What I Learnt After Teaching 88+ Parents | www.agentsofspeech.com/micro

Hey, everyone. Today I want to talk about what I learned after teaching parents. Actually multiple parents. And in the title, you might say 88. I actually, you know, that's like a low ball. I didn't really count. It's just that I typed into Instagram and Facebook and WhatsApp and so on all these things, and I kind of counted a bunch of. And I came up with 88. Okay. So it's nothing scientific. I'm pretty sure it's more than that because. Just because, you know, it's been quite some time now. I've been teaching parents over the Internet for a year and a bit. Okay. And the reason why I started before was that I felt like that was the single thing that helped children the Most back in 2014. Okay. When I was still working, not as a speech therapist, though back then was an ABA therapist. Thank you, Aileen. I appreciate you, too. So, thanks. So back then, in 2014, there was one student who really taught me a lot, and that was a kid. I'm not gonna say his name right. But what happened was that because we got the parent inside the therapy room, in the clinic room, and we taught the mom how to do certain things. And just after, like, two weeks, the kids suddenly started talking a lot. And I was like, okay, so I didn't know a lot about speech and language back then. But then I decided to do a master's, right? So after the master's, over and over again, textbooks, studies have been saying that, you know, parent involvement is the single most important thing, because think about it. As a therapist. As your therapist, actually, I only get to spend an hour or, you know, at most maybe two or three hours a week with your kid. But who. Who gets to spend so much time with your. With your. With your kid? It's. And that one is you, right? You might be the main caregiver, you might be the parent, but most of the time, it's you. And some might argue, some who are in Indonesia or in Hong Kong would say, oh, no, it's my nanny who has the most time with my kid. Right? But what I'm telling you, no one can beat what you can do. Okay? Not even myself. And I say this as well, because recently there's a client of mine who. Who brought the daughter over, and we were trying to work something out, and basically it was going fine until I started to introduce some new toys, which scared. Scared the heck out of the kid. Like, I brought out my best toy ever. Didn't work. She was crying. She was. She crying? So Hard that she fell asleep. You know, I haven't had that thing happen to me in a long time, you know, so, you know, that's, that's something that you have to, you have to bear in mind, like, even if things have been going good, but when the therapist tries something new, it's going to be super hard. So I told the mom, okay, take this toy, the one that scared the heck out of the child, right? The little girl. I said, okay, try at home. Try these things. And so she did. And when she did it, she was actually a lot better at home than inside the room. And for that very reason, I'm telling you that you are the single most, you know, capable person of helping your child out. And I'm saying this out of thin air. There's loads of different from the 1980s, actually. There's been load of articles about it if you want to know about it. Just like PM me or something, like private message me. I don't want to like bombard everyone with that. But if you're interested, you can, you can ask me. Okay. And the reason for this live is, number one, to answer your questions. Number two, to also talk about what I've learned every week, right? So this week I learned that, hey, you know, out of all the parents that I've talked to, you know, half of them really just are. They've become too overwhelmed, right? They become really overwhelmed. And what happens next is that they give up and they say, oh, man, I gotta get my kid back to therapy. And this was. One of the mothers would say, like, oh, you know, I'm not a. I'm not a teacher. I'm not. Whatever. Not like you, Eileen. Like, not like you. You've got. That's crazy. You're a retired teacher and have seven certificates and also a master's degree. Not everyone's like you, right? Some of them will say that. Some will say things like, oh, I'm, you know, I'm. I'm not good at listening. I'm not. I don't have the patience to teach. I'm not. Whatever, whatever, whatever. But the thing is, you're the person who's like having to, you know, face that child every day. So if you don't, if you don't have certain skill sets, certain mindsets, it's very difficult for you to actually go ahead and, you know, survive at home. And sometimes what happens is that the stress builds up so much at house, in the house that, you know, the relationship between the mom and the dad become sour, right? Because sometimes it's more like a pushing the ball thing. You know, the mom. The mom's like, oh, I told you that you should whatever. And the dad's like, it's fine. Just give it some time. And these, like, back and forth, really gonna hurt the relationship. And, you know, I'm not saying from experience. I'm saying from what I can observe. All right, so what is it that I want to share with you today? Well, simply speaking, I believe that there are some universal things that you can do, some mindset shifts that