Toys for Speech Therapy at Home | www.agentsofspeech.com

All right, good morning, everyone. All right, so today I want to talk about what toys you can use in the at home when you're doing speech therapy. All right, I'm sorry it's a little late today. It's just that I ran into some technical issues related to Internet. As you all would know about Indonesia, the Internet is pretty bad. Okay, so what kind of toys should you use for speech therapy? First of all, you need to know at what age your child is right now. Okay, so what kind of, let's say if you're starting off with like a two year old, a three year old, right? What kind of toys should you use? Well, the first toy you should use is yourself. So we've been actually talking about how to actually do activities without any toys. You can go and check out my video about it. It's basically some routines that I teach about using, like peekaboo, about using swinging, tickling, that kind of stuff to keep a child motivated to play with you. Okay. There's no other better toy than yourself in the beginning because basically you're trying to pair yourself with good experiences. Such as? Such as yourself, food. Like you want to pair yourself to food, right? Or like drinks or whatever that makes it easier for them to like associate. Associate good experiences with. Okay, so the more you play with them and the more you can eat, the more better the experience. Okay, so what other. Like let's say that, okay, cool, your child is now like very, very good at talking to you. So what kind of toy should you use? Okay, so the first go to. That a lot of therapists go to, especially in Hong Kong, is actually this thing, right? It might not be the best thing. This little piggy bank thing. Not everyone likes it. And this is a newer edition, right? The new edition. It doesn't really look like a pig, but children love it. You know why? Especially those on the spectrum. And it's because of these coins. All right, I have a five year old who likes these coins so much. That's all. Just all I use for the whole session. You have different colors and if you see it, it says one, right? So it has numbers as colors. So they would like to like put it in order. And because they're rigid, they like to put it in one by one. So once you tell them, Once you tell them that how you play it is by turning it on. And then if you hear that, yeah, you put one inside and it goes one, right? Two. Yep. So these kind of toys are pretty cool. The reason why is because you can keep on using It. Let's say you have a bunch of coins and you're. You're teaching something like. Like an open hand gesture because they're not verbal yet. You just keep on giving, right? Oh, here we go. One last one. Oh, here. Here you go. Oh, good job. Right. And every time he. You can also put it in the container, like we always teach. And then ask your child to, like, learn how to say open. And you keep on giving, right? And at the end, right, My cat's going crazy again. So at the end, they can actually try to open it and actually try to open it. So let's say that, you know, it's like this. And they can't open it because you're putting a finger over here. So you force them in the situation where they must talk to you again. So you say open. And this is for, like, two to three and a half. It's very rare that you use it for four years old, because to be honest, this is a little too stupid for four years old. Okay. Like, three and a bit. I think it's still fine. All right. It needs to be age appropriate. Yeah. I've got a client who loves a pig, but she's 18, so it's not the best thing. You know, you shouldn't be teaching things that are weird in our social norms. Not saying that. It's like, there's a reason why we want to stick to it. It's just because they would play things within their age group so that they have similar interests and therefore they can have. Like, there is. It's easier to connect with people of their own age. Right. So this is one of them. I like it a lot. There's a few verbs you can target as well, such as, like, you know, open here you can target press, right? You can target put into the. Into the top. And then what else you can do is. Oh, you can do turn on over here. So there's like, two buttons if you can see it, like, 1 and 2. So if you turn it on, it goes like that, Right? You can always turn it off for every trial so that they have to do a bunch, like a whole routine of a. Oh, open, get coin, putcoin. Oh, sorry, could be open, get, coin, turn on putcoin. Right. And then press my nose. Yeah, and it goes like, press my nose or something. Right. So that's one of them that a lot of therapists would go to. And basically, it's because it's very. It's very like sound and light. So anything that has sound and light is Pretty okay. It's pretty okay. So there's a bunch of these at the same level. You know, like those with, like, the glowing ball stuff. You know, like the ones that you press the ball and it goes, like, spinning and. And all that stuff. It's like. It's that level. Well, this is what we call effects. You know, effects toy. A more technical term is like a means end toy. Right. So these stuff is. Means end is for like 2 years old to, like, 3. And a bit for those who are. For children who are not speaking yet. Okay. And we put. If you're doing toilet training, we put a lot of these inside the toilet. All