Teaching Your Speech Delayed Child to Sit and Focus

Okay. Hi, everyone. Tell me if you can hear me. If you're joining me right now in today's live video, we want to talk about how to get your child to sit down. And the reason why we're doing this is because basically, there's a lot of parents asking me that, hi, Annie. That they're saying, hey. Every time I tell my child to sit down, they kind of run away. Right. And how do you deal with that? Well, there's a lot of different ways that you can make a child sit down, and I'm sure that there are a lot of ways that it can work. But I'm gonna tell you what I know, okay? Because for the past. Actually, the past year, I've been teaching parents over the Internet, right? And recently, because of coronavirus, we've made ourselves even more. You know, parents have become even more of a. A person who needs to do these things. All right? It's not just. It's not just bringing your child to the therapy center anymore. It's really trying to become the therapist at home, which kind of sucks. And the biggest problem now right now is that children are running away. They're not having fun. They're not having a ball at home at all. So how do we get them to sit down? So let me look at. Look at my notes real quick. Yep. So the first one is, as I always say, hi, Nabeel, how are you? As I always say, are there any rewards? Right. Nabeel's daughter is very good at sitting, so she can. She can, like, you can ask me anything else. All right? If this isn't. Isn't telling you new stuff, right? So number one is like, are there anything. Are there any rewards? Are you just telling your child to just sit there? Because that's a real problem if your child is used to running around, roaming around the house, you know, picking stuff up, throwing it around, jumping up. Up and down the sofa, and then, you know, go climb inside the bed and you tell them to sit down. Of course he or she's not going to like it, right? And if there's no reward, there's no reason. There's no reason to listen to you. So the analogy is always like, okay, so you want your child to do something. It might be, like, sitting down. It might be whatever. But if you don't have. If you don't have a reason behind it, you don't have a reward, then it won't happen. Just as if you were to employ someone and then you told her that, you know, hey, sit here and do this work and you don't give them a salary, what's going to happen? They're going to leave. So it's the same as a child. You got to give them something that makes sense to them. They're, like, weighing right inside their heads. They're smart. They know that they will weigh to the odds. Right. Is it better to sit here? Is it better to run away? Is it better to, like, scream and shout and, like, flap the hands? Well, the ladder is going to be the best way, right. For them to really enjoy themselves. So, you know, teach them. It might be like a reward, as in, like a praise. That's a reward. It might be giving them food. That's a reward. Drinks, right. Toys, activities, board games, whatever. All these are great. All right. So. Right. So the next thing is a big one that I really want to talk about, actually, that's the main point of today is do not make sitting a punishment. Don't make it until it becomes like a punishment. Right. There is a lot of parents sending me videos, and you're welcome to do so. Please send me more videos, ask me more questions. That's why these, like, live videos happen, because I feel like I can tell more people in one go. Right? So when your child sits down, don't make it a punishment for them, meaning it feels bad, right? You're just there to work, put them on the table to do the things that they like to do. Make give them a little snack, give them a drink. You know, as I was saying, talking about a reward, don't punish them. Make sure that when they sit down, there's a lot of free stuff going on. Right? Free praises. Yeah. Laughing, tickling, you know, make sure you play with them a lot. Like, there's a few that I like to play that you can only deal with smaller kids. So let me demonstrate. So if, you know, you know those little chairs for children, if you're strong enough and they're small enough, you can pick it up. Pick them up on the. On the chair and you can wobble them around. Okay. I call it the roller coaster. So if you can do the roller coaster, you can wobble them around on the chair. They want to. They want to stick on the chair, Right. And yeah, so Nabil says she likes. Daughter likes to go to the park and she likes to play in a swing or slide a seesaw. Right? So that's the same if you can make the chair something that. That is fun, that can swing around. Of course, if you're a mother watching this, which is 90% of my audience here, then it will be difficult to pick them up and then go like that and swing them on the chair. But it's super fun. Okay? That will keep them on the chair. What else? Can you make it fun for them? Right? What else? So when you're sitting on the table at the chair, make sure that, you know, you can play some music, right? Number one, to make it soothing. You know, at those spas, if you're a mother, you're watching this, you're like, oh, I really want a massage. You know, it's been so long since the pandemic. And you want, like, some therapy, some therapeutical, like, massage stuff. So think about it as how you feel when you sit down at the table, all right? I actually been to a senior therapist's, like, room, and he specializes in eating, sorry, feeding in children. So you know how, like, a lot of children, they don't like eating and feeding. Like, they just. Just picky eaters, right? Or they have some problems with, like, swallowing. And that senior therapist in his room, he. He's, like, super way senior than I am. But anyways, what I learned from that guy was that he