The 3 Stages of Speech and Language Delayed Children

Alright, today we're going to talk about the three stages that children go through when they're developing language. No matter if a child is speech delayed, if a child is typically developing or on the spectrum. The first stage is what we call nonverbal or preverbal. Let's define what preverbal and nonverbal is. We have a separate video on this that goes more in depth. Basically nonverbal means that the child is a little bit older and we determine that, we meaning professionals, whether you like it or not, we will think that, okay, this child is not verbal just yet, okay? And maybe that's over around like three and a half to four years old we would start calling a child non verbal. And this is a distinction between preverbal. Because if we talk about preverbal that typically means that a child is, it might be typically developing or he or she might be speech delayed or on a spectrum. But typically the age is around like two years old to two and a half. So therefore we can look like or below even like maybe one or one and a half. Right? So younger ages, language is still developing and therefore we call it pre verbal. And we work on a lot of pre verbal skills. Right? Whereas non verbal we tend to think about what other functional things we can work on. Okay. But for these two, we talk about these nonverbal or preverbal children. The first stage, this is the first stage, right? What we want to do always is to teach imitation skills. Alright? So imitation skills is practically or theoretically or maybe I don't know, just in general it would be the biggest and the most important pre linguistic skill. Okay. There are many pre linguistic skills. If you search on YouTube you will see other therapists talking about it. I don't really talk about it because I don't think you should work on every one of them. And whether if like some of the activities we talk about here actually works on everything. But you don't have to know that. You just need to care about whether your child is actually learning or not. Alright? At this stage what you want to focus on is verbal imitation. So if you need more help, you can go down in the comment section below. We've got some links for you to download that are free. Okay. Just go to the pre verbal stage and then you'll see a link over there for you to download. The second stage is what we call single word level. And at this stage our main focus is get the child to start using multiple words inside of one phrase or sentence. So what I mean by multiple means more than Two. So we start off with like two word phrases and so on. But a lot of people who do this would always try to teach I want whatever or give me whatever, or this is something something. So this is actually not a good idea. Again, we have a whole other video about this. Right. The reason being if you add I want in front, it doesn't necessarily add a lot of meaning to the whole utterance. Right. So rather than that, what I like to focus on and the parents who I coach focus on are adding more verbs to the child's repertoire, to his vocabulary. So a lot of children who are at single word level, their vocabulary is skewed towards nouns. They're able to say this is whatever, that's whatever. But then when they're required to actually talk about, like, actions and verbs, it's pretty hard for them. All right? So that's why we teach verbs, because it's literally the glue that puts a sentence together. So if you look at sentence and you have to categorize which one is a noun phrase and a verb phrase, you will see that verb phrases are always longer. Right. And the reason is, because the verb is, at least in English, in Chinese, and also in Indonesian, where I know a little bit about the language, is that the verb is very important. So once the verb is there, we can start adding a word in front or behind, and we stick to structures systematically. Again, we've got downloads for you in the comment section below where you can take a look at that. And then the next stage would be what we call the verbal reasoning stage. And at this level, we are still creating resources for this level. Basically, what it means is answering why questions and how questions. And your child would be able to. They already know the reason behind why something is wrong or the reason behind when you say, why is this happening? But they just can't verbalize it. This is the stage where they're using language to actually argue and to actually verbally tell you exactly how they feel. Right. So answering why, answering how questions. Okay, so let me give you an example. For instance, why is the table wet? Because mom spilled it. Right. Why did Tom put a band aid on? Because he tripped on the floor. Like, these are very simple why questions. And then the second thing that you should be doing is storytelling. So you would see a lot of sequence cards online, and you put them in sequences, like, put them in order, and then you tell the story. So a child's ability to tell a story is quite important because inside it's the ability to convey a message or a story effectively to you. And there are loads of stuff involved. For instance, knowing if the other party, like for instance, you understand what I'm talking about. How do I cover all the points to make it interesting? Do I talk about the characters inside the story, how they feel, what they're thinking? This is what we call theory of mind. And also to talk about the whole thing, we're not even talking about one sentence or two, we're talking about multi utterance. Are they able to stay coherent in that way? The last thing we do in verbal reasoning is what we call inferencing. And inferencing is something that are not in words. So for instance facial