right. We put a lot of these inside the toilet, especially for those in, like, two, three, that age range, just so that they know they're safe inside the toilet and so on. And it's a. It's an easy toy to play. That doesn't. That doesn't complicate the situation. And if right now you need help with toilet training, we're doing a workshop and you can go there. I can tell you exactly how I do it to make. To teach children to become toilet independent. It's pretty easy. There's exact steps that you can do. And we don't do, like, you know, intermittent. Like, we just don't put them in the toilets. Schedule it every time. We don't schedule. All right. We do it in a chunk. So. So if you're interested, you can go to agentsofspeech.com toilet. So it's like this www. And this is on Friday, by the way. This Friday. So all the details are there. I'll just put it there. There we go. That also put it in YouTube for those who are watching over there. Okay. So that's that. And then the next level. The next level is still toys that are. There's still toys that are little, like, effects and everything like that, but it's a little more complicated. It's more realistic. Whereas, you know, these kind of toys, they just. Whatever. It's like a. It's like a. It's like a piggy bank. Right. It's not. Not much real world application. You know, that you see things such as a car that you press and it goes. That kind of stuff is the same level as the pig. All right. The next level is a little harder. It's a little more like real life is this kind of stuff. So actually you can get this wherever you want, you know, like the piggy. You can also find it online pretty easily. You can just type in like piggy bank, toy or something. This one is like a vending machine, right? And vending machines are nice because first of all, if there is something like that in the real world, right. Second of all is that there's more things to do within it, all, right? And usually I do this for like 3 year old onwards. And that they have some world knowledge so that you know, you're not, you're not being like, you're not just like throwing random stuff at them, right? They kind of know what it is and they know that this is like a Coke or like soft drinks. And what you can do basically is to teach a bunch of verbs here, okay? And you can also target a bunch of speech sounds, which I'm not going to talk about. We're just talking about language, okay? Let's say you're just doing like some home therapy with your kid and you're trying to get them to talk, right? So what you can do is like you can show the routine first, right? The routine obviously is to get a coin, right? And then there's also a card. So if I were you, I wouldn't even let them know about the card yet. Because remember in the previous video that we did about playing routines, if you haven't, you can go watch it after the live. Basically what it is is you want to withhold stuff that has added effect. Just when it becomes boring, you can throw it in and it revives the whole situation. You don't need to change toys, right? So I would introduce the coin first and then slowly I would tell them the whole routine. For instance, like this. Oh, put coin. That's right. Well, the first thing you got to do is to turn it on, right? So you would not let them know that the thing is here only you can do it. So you turn it on, you put it in. There you go. So this is pretty loud. I don't really like it. But anyway, once you put the coin and then you show them, the next routine is to get this right, is to press the button and then take out the juice of which let's see if your child actually knows, right? You can like show them and. Hi, Bethel. Good night. So if you can see it, it says watermelon. There's different kinds there. So you can like basically just teach them about different juices as well. So why not? And then the next step is like to drink, right? So you can make them say like drink watermelon juice, like that, make some sound effect. And after that the last one should be like throwing it away. Right. So usually what we do is like we throw it into like a bin. I don't have it here. So you throw the juice away and after that when you finish everything, you can tell him to like recycle and put it back in, right? Oh, put in the juice, whatever. So, so the whole thing happens again, right? So they ask for a coin, they're like, oh, it's here, go get it. And obviously there's nothing there, right? Obviously you want to like, you want to press it yourself and get a coin. If it's going to let me, that is. Okay, There you go. So another coin and then you start restart it again. So the sequence goes like putcoin, press button, get the juice, drink the juice, throw the juice, right? And the good thing about this thing is that that's too loud. The good thing about it is that this can become a turn taking game, right? It can become a turn taking. Let's say that oh, it's my turn to buy a drink or it's your turn to buy a drink. Like the kids turn or sometimes we're in like a three way situation. You can get mom or dad to buy the drink, right? And you can tell them to tell the parent what to do. You can tell them to tell us how to play. This is where you get from like requesting a child, Like a child always, like always requests like I want coin, I want to press, I want to drink. We can flip it because he or she knows, your