you can have in your. In your life that can actually make the whole process a lot easier. Okay? I'm not saying it will make it a lot faster. Obviously it will be faster given that you do these things, but at the very least, you will be less stressed, the kid will be a lot more happy. You know, maybe your husband, your wife would be a lot more, you know, satisfied with how you do things or how things are at home. Okay? And the reason why I'm saying, like, oh, it's not going to be like, oh, the best thing ever. It wouldn't make everything faster is because you have to understand this journey is long, okay? It's very long. In fact, just when I'm doing these lives, right, talk about what I've learned for the past week, right? Which can be a lot or a few, but I'm telling you, this week is quite a lot because I got to talk to some parents, I got to talk to read some books, got to teach as I got to teach more basically this week. And I realized that, hey, this is a really long fight. Sometimes something happens and the child performs a lot better, but you really have to wait and be patient and be okay with that. So with that said, the first thing you have to do is stop repeating yourself, okay? If you keep on repeating, your child isn't responding the way you want to, you want him or her to, then it means that your instruction is flawed by its principle. Okay? Remember, whenever we make. We make a demand or a command or an instruction, at the end of the day, it's something that we want the child to do, not what the child wants to do. Then put their hand up and say, oh, I know. Never the case. They're always trying to ignore you, trying to do their own thing, trying to run away. If you think about it that way, then, okay, so every instruction needs to make sense for them. That means if you repeat it, it won't make sense. It will never make sense if you repeat it. And even if you repeat it and they actually do it. I mean, your child actually does it at the. Maybe the seventh time that you say it. What are you doing? You're teaching your child to react to you, to respond to you on the seventh trial, which isn't that great, in my opinion. And I never do that inside the clinic room. And to really catch yourself repeating is a difficult task because what is it like? Sometimes I see parents, this is something that you have to learn, okay? If right now you are like what I'm describing, you should stop. So if you are thinking that you can remote control your child from far away with your voice, then you're wrong, okay? There's a reason why they are speech delay or, like, language delay or disorder, okay? It's near impossible that you can remote control them with language. Even normal, typical developing children, you cannot do that. Can't do that. So what you're supposed to do is to give the instruction, and then probably they don't want to do it or they don't understand you. Either one doesn't matter. Help them with it, okay? So if you tell them to, you know, pick up the trash, they're not doing it. Then, you know, go next to them and then take their hand and do it for them, right? And that trains them to become much more obedient to you because they know that once you give an order, you will come over and actually make them do it. So the more, like, if you do it, like 100 times, right, it's going to be burned inside the brain. Whatever you say will happen, because if they don't move, you will move, right? So this is something you have to learn, okay? And actually, this advice is the most. Is actually the best advice that a lot of parents have seen results in. They're like, oh, Ming, look, my kid's listening to me more because of what you said. Yeah, that is the most important thing. And I realized that, you know, when I tell parents about things, it needs to be step by step, small bites at a time. And, you know, parents like yourself, you get overwhelmed. And I do as well in different subjects. But to me, this is like my job. Right? But to you it's different because teaching a typical developing child and a child on the spectrum, or speech delay, language delay, whatever you like to call it, is very different. You have to understand that. So what you have to do from now on is to think in a way that makes sense for a child, all right? And not repeating is one thing. Saying something and making your child do is another. And I'm just going to Stop here because there's a lot more. And to save you time, what I did actually was to record all the best advice I had. I wrote, I went through all the coaching clients I have, all the parents who I've spoken to, all the students that I have right now. And I said, okay, which one is the, is the most like repeated advice, which one has the most impact? Those advice I've put inside a little something, a little small, small micro course that takes like, you know, like an hour and a bit like maybe an hour and like two minutes to, to finish from start to finish. And you can go to agents of Speech.com micro. It's a. Why I call it micro is because it's a micro course for you and it's in the title, if you can click it, that's cool, you can go check it out. It talks about basically all the best advice I've given and what the parents have been saying to me, what they thought was useful and it really wasn't the stuff that I thought