expressions or certain how we move, how our body language is or we see from like for instance, I'm holding a mic. Why am I holding a mic? Because I'm recording something. This is inferenced from the information here. And if a child is able to verbalize it, it means that their thinking is clear. Right. And they're able to think in language now instead of using pictures and whatever, you know. But this is not necessary. It's just that if they're able to think clearly and put it into words for other people to understand. Alright, so inferencing is the best thing that we use a lot is by using Mr. Bean because there are no, Mr. Bean doesn't talk, but you know exactly what he's doing because he's got a lot of body language, facial expressions, he puts a lot of context. And the best thing is actually that he actually takes a lot of understanding to really verbalize what he's talking about. Especially if you're talking about a child who is on a spectrum or is language delayed? All right, so these are the things that we work on with verbal reasoning. So right now we don't have these resources yet. So if you're watching in another timeframe, maybe you can scroll down to description below and there will be a link for you to download some stuff as well. But not at the moment. All right, give us some time. And after these three stages we move past what we call like just verbal language for now. Right. Obviously we will still work on a lot of stuff. So there are two more things that we will be doing. First of all is literacy. So literacy is depending on where you live in. It's not entirely up to the speech therapist. Sometimes it's up to educational psychologists and so on. And for literacy, what we usually do, maybe it would be like dyslexia, dysgraphia, which is dysgraphia means they Cannot write. Yeah. So these things, it's a multidisciplinary thing. So for instance, as a speech therapist, I might do more of dyslexia. Dysgraphia might be to do with cognitive and understanding of using his hands. So it's more of occupational therapist. And then as a whole educational psychologist will oversee the whole thing altogether, the whole literacy. So in Hong Kong it's not really our responsibility. Alright, so other than literacy, why do we do literacy is because as they go into primary school and secondary school, or what you guys call elementary school and middle school in the US is that children are moving away from learning to read to reading to learn. So therefore having like understanding how to use words, written words and read written words is very, very important. Okay? So other than that, we do some higher thinking skills as well towards middle school, secondary school, high school, whatever you like to call it. And why we do this is because we realize that a lot of children who have had been language delayed, they lack the skills of categorizing ideas. Alright? And this is what we're talking about around like 15, 16, like 13, 13 onwards, right? All the way up to 18 even. We're teaching them how to use mind maps, we're teaching them how to think clearly, how to use mental models, right? How to make sure that they double check what they're thinking, alright? Give them some ideas and some systems about what to do. Sometimes it's even just as easy as teaching them how to read Google search results, right? Teaching them how to think and criticize and so on. So these are very, very important. So there are loads of these exercises online actually, if you know what to search at this moment, you don't need to think about this. If your child is around like one or two, or even like all the way up to six, you don't need to think about this, okay? I'm just telling you just in advance because this is a whole roadmap. All right? So the last thing that I like to talk about is social skills. Social skills are developed all the way. Like despite the three stages, we're always working on social skills and we don't have to necessarily pick out social skills to work on. A lot of parents ask me, how do I make my kid more confident? Well, confidence comes from competence, right? If your child is good at something, they're going to be more confident in it. And the same is for you and I, right? When I started this channel, I was very incompetent in talking so I would look like I would be a little less Confident. Right. But at the same time, don't think what you can do to push that, that sort of confidence. The best thing you can do is to increase your child's language competency and therefore, socially speaking, they will be better off. Okay, that's number one. Number two is that there are subtle things that you're working on socially. Right. If you're teaching them how to play, you're giving them a skill so that they can go out and actually have fun. Alright? So there's no point in telling your child to go play soccer or football at a tournament. It's just going to crush their confidence. Right? So a lot of parents will bring the children out to, I don't know, like a play date. And the child doesn't even know how to play yet. So therefore, the playing needs to happen at home first with you, with adults, and then you can slowly add kids. Right? So slowly, slowly add more social skills. We'll have a workshop about that very soon. And if you're watching at a later date, you can go down as well. You can check it out in the comment section below. All right, so that's it for today. Thank you so much. My name is Ming, by the way, from agentsofspeech.com and before you go, if the links below don't serve you, then you can go to agentsofspeech.com checklist to get a checklist of tools and toys that I recommend you to get when you start home therapy. All right, so thank you so much. I'll see you in the next video next week. Bye. Bye.