child knows that if you finish your turn faster, they get to play sooner. So the more you play dumb, the better it is for them. All right? No, no, better for it is for us because when we play dumb that you make them want to talk, they want to get it on so they will actually instruct you. So instead of like the way of them telling you like oh, I want to press the button, it's more like he's instructing us to do it. So the function of language is different. It's not, not like requesting anymore, it's more instructing, commanding, right? Manipulating us by words, which is basically the whole goal of the situation. So a lot of people get stuck, a lot of kids get stuck, let's say on just requesting stuff. You know, even if they're like five or six, they keep on saying I want, I want, I want, I want. But there's not enough other types of languages such as, you know, commanding, instructing, commenting, that kind of stuff, Stuff clarifying, there's not enough that kind of language. So once you're up to Here when you're using, like, real stuff like this. And what other real stuff are we talking about? Right? So, you know, you're using, like, you know, those toy microwaves, those toy washing machines, toy sinks, toy whatever of a miniature version of the real thing that is at the level of a vending machine, really, to be honest. Right. And why we want to stick to there is because then we can try to generalize it towards the real thing if you have those apparatus at home. Obviously, if you do, like, a toy iron thing, don't generalize it towards the real iron, because that's pretty unsafe. But if it's like a. If it's for, like, a washing machine, I think it's fine. So Vonnie asks, these toys are not yet for my kid, right? Actually, this one. This one not yet. This kind of stuff. Not yet. So if you're doing, like, toy foods and, like, miniature versions of a real thing. Not yet. What you want, Vonnie, is this type of toy. And then you can go ahead with doing, like, the open palm stuff with her again, right? So this is nice. This kind of stuff, if she likes it, this is like, on the level of puzzles, you know, it's basically like a puzzle with, like, sound. So you just take out the toys and. Sorry, take out the coins, and you keep on putting it in. Okay? And then every trial, you ask for her to open, like, open palm, give, and then put it in. And then the next step for you, Vonnie, to be honest now, I'm saying a lot of. To be honest for no reason anyways. So what you need to do the next time, right, Vonnie, like, you're already nearly there. So between each snack, each coin, each puzzle piece, whatever you're using, you want her to do some things for you. So let's say that, oh, she wants the coin. Okay, you follow me. You touch your nose, okay. You help her finish it, and then you give it to her, right? Some easy stuff. And after that, you can move on to speech sounds soon. All right, you're welcome, Veronica. So now you know the general progression of how I use toys, right? Usually I start off with me food, and then I go on to, like, like these stuff, like means end toys. What we call means end just means, like, when you press a button, something happens that's a means end, right? The next one is, like, this kind of stuff that's, like, more imaginative because it's like a miniature version of a real thing, right? And they can only like it when they know the real thing. Like, I mean, like, if you don't like, if you don't know about cooking, then why would you play, like, toy foods? It's just crazy. So once you get that done, usually what I move towards is something more imaginative. Right. Something like Mr. Potato Head. And Mr. Potato Head you can use from like, three until like seven. And that's because it's a lot of dust. Haven't used it for a long time. And that tells you how long this coronavirus has been going on for. So it's more imaginative because there's, like, body parts. Right. And how you would use it in the beginning for two or three years old is just for them to build it, right? It's just for them to build it. So you can ask them to, like, choose what kind of hands and body parts they want. And what I would do is, like, I would ask them any other toy for two year olds? Yes, Veronica, there are loads. But I just don't. It's just in the clinic. I haven't brought it back yet. Okay. Two years old, you would stick with puzzles. All right. You would still with puzzles. You would also stick with bubbles. Bubbles is very nice. The piggy bank is great. You know those balls that make sound when you roll it? Those are nice. There's also some, you know those baby toys where you use a hammer and you hit something and then sound comes off, comes out. That's pretty cool as well. So anything that has light and sound effects, those are very, very good. Okay. I would also use big cars, like really big trucks that has, like, sound and light on it as well. I would use those. Just avoid anything that has small parts. Okay. So that they don't eat it, you know, and at the same time, nothing. They require no knowledge of anything to have fun. So the distinction is that if you teach them to use, like, a toy microwave, if they don't know what. What's a microwave, then it's very hard for them to have fun. All right? So you got to understand what's going on. It's just like if I were to tell you to play this, you know, there's a