would be insight, you know, I thought it would be all the, all the grand tactics, you know, oh, you have to do this first and then when they sit down, you know, try to move the hand towards. No, none of that stuff. It's really just very plain old advice that, you know, I've been talking a lot and something that parents can actually digest, okay? And it's not that hard, but these things have the greatest impact, okay? And because you don't the reason why you're not being able to communicate or you get ignored at home, or your child doesn't really listen to you and do the opposite of what you said, it comes down to your habit. It's impossible for your child to change a habit if you don't change your habit. So it sounds kind of stupid and crazy, right? So what I'm trying to say is that there's no way that your child will change on their own, all right? You have to influence them. And through influencing them is through your habits. And because your habits aren't well built, okay? It might be that this speech delayed child might be the third child that you have and therefore that communication between you guys, it's not established yet because you're very used to talking to their brothers and sisters. Or maybe this speech delayed child that you have is your firstborn and you don't know how to navigate, you don't, you don't understand how to, you know, how to communicate effectively. You thought from looking at your friends like children, you would think, oh, this is easy here. So if I say something, they will respond to me. And usually that's not the case. And that's why you're watching this video. That's why you're following me. That's why. Sorry, it's a little itchy. That's why you are tuning in and that's great. So, you know, with that all said, you know, Please go to agentsofspeech.com Microsoft it's made it super easy for you. You just need to go through it, watch it. And it really saves me a lot of time because most of the time I'm repeating the same things over and over again. Stuff like, oh, is bilingualism something that I have to be careful of? No. Well, go watch it in the micro course, right? Will gadgets kill my son's language development? Or is gadget use like iPads, iPhones, watching videos like games or whatever? Does it cause speech delay? Hell no. But, you know, for the full explanation of why I use it, and I actually think it's great and why parents have been using it, like the other day inside a Facebook group, she was saying about, you know, a feeding problem with her child, right. I told her to use an iPad. And the way that you use it, why I would say it's good, it's all in the micro course. So go to agentsofspeech.com micro go check it out, see what other parents are saying. Okay. Is it going to like change your life maybe? Most probably, actually, because from what I've heard around and you know, after giving loads of advice and stuff, I start to realize that it's really about those little habits and what really distinguishes, what differentiates a person, like a person like me, myself, and someone who has never taught anyone who needs special needs or special education or individual needs, however like to call it, is that it comes down to how automatic I am. After I say something, I instantly make the kid do it before I ask them to do it. I make sure that they understand the task before I even introduce the task. I make sure they want to do it. So. So I eliminate all the, all the potential downsides from my end to make it all upsides for the kid. And if you've watched me long enough and you've been tuning in what I've been saying on this page and this YouTube channel, on this Facebook group, then you will know that the best, the thing that I like to say the most is that avoid your child from failing because there's nothing fun about failing for a child. And same as you that's why a lot of parents were actually, you know, giving up after I told them what to do is because they've been failing too much. And I thought that, you know, that'd be okay, that parents will be fine with failing. I was wrong. Everyone doesn't like failing. I don't like failing either. So make it easy for a child. Think about these things before, right? Think about, have I. Have you made it clear what you want them to say or do? Have you made it, have you make sure that they actually want to do certain things? And after which, when they cannot do it? Are you repeating yourself? Because repeating doesn't work. If they knew what you were saying and wanted to do what you were saying, they would do it on the first go. The second go would be like, whatever. Because with typically developing children, if we repeat ourselves, we make them understand that we're for real. But for children who are on the spectrum, more speech delayed from the get go, there's too many variables. They might not understand, they might not want to do something. And you need to remember that they're psychologically, they've been failing so much and failing to like, understand us. It's very easy for them to give up, okay? So you have to remember that they're fragile. They really need you to communicate on a higher level to take care of them in order to do that. So these are all habits. These are all habits you can change right now, right? Everything is a habit. And the habit to analyze stuff