put aroma. Like, he put aromatherapy inside the room, which was very comfortable with, like, very nice lighting. So don't try not to. I know in clinics and especially where I live right now, you guys like to use a lot of. Not you guys, as in, like, the people who are living in this country like to use a lot of white light bulbs. So think about, like, making the whole environment, like, friendly and comfortable. So I use a lot of warm light bulbs, and sometimes I do use white because I only work in a day, right? So by night, you know, make it. I don't know, just make it comfortable for them. Add some cushions, whatever. Make it comfortable. All right? And if you've been through my toilet training workshop, which you can check out at agents of speech.com, by the way, if you need help with toilet training, potty training, that's where you want to go. The thing is, you have to make it inviting, okay? You make it inviting for them. It's not just there to do work. You got to make sure that they're ready, they sat down, they're comfortable, they're having a little fun before you ask them to do anything, okay? Or else it's not going to work. All right? All right. So the next thing I want to talk about is, do you have a set place? You have a set place for your child to sit down and work or to play with you, all right? If you do not, then it's going to be harder. It's going to be harder. Especially these times during this pandemic where you spend most of the time at home. I would really urge you to put a corner with, like, a children's table, children's chair for your child to sit down and, like, just chill and have the fun and play toys with you and learn, okay? Or else it's going to be very, very ambiguous. I mean, as in you don't know how to separate work and play and eating, let's say, right? Like a real meal time. You have a dining table for that, right? When you're working, you've got, like, your own work table, like I have right here. So why can't you do it for a child, right? Especially from these, like, work from home, like play from home, learn from home, like these times, right? So you set a place, a corner even. You can even do an apartment. Okay? This works even from where I'm from, from Hong Kong. So, you know, really, the space is a big, huge problem, right? But you can still make do. Okay? You can still get those little foldable chairs and foldable whatever and put it there, right? And Nabil says, if you're not seeing this on Instagram, I'm sorry, because I'm using. I'm on. Also on YouTube and Facebook. She says, my daughter is so used to sitting. She tells me, I want to study. Oh, that's. That's very happy for. For Asian parent to hear that. I'm not sure how I would feel if I were the parent. Right? But this is cool that she. It's already a very strong routine, right? If the daughter says that she wants to study, right? So make sure that you have a strong routine. You have a strong place. Strong. A strong, you know, a strong corner where you can do stuff. Okay. And make sure that they understand. And don't start with like a whole hour in the beginning, right? I have this parent, actually, a few. They would come up to me and say, hey, Ming, I've done it for 40 minutes a day. And they sound very, very proud. But the thing is, don't do that because you're going to burn your child out, right? You're going to burn anyone out. If you put them for like an hour, 40 minutes. There might be parents out there who are like, hey, my child's used to sitting for an hour or two. Well, good for you guys. But for this video is for parents who are trying to make it work, but it's not Working, right? So I was talking to a parent today as an online consultation, and she was saying how. I told her, okay, the first job you need to do right now is to teach your child to sit down and listen to you. And. And she laughed. That was her first reaction. And then the daughter, right next to the mother, also laughed because it's a joke. It's impossible, right? So this video is for you guys. Listen up. What I would do from the beginning. Let's talk about the points again. You have rewards. Number one, avoid it being a punishment, and also it being a set place and a routine, right? So these three points reward. Avoid it being a punishment and having a set place and time to sit down and do whatever. These three points are really important, okay? It's really important. The reason why your child listens to me or any therapist is because they come to my clinic, they sit at the same chair, they play the same toys. They know it's the same time as the same person, me, who's giving instructions. It's a strong routine. It's a strong routine. So what I would do, okay, I would tell you what I told the mother for online consultation here, okay? And if you guys want an online consultation, just give me a DM or a pm. I will let you know how I do things, and maybe we can have a chat. And what I told her was that, okay, first of all, what you need to do is to take out something that she really likes, right? Or he really likes. Like, maybe like, I don't know, like chips. Like, show it to him and then don't say anything. When he comes over, point to the chair, right? And then tell him to sit down. If that doesn't work, you know, you know, pull the chair closer. When he's about to grab it, push down the hips. Push down the hips because the hips are like hinge, right? Push it down. It's going to move like that. See, if this is the hips, this is the head, right? I push it down, it's going to sit down. So you're going to do the same thing. You need to do the same thing. All right, let's see. We got a question. Wait a minute. I can't see it. I can't see it. Wait. Oh, there we go. I pinned it by accident. My bad. Okay, parent asked. Do we need a routine schedule to teach our child to sit down? Or we can just do it anytime