game, you know, there's a real video game called, like, Football Manager. And all you do like football as in, like, soccer and in America. And what you do is, like, you manage a football team, like, answering emails and everything like that, and scouting players. If you didn't like football or soccer in, like, American terms, you wouldn't want to play it. So it's the same reasoning behind it. Like, you wouldn't want to play that Stuff if you don't know what's going on and you have a genuine interest towards it. Right. So for two years old, stick to those that make sound and light and are, like, super easy to play. All right, so Back to this. Mr. Potato Head. One of my favorite toys ever, because it does a lot of heavy lifting for me. I mean, like, it looks goofy. It's stupid. There's a lot of body parts you can teach, right? So what. What I do usually is I teach them how to, like, make it first. Crap. Okay, here we go. How to make it first. And to be like, to be fair, this thing works wonders if your child is, like four. All right? Because it's funny. I mean, like, if you put like a. Once you finish your whole thing and then you dissemble it and you ask them to make it again, they would be okay with it. There's not many points in the world that a kid would be able to. It would be okay. Yeah, Veronica. Sound and light. Yeah. Go, go, go. Ham on Amazon. And then, you know, if you do it over and over again, your child is still going to be okay with it. It's that kind of toy. So once you do that, and then you tell them to take it off, and then you can start doing language stuff. For instance, take off the nose. All right, good. Take off the hat. Yeah. Take off the hand. Take off whatever. Take off, take off, take off. And after they take it off, they can now choose what they want and they put it back on. Okay? So for instance, you can choose between a yellow and orange nose. Okay. Never remember what I said before in a previous video. Again, I don't know which one. Okay. It's starting to become too many. Like, too many, too many. Sorry. All right. The situation here is getting very bad. Okay. All right, so remember, do not ask them to describe the color of a nose or whatever when you don't have a contrast. So now we have a contrast because we have two things that are, like, very similar, exactly the same, nearly, but it's just different in terms of the color. So when you have that, you can use it for language. Tell them to distinguish which one they want. And for instance, if they just say nose, I'll just give whatever name, whichever, right? But if they say yellow nose, I know it's this one. So usually kids do have a preference, especially those on the spectrum. So use that to your advantage. So inside the box, preferably, you want to buy the whole box of Mr. Potato Head, not just like the normal one, so that you get different Distinctions, right? You have like a blue hand and a white hand, so you can use that. Or you can use like a blue hat and a green hat. Yeah, like that. So once you do that, you can actually ask them to, like, say longer sentences. Like, they can say, put on the blue hat, something like that, right? I can also say, like, put on the pink ears. Right? And you can only do that because I've got orange ears here. Right? And once you can get to that level, you can increase the sentence again. So you can put all the body parts. Sounding pretty crazy now. Okay, putting all the body parts inside the box. And then we put Mr. Potato Head with the shoes on in the middle. And we just pass around the box seeing whose turn it is. So it's another turn taking. Or better yet, you know, you can have two Mr. Potato Heads. And then we have a big barrier and your child has to, like, teach us how to teach. Teach us how to make the Mr. Potato Head according to his desires, right? He cannot see, I cannot see. That's why he has to say it. All right? And likewise, we can take turns. I'm instructing him how to make the Mr. Potato head to my accord. Okay? So the longer sentence would be, okay, like, Mr. Ming, take the. Mr. Wing, take the pink ear. Okay? And then Mr. Ming put the pink ear on the potato head. Something like that, right? And then sometimes what you can do is like, you can play stupid and you can put it here, right, like that. And this is another language go. What we call like, what's wrong? This is for children who are much older, much older, much smarter. So this is around when they can. When you're starting to teach why questions, right? You can ask them what's wrong. Okay. What, what's wrong here? Oh, the hands at the wrong place, right? The hand should not. Shouldn't be there. If you're teaching like a language structure, like, it shouldn't be whatever. It should be whatever, that kind of language, like, structure. Then you can use this, right? You can say, what's wrong? Oh, the hand shouldn't be where the eye is, it should be below the ears, something like that. So it needs to be very accurate so that I know what to do. Okay. At this point in time, if your child knows what happened, what's happening, they say, oh, what's wrong? And they start pointing and pointing and pointing and pointing and pointing. That means they know the content. They just don't know how to say it with words. So that's great. So then, then you can teach them. You can Tell them to, like, oh, the hand shouldn't be where the eye