is also, you know, is very important. But these things, it's down the line, these crazy tactics that you have to learn, these strategies, these ways of thinking, you need to learn this down the road. But before that, you need to have a very good communication habit. And what I mean by that is that every time that you talk to your child who is delayed or whatever, or disorder, I don't care about diagnosis. If you know me long enough, right? I don't care about that. Because if you can actually talk to your child on a, you know, face to face, one on one, and they do what you say, then you are on a very straight path to what's. Teach them something. And during these times in quarantine, right, a lot of parents are emailing me left and right. They're saying, ming, dude, I'm scared of regression. I'm scared that this will happen, that will happen. I'm scared that, you know, I cannot go back to therapy. And like three months time, and it's been six months already, I haven't done anything. I haven't haven't been able to do anything. I've been so guilty of giving my child a gadget and just leave them being so that I can do my work at home. I get it. I totally get it. And what you should do now is to equip yourself with the knowledge so that even if, let's say that even if the quarantine, like, even if the vaccine comes out, right? And then things get back to normal within the year of 2021, which I don't know what's gonna happen. I'm not like a prophet, I don't, I'm not a scientist. I don't know this kind of stuff. But this is the best chance for you to stay at home and teach your child. Because some of the parents who I've been, who've been consulting with me, I've been telling me the amount of time they have been at home has hugely, drastically increased their child's language development. And I know that that's not even the optimal. Because they haven't done a lot of things correct because I was looking at their videos and stuff and they were describing to me. So if you, if you, if you should do it now, you should do it now. If you, you should, you know, don't dip your toes in the water. Go full on, teach yourself. All right. It's the best time to do it now. And you're going to say, hey, I don't have time, whatever. Right. Also understand because, you know, most of the moms nowadays, they work from home. Most of the dads work from home. You know, some of them have two jobs. Yeah. And given the economic, you know, status of the whole world. Yeah. We're gonna have problems like working and we need to work even harder. Right. So the thing is, you really have to do it now. Okay. Because afterwards you'll be even more busy when everything picks up. Yeah. So that's what I mean. Okay, so that's my little rant here. And that's what I learned from the last week and actually from the last year and a half from teaching parents over the Internet, which is rather difficult if you ask me. I found out that, you know, parents don't like to fail just like children. And to teach parents to do stuff and say things and give instructions and talk to avoid children from failing is the most important. And this comes down to habits. And it's very, very easy, actually. Once you get into the groove, you understand how it works. It's actually very, very, can be easily done very easily. And I always say like you only need 15 minutes a day to teach your child something new. Just focus on one thing and just do it correct. Right? That's the most important. So how about you can take 15 minutes for yourself to learn something new, build up a new habit, have some new knowledge and then try to implement it for the next like I don't know, for next month to commit and give 15 minutes to you and your child. All right. Can you do that? So if you, if you can, then go to agents of peace.com micro there's a micro course there for you to watch, for you to learn and I'll see you inside. And for everyone who joins, I will be answering all your questions by email and I think we'll also make the Facebook group available to you, the private one. And that's all. Thank you so much for tuning in and at the very last thank you for all the questions and emails I'm getting for the past few weeks. And these videos are for you guys. If you have any questions, please put them in the comment section please below I think here and then watch out for my emails as well. If you haven't been on the email list yet you should because I send out every few days just to talk about answer questions like to the mass so that maybe you can like chime in on some things that I've been answering parents about and might relate to you especially on the Facebook group when they were talking. Like last week's highlight was someone asking about feeding like getting your child to eat faster during lunchtime or dinner solved it. So you know these things. It takes trial and error but it also takes you to tell me the situation so that we can try from the very get go. Okay. And it makes even makes it makes it even an easier job for me to tell you something when we have a basis of knowledge. So one of the best ways to get basis of knowledge is of course agents of speech.com micro our whole new micro course for busy parents like yourself. So that's all for this week. We do this every Monday, 9pm Jakarta time, my time where I am right now