if you have more questions, you can post in the comment section. I will try to get. I'll try to get back to you. Okay. Before we leave, Shushu says, how about a parent who doesn't speak English? I'm not. I don't really understand. If your child. If the parent doesn't speak English, then the child shouldn't speak English either. Is there context for this? Anyways, I'm going to end this live right now. And to tell you guys, I know a lot of. A lot of you are signing up to the micro course. I'm very grateful for that. And at the same time, why you have to go through it is because when I teach something, I don't want to repeat, repeat myself too much, right? And there's a lot of basics we have to go through before we teach. Like, sentences like, well, I was talking to Tope just now, right? And that needs to be on the foundation that your child likes to listen to you, knows that it's rewarding, wants to talk to you, have communication intention, you know, wants, like, understands that there's like a turn. Take that. I say something, you say something. And so on and so forth. Okay, so I'm going to end it here. Thank you for all the questions. If I've missed any, I will try to cover it later on. And I'll see you guys next week. Monday. Okay? Monday night, same time. See you guys.