is. It should be under the ears. Now, we are not. I don't have ears here, which means I failed, right? Because I should have put the ears here. And then I have a point of reference. So you have to be careful. Okay? So that's one of the things I like to do, too. Like, what's wrong with Mr. Potato Head? There's just so many things you can do with this thing. But you gotta keep it fun, all right? That's why you need a whole bunch of different body parts in the box. All right? So. And then what you can do is then you can do like you can. You can teach your. Teach your child to do why questions. Which, by the way, is one of the most important things, important milestones that determines whether your child is talking a lot or not. Why questions. So if your child. Right now, you ask them, well, why? Why is this happening? And then you just repeat after you. Or they just don't do anything. Oh, you're welcome, Francis. It's cool. Then you want to teach why questions. So one of them is actually to use Mr. Potato Head in a very particular way. First of all, what you want to do is to introduce what each body part does. Like, the function of it. So eyes are for seeing. If they've been through kindergarten, they would have known, right? Like, you would have some props. I don't have any here. So you say, like, eyes are for reading. Like reading a book, right? Or looking at a phone. Ears are for listening. Hands are for holding. So I don't. I've got the other Mr. Potato Head that has, like, a bag. So you can. They can actually, like, hold a bag, right? And another one is like, say mouth is for singing, for eating, for talking. Right. Nose is for smelling, for sneezing, for. That's it. That's for breathing, maybe. So how do you do it? Is basically I pretend that the Mr. Potato is walking and he falls down and he drops his eyes or something. So each time you do it, if it comes to routine, it's pretty funny. So you go. You, like, be really silly, right? And you can just sing a song. Oh, no, it fell down. And then you come up, and then you ask the child, hey, what happened? And the child would probably say, oh, the eyes are gone. That's right. The eyes are gone. Oh, no. And then you. You take out a book and you ask, hey, can you ask Mr. Potato Head to read a book, please? And then you pretend to be dumb again. You go like, oh, I can't see what book, right? And then the child's, like, laughing. Most probably if they're at that level, they would know that it's a funny situation. And then you would ask, oh, why can't Mr. Potato Head read the book? And the answer is, obviously, because he has no eyes, right? There's no eyes. So that's a very, very simple why question thing. So. And then you say, oh, can you give it. Give it back to Mr. Potato Head then? Oh, thank you. So can you see now? Yes, because his eyes are back, right? So you keep on doing it. You keep on falling. And then this time, the mouth comes off. And then you're like, oh, no, what happened? The mouth's gone. And then you give him, like, a toy food or, like, a singing stand like this, and you say, oh, can you tell Mr. Potato Head to sing? And he was like, nothing's coming out. And then the kid's probably laughing if you're doing at the right level, because it's dumb, right? He knows what's going on. And then you can tell. You can say something like. And at this point, you can say, okay, why? And the answer is, oh, because. Because he has no mouth. So once you give the mouth back, then you can reinforce naturally the situation by saying, yeah, he's got the mouth now. Now he can sing. You tell Mr. Potato to sing. And then the kid would have to say, oh, Mr. Potato, please sing us a song. And then I'll pretend to be Mr. Potato Head and sing a song. I'm not going to do it here. Okay. I'm not going to do it here. Okay. So that's how you use Mr. Potato Head like that. And then one more level up, which is the ultimate level of Mr. Potato Head, is that you start making a story. You act out a story for Mr. Potato. All right? So you can take any old story card that you have at home and then use Mr. Potato Head to act it out as the main character. All right? That one takes a little more skill. All right, I'm not gonna tell you what to do here, because basically, you have to try it yourself. And I don't know what kind of stories you have at home. So rather than using, like, story cards, which a lot of us do, I do as well. Okay. But the thing is, if you can put it out with, like, figurines, Mr. Potato Head act it out with some props. It helps them to generalize. Okay? So that's the bunch of toys that I like to use for each ability level. And Each. Whatever. Okay. With each language level and each age group, nearly. This kind of stuff. Above four, please. Okay. This kind of stuff. Two to three. Okay. This kind of stuff. Three plus. Right. Anyone who is above four, four or. Sorry. Above six to seven, you can use board games. Okay. I forgot to bring it again from my clinic. So you can use board games. Board games are nice. Board games are cool. Choose the board games that has stuff that you can press and spin. That is usually the best thing to do. All right? So we're doing a toilet training workshop, right? And then this Friday, and what I've been teaching is that you should put these kind of toys inside the toilet. And should you put all these there? No, it's according to your child's