because I'm a child. Whenever he see the table. This one, the one that we used to learn. Okay, that really sucks. So what you can do in this situation. All right, we can do. The situation is that first of all, don't use the table. Just use a chair, right? And then put the. Put. Put the. Put the. A little chair somewhere that is less of a threat because you've already made it a punishment, right? It already is. Like, when the child sees it, she already thinks or he already thinks that place is torture, right? So he's not going to go there. So get rid of the table, only have the chair, put it somewhere else. And then use, like. Listen to me again, right? Take out something he wants. When he comes over, just tell him to sit down. Like, tap on it. If he doesn't still sit down, he's still trying to get to you. Push on the hips. Make sure the hips, like, fold like this. Push it. And then sits down. And afterwards, give the food right away. Give the food right away. Or like the phone, I don't know. Or anything that they would, like, hit and snatch and hit, I don't know. And die for, you know? So it needs to be very strong in order to teach something that is new and they don't like, right? Okay, so once you do that, you need to keep on praising, you need to keep on giving more rewards, snacks, toys, whatever you're offering that particular kid. And then you just keep on doing it, right? So to answer this question, hey, how long do you need to do it for? Just as. Don't. How to say, do not end this kind of practice of sitting in a bad note, meaning it's really bad. If your child starts to, like, go, and then you let them go. What you're teaching the child is that what you're teaching them is whenever they nag, they get to go. So end on a good, good note. Just. Just before it gets out of, like, you know, it's going to be like, the point where they will start, like, having some, you know, nag a little bit, then stop before that, all right? Stop before that, okay? So if you can stop before that, you end it at the good. At a good note. What you can do then is a lot because every time they leave, they're a happy customer, right? But if you. If they leave your shop with a bad review, then it really hurts you, okay? It really hurts you. So always leave on a good note just before they get mad or he or she gets mad. Let them go. Not too long. Maybe in the beginning. Maybe just like two or three minutes, if you ask me, right? And always have, like a playmat, a play mat, where they can just Go off and do their own thing. So that's a routine, right? A table, a chair, a play mat, a playmat. Just for them to, like, go somewhere else. Right. All right, so what else do I need to talk about here? Right? You have to make a routine. Right? So what is a routine? Actually, according to the parent who asked just now, Oopsies. I'm not very good at Instagram. All right, who asked just now? How do we schedule routine? Okay, cool. What? I mean, that schedule a routine is. I've been thinking about how to make it easier for parents to implement this. Right. So I would say that there are some times that, like, help and cue your child to get ready. Okay. So one of my clients, we always do the task right before his lunchtime. Okay. Right after he takes a shower. So that's something that you would need to. What's that called? That's something that you need to understand. You have to, like, anchor a behavior with a cue or a prompt. So one of my clients is always after shower. So when I see him, he's always wet, which kind of sucks. And also. And also, it could be after lunch, although I don't like it because they get kind of sleepy. And my favorite is after nap. Right. But you only get, like, after nap once a day, right? So use it wisely because they're fresh, right? They're very fresh. And use that time to teach, you know, sitting just playing with you and so on. Okay, so let's say that you got your child to sit down. The other part of this video is to say, how do you get them to focus on stuff? Right? So how would you. How would you even go about. Because a lot of parents, like, you know, they send me, when I say a lot, I mean, like, maybe like three or five, right? I don't want to sound like I'm so super busy or whatnot, but just three or five parents have been telling me that whenever they tell them to do stuff on the table, they would literally run away. Okay, so there's a problem with your relationship with your child. Right. This is the problem is that if they find something hard and they're not looking for it or asking for help from you, it means that they have a long history of failing with you around that you haven't been helping them as much as you should. Right? I'm not telling that it's your fault. It's not at all. What I'm saying is you should change your way of telling your child what to do. So, for instance, if you tell them to do some now it's very hit, right? You use those, what I call those flashcards or whatever, those ABC or like, items or whatnot, or even use an app, right? So if you keep on doing the flashcards, number one is very boring. Number two is that if they don't know something, remember to prompt, like to give a cue or just tell the answer if it's like just one word, thing, all right? Because if they don't know, no matter how much you ask a question, it's not going to happen. All right? So why I'm saying this is because one of the parents was like, okay, whenever I ask the question, and then I will get the answer. Something like that. But the thing is, if it's something really hard and she keeps on drilling. So for instance, she would say, like, what's this? What's that? How do you say it? What should you do? These kind of words, it becomes pretty, pretty, pretty hard for the child to actually go on because they don't have the content in their brain. No matter how many questions