ability and how much they like it. You don't want to put. Really, really, really a class. Let's say that they really like this vending machine. I probably wouldn't put it in the toilet, all right? I probably wouldn't. The reason is because if you're doing toilet training, you have to be. They have to be on the. What's that called? They have to be not focusing that much because they still need to know when to pee. All right? So if you are having trouble with doing toilet training, you want someone to tell you exactly what to do and something that works. You can go to agentsofspeech.com toilet, all right? And check it out. There is actually. There's actually. You can actually use a code. For a discount. And you might ask me, hey, Ming, why isn't this for free? I mean, you always do, like, lives for free and whatever. And that's because I feel like a paid one will make the parents a little more invested. And it's not like I'm charging a lot for this. I used to charge a lot for it when I do it for the parents. But when I'm telling you what to do, I hope that that little investment will keep you online, all right? Keep you there and keep you learning with me live, okay? Because I've tried actually, I've tried doing an online course, right? It's still there. If you go to agentsofspeech.com, you'll see the course there. And a lot of the people who watch this live every Monday, Wednesday, Friday are actually members of that online course. After looking at the analytics, they watch my life more than watching the online course that I've made. So why don't I just make it live about a topic I want to talk about and then just make sure that you go through everything. This is why I'm doing it. Toilet training is very, very important, right? If you don't do it nicely, if you don't do it nicely, then you know, you can actually run into the problem that your child will not be accepted in a school, because if they're not toilet independent and they're always on nappies and they don't know how to follow a teacher to the toilet, then you have a big problem. All right? It's always wise to do toilet training as long as they're around like, two and a half to three. Usually start at three. Three is better because the legs are long enough. Right? So. And I'll tell you why the legs length is such a huge issue in the toilet training workshop. Okay? So go there, sign up. It's on Friday, this Friday, 17th of July. It's at like 9pm WIB is 10am EST. Okay? So go check it out, right? And I don't know how many times I've said that choosing the right toy is very important, but more importantly is choosing how you use and how you interact with your child is even more important. Okay? So that's why all the toys that I show you here wouldn't work, like, even if you bought it and you start to use it today. You need to know how to increase the level slowly and make sure that's fun for a kid. All right? And this is for all things about therapy, all things about interacting with a kid. You need to know where your child is at, how to get there. It needs to be systematic so that you are clear. First of all, you are clear what you're doing. A lot of parents are not clear on what they're doing. All right? They look at me, they think, oh, that's super easy. I can do it. And then once I tell them to try, which I always do, they are, like, blank. And to be honest, I am totally expecting that because when I started as a junior therapist, I was like that too. I had to write things down to do whatever. But what I mean is, please do not underestimate the amount of work that you need to go through to play with your child. Because obviously, obviously, if your child was neurotypical, as they call it, or like their normal developing or typical developing, they would lead you in play. They would tell you how to play the toilet training, they would tell you why. But a lot of times for children who are speech delayed or on a spectrum, whatever, whatever that is like holding them back. The biggest problem is actually they cannot lead you. They Cannot tell you. You have to think for yourself. You have to think about, like, why is that they don't like this. This thing, right? I had a. I had a kid who just hated it, right? And the reason behind it was that I found out it was too loud. So what I did was, you know, you see the speaker grill here? I just put a tape over it. Problem solved. Love. He loves it again. So you have to know why. Okay? You have to know why. So this comes with a lot of, how to say, A lot of practice. And at the same time, this comes with a lot of. You need a lot of help from therapists, right? So why encourage you to do. Is that every time I have a live here, which is Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you can come online and tell me about your child, and I can solve some of those issues for you. You can go back and try it. All right? And for each child is very different. So even if you have to send me an email, you're not very happy, not very okay. With, like, sharing with everyone here. That's fine. My email is mingagentsofspeech.com okay? So it's just mingagentsofspeech.com so you can go ahead and send me an email about your kid. Okay. And sometimes I might share it because I might share it with everyone here with your consent, of course, to tell you exactly what I would do and why I want you to try. Okay. But there are things in life, doing therapy, where like, a standardized procedure away always works. So for instance, token economy. Have you guys heard of that before? This kind of stuff, it works, man. This kind of stuff works. If you. It's just stickers, by the way. It's really just stickers with Velcro on it. Right? It's Velcro. This kind of stuff works if you want to do, like, a lot of work and you want to teach your child academic stuff. And if they're on the spectrum, they need, like, an end goal. This is what you want to use. It works as a standard procedure. A lot of people use it. We're not saying that we will always use these stars forever, but it's something that is good to initiate your child into doing repetitive tasks. Right? And then flashcards. Flashcards. Using these Flashcards are nice. Using these flashcards to teach. Oh, man. This is vocab. It's good. All right. Not saying that you should use it forever. It's good. These are just common tools that work in conjunction to the toys. I was talking about using these mouse shaped Cue cards work. Okay. So there are some things that, you know, when I tell you to try, there's a reason behind it because it's been working. All right, so same as the toilet training. You need someone to tell you what to do and to try. Okay. So is every child the same about this? No. I've said it before, and recently a parent was asking me about. They say, oh, Ming, I've already followed everything that you say. You know, I've already followed all the advice you did. I followed, you know, especially for the Indonesians who have seen the video about tenor, because not a lot of Indonesians or Asians are willing to actually share videos of themselves and their kids, right? So when they see T, they're very inspired, right? And then they tell me, oh, yeah, I tried that with. With you, with my kid, but it's not working, though. And I'm like, after I see the video they send me, I'm like, oh, of course not. Because this is the problem. Because not every kit is the same. The way that you use a toy here should be like this. If you try it, it's going to work. So they go home and they go. And they do it according to my comments. And yeah, it's going to improve because basically they need to look at what they're doing, why they're doing it, and when they're doing it. When you guys are doing at home, it's very foggy because you haven't been doing it a lot, right? And if I mean, like, I do it for a living, right? So it becomes very foggy. You don't know what the end goal is, and you just keep on trying to hack at it, trying to do it. Try to, like, push toys onto your child. Like, even these ones become very, very, very, very unfun. Right? So I have this toy. Maybe I'll show you guys now. Just give me, like, two seconds. This one I use a lot. There's a microwave. All right. I just want to use it a lot. And then a lot of parents buy it and then use it at home and then don't use it for language and just put them on the side and let them play. Yeah, the sound to it. So they just put it at the side, and then they just let their child play with it. The child gets bored with it, you know, they get bored with it. They play. It's just at the corner of the house, you know, and the door is broken and everything, and the child's bored of it, and they don't want to play with it anymore. And by the time they come to my clinic, they don't want to play that anymore as well. So you need to. These stuff you cannot just leave around, okay? You can buy for them, but you can't just leave them around. These are delicate stuff, you know, like, if you buy this for like a two year old, he's gonna smash it. You buy for a three year old who doesn't know how to play it yet, the door is gonna break, you know, for reals. And then if you press this one too hard, the buttons go in. It's not like a real industrial grade microwave, you know what I'm saying? It's plastic. It's made in China. Some of them now is made in India. So I'm not saying that it's bad per se, but still. This is already from Toys R Us and it's still kind of flimsy, you know, like you can see it. It's flimsy. So you cannot just leave these things on the floor. Especially for the Mr. Potato Head. You lose all the body parts if you just put them on the floor. So what I mean is, all these toys are good, but you have to use them in a good way, all right? You have to. You have to guide your child by teaching them the appropriate play skills, appropriate language thing, branch goals that you want them to do. So before they even touch it, you have to show them once, show them a few times, and then once they know the whole drill, you can add language to it. And you have to make sure that they don't go too fast. You know, some kids, they go like, they press everything. They go like three at a time and three comes out, see? So it's not very sophisticated toy. Like if you press 3, 3 comes out. So you have to be careful. You want to leave that until the end when this toy is becoming boring, you teach them to press three at a time. Right? So that is one of the problems here. And a lot of the times when I get emails about like, or private messages, parents are like, oh, yes, Ming, I already tried that. I already bought those toys. It's all broken. Yeah, you gotta, first of all, you gotta, like, put it in a safe place. Don't let them just play with it for free. Like, just free