you ask is impossible, right? So for instance, I now live in Indonesia for some. That's another story for another day, why I'm here. But what I'm saying is gonna have, you know, if someone came up to me and started to talk, talk to me in another language. And then they kept on asking me, which did happen before, by the way? What happened was like I was driving and I scraped the car or something. No, I scraped the wall. And then it's actually none of their business, but they came up to me and kept on asking me stuff. And as far as I'm concerned, that wall was public property or something, right? So they kept on asking me stuff to me, and I'm like, huh? What do you mean? I don't understand it didn't. They gave no effort to slow down the speech, right? What I always talk about here to, you know, give. To slow down speech, simplify the speech, you know, use more body language. And he didn't even care to give any pictures or whatever or, like giving me options, whatnot. None. You just kept on talking, just giving me, like questions and stuff. How am I going to feel? Real bad. So think about that in the shoes of your children, right? Think about that. Think about, like when you do that, you keep on questioning, questioning, questioning. It's not going to help. So what should you do? So you get them, sit down, get them to focus, but it's not happening because, you know, every time you tell them to do something, they don't like it. They don't understand it, they feel it's too hard. You're not going to help. So what do they do? What you should do now is to give the answer every time. Real quick. Give the answer as clearly as possible and then ask again. And then make the queue much smaller and fade away. Let me give you an example. So for instance, if you're teaching, for instance, you're teaching how many? Like how many? Oh, let me see, there's a question here. Maybe I can use it as an example, right? Let me see. My kid already knows, so call me picky Pichi. I don't know how to say it. I'm sorry. My kid already know how to spell shapes, colors, but he don't know how to make a conversation. How to teach my kids make a conversation. Cool. So let's say that we're teaching a conversation, right? Even better. So when you sit them down and tell them, okay, I'll teach you how to do a conversation, right? First of all, it's not going to go well because it's not well defined, right? And it's too open ended as well. So what do you do? You give a prompt, a cue. So how do you give a prompt, a cue to a conversation? Well, there's something that you can do. You can make up a script which I've been doing with one of my clients. And she's like 12 years old, right? Ah man, I forgot her age. Something like 12 or 13. So you give her a script that's a conversation, right? It might be like a pretend play situation that has instructions or, or conversation, right? So let's say that it's inside that restaurant. You're pretending at the table. You've got like the waiter, the waitress. Make sure that they understand these kind of jargons. Not jargons, these vocabulary first. And then what you do is like you go, you go into it and then you say, okay, let's play now. Ready, set, action. Okay, so the kid comes up with like the menu and then she's like, oh, I want the whatever. I want the what? I want the X, right? And you might say, hey, this is like a functional exercise, right? I mean you do it in a, in a restaurant, you, you check out a McDonald's, KFC, whatever. But is that conversation? Yeah, kind of. You need to be able to have a script to fall back on. All right? Or sometimes when we're teaching older students in primary school how to have appropriate conversation skills, you still need a script because it's helping them to get rid of some of the thinking process in their mind. So once you have that, that's the direct answer. And then you can start. Faded away. You can start changing the words into pictures only. You can start changing some of the words into small, into one word. Or you can give some sort of gesture, something like that. All right, so once you understand that, or it might be just fill in the blanks, right? Whatever that can, that can cue them a little less. That's going to help them to use the brain a little bit more and think better. Okay. Yeah. Nabeel says basically it's role play. Yeah, basically it is role playing, but at the same time there's a script. Okay, that's. Some people call it script therapy. Just giving a name or whatever. But, you know, it depends on the kid, depends on the kit. It might work well on you. Nabil, actually, because basically she doesn't have. I'm talking about like a case by case basis, right. Her daughter, she doesn't really speak in complete, complete sentences. She chops up in between. So that's a good way to help her understand. And the best way, best thing about this, I've talked about this a lot of times. I think it's a great opportunity that you should record these play sessions that are fun to the kid. It acts as the reinforcement, acts as a reward. Afterwards, you don't even need to think about what toy to make. Because this is kid who I talked to this morning. He couldn't say any words, but he could only say, hey. And guys, you guess why? Because of YouTube, right? He says, hey, guys like that. He loves toy reviews, right? So if you can do it like a review video or like a YouTube video, that your role play or script, scripted conversation or that kind, then it becomes a real cool reinforcement, all right. That is embedded in the task. I mean, this is so cool because never in a day that, you know, we can live in an age that we can do this, right? You do something, record it, you can watch it again. And you're like, oh, I'm happy. Right? It's cool. Okay. And where, where did I learn this? Well, because back in the day I was like teaching Lego when I was doing a master's. I also had like a part time job job. And then they were doing like stop motion, meaning, like they made the Lego and then they, they took pictures and they made a video out of it. I'm like, dude, that's crazy. You can teach them something. You can teach them like to make a story, right? You can teach them to make scripts. Right. And then you can teach them to a video. And at the. And at the last, the product is actually, like, fun. It's crazy. Yeah. All right, so Nabil said yes. That's what her therapist is working on. On Roleplay. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Work on Roleplay is a very good idea because it helps children understand world knowledge. Okay, so that's pretty much all I wanted to talk about today. I'll recap it real quick. So today's topic is making your child sit down. Right. Very straightforward, yet, you know, very difficult for some parents and some children. So what do you do? First of all, make sure you have a reason for them to like to listen to you. A reward. Right. Number two, don't make it a torture punishment for them to sit down. Like the parent who was asking on Instagram just now, she said that. Okay. Whenever she. The kids saw the table, he would run away. Well, that sucks. Try not to do that. Yeah. Number three, do you have a schedule? Like a routine, a time, a place where you can do it? Right. Can you do that? Can you do that? Can you fit it in your schedule? Right. Once you have these all in place, it should be very easy. Okay. And make sure that when they sit down as a good, good, good, good, good experience. Like you go into a spa, you know, you get there and then all you hear is praises like, oh, good sitting. That's right. Nice. Doing this kind of stuff. Like, you know, make it comfortable. Make sure that their legs aren't hanging right. If, again, if you're teaching toilet training, this is the first step that I teach. Right. Make the place comfortable. Okay. Make it comfortable. I don't care. Make. Make it smell nice. Make it look good. Better lighting. I don't know. Padded chairs. You know, the foot must touch some kind of surface of floor so that it's supported. And it makes it better and a better experience for them to stay there instead of, like, feeling not that comfortable. Right. It's not a fast food restaurant. You don't want to want them to leave asap. You want them to sit down and really connect with you. Right. So at this time, if you have any questions, please do put them in the comment section. There's actually quite a lot on Facebook, I think, but I haven't been able to see it. Let me check it. Yeah. So I'll be here for another five minutes just to answer some questions here. And, yeah, please tell me what kind of things you're working on. Right. And to be honest, when I ask this Question is very difficult because a lot of parents don't know what they're working on. So therefore, last time I did like a video about, okay, do you know what you're working on? You know, what kind of stuff are you doing? What kind of goal are you trying to achieve? Right. So we have like, parents like Nabil, who wants to, like, buy a dollhouse so that she understands better. But, like, let me ask, if you don't mind, Nabil, what kind of thing are you trying to do? Right? What are you trying to do? Is it role play? What are you trying to teach your verbs? Are you trying to teach her, like, a certain sentence structure? These are very difficult to actually answer you to answer to me. Right. And the real thing about it is that sometimes if you ask a therapist, they might not be able to answer you as well because they haven't thought through. Okay. But most of them are pretty cool. So most therapists can so see. Oh, I get it. Because it wasn't in the group Facebook anyways. Yeah. So by this time I just. Oopsies. I just need to hide all that by this time, please, if you haven't, go to agentsofspeech.com check it out. There's a lot more info over there. And if you haven't, you can go to agentsofspeech.com checklist to grab a bunch of tools and toys. So it's agents of speech.com checklist. It's a list of tools and toys that I recommend to parents who want to start home therapy. Right. And just before we go, if you want someone to talk to about specifically your child and you want me to help you out and talk about, okay, what, what goal you want to set and how to do it specifically for a child, then you can DM me on Instagram or like, I don't know, on my Facebook, which is called PM. And on YouTube, where you can just send an email, right? Send an email to me, talk to me. We can set up a time to talk and help you out on these very trying times. And to be honest, I've stopped entirely for seeing clients. I've stopped it myself. And there's a load of reasons I'm not going to start anytime soon. So to everyone who are reaching out to me, asking, oh, when can. Are you open during these times? I'm not. I'm not open. I am not going to be open until things get better. It really is. It really is kind of difficult for me. Right. Because I see that some, some of my kids, some of my students are, you know, they're not improving and it hurts but at the same time it really is dependent on you guys now on you now to help me out, okay? To help me out, tell me how it is at home so that I can tell you what to do and you can try it. And I really don't know when I'm going to start because to be honest I just bought a bunch of like children furniture with toys and stuff and I can't use it so too bad for me. But I think it's really is it really is about safety to be honest. Right? Everyone stay safe and if you have any questions, you know what to do if you haven't like it like this video, Share it to friends if you found it useful and that's it. I'll say see you guys next week Monday nights at 9:00pm all right, bye.