play. There is a place for free play, right? But you also have to be careful about how they use it. Okay? So, yeah, that's what I mean. Okay. Do not let them, do not let them. Let your child just do whatever they want with toys, okay? It's gonna break you're gonna have to buy more, so be careful about that. All right, so these are the toys that I recommend. If you have any questions for me, you can just put them in the comments. Even if you're watching this on a recording. Okay. You can still put them in the comments and I'll be sure to answer them. All right. When I get around to. Okay, so for toys, these are stuff I like and obviously there's a lot more if you guys want to know. I might as well do like a. I'll show you from my clinic room. That. That would be much easier. Right? And what kind of other. Like, a lot of people ask me, do they still play toys in primary school? The answer is like, probably no, don't do it. I mean, especially when you're teaching your child, using toys isn't the best way. Okay. They can just play themselves by the time they're in primary school. I'm talking about children who can talk, right? Children who can speak. Not the special needs children in, like, a special school. Okay, so let's talk about the kids who are in mainstream school but need some help with language and speech. Would I use toys? Probably not. I would go full on with, like, board games and flashcards. Right? Because they're already in a school environment. They're used to worksheets. You don't want to, like, spoil them all. Right. And to, like, fun side story, I had too much fun in a primary school with a bunch of primary school students. We were all having fun and learning, right? And I got a complaint from the school just because they thought we weren't working at all, you know, and that sucks because to be honest, therapy should be fun if there's no laughter and everything. And people use, like a very official, how to say, a very, like, serious tone to it. It never really works that well. You know, A lot of the students in primary school, they hate going to therapy. Some of them love it, some of them hate it. So you got to keep it fun. And how you keep it fun is just through being, like, funny according to the age level as well. So if your child is at mainstream school and primary school just having just a little bit help me a little bit help with, like, language and speech. I would urge you to stick with cards. Card games, like Uno, that's a problem. Uno is the best one already. And then you can play like, stack it, you know, like Jenga. That's very loud. You can also play like board games, like chutes and ladders and all that sound stuff. And I don't have it here, obviously. And you use a lot of flashcards as well, so that works. And if your child is in a special school, meaning they need, like, special care, special. They're in a special school. It's just not mainstream anymore. Then what you can do basically, is you can still use toys, the ones we talked about today, more so going towards more functional toys. So, for instance, if you have toys that, like, mimic real life objects, then you can use it even more. Because in their class, they learn about how to use these kind of things. Right? And what. What I usually do for children of special needs, like they're in the special school and primary school, right? It's just a whole load of words and terms. So what I usually do is I bring them outside to do therapy. I bring them out of the clinic room to walk them around and show them how to use certain objects, furnitures, you know, cooking, whatever. Like, maybe I'll play like a game of, like, basketball with them. Tell them the rules, let them explain the rules, tell me what to do. I'll do something that. That is totally against the rules on purpose. So these are children who are in special schools who are already talking but just need a little help, right? Those ones I would do like that. But if they're totally not talking by the time they're like six or seven, I would go back to drilling and using food. Because if they're not doing that yet, that is our goal. That is our, like most. As our most, how to say, most urgent goal ever is just to make them talk. Right? So I would use, like, food and an iPad and, like, phones and drinks to motivate them so badly that they would talk to me. All right, so, yeah, that's probably it for this live video. And just before we leave, I just wanted to say again, if you're watching this on the recording or right now you're on Facebook and YouTube, then you know, if you haven't and you need help with toilet training, then I would urge you guys to go to agentsofspeech.com toilet. All right, we've got a live workshop going on the coming Friday, so go sign up. Go sign up. There's a code called Facebook. You get 50% off for it. Okay? So that's that. Thank you so much. And I'll see you on Wednesday. Actually, tomorrow morning, I'll be going live on my Instagram, which you can find. You can just search on Instagram. It's called Mingfeng Speech. So I'm going live with another Instagram page about Montessori. It's a Montessori school. And we'll be talking about. I totally forgot. So go check it out first. Okay. Anyway, so I'll see you guys on Wednesday. Wednesday morning. If you guys are joining on IG tomorrow on Tuesday, then I'll see you there as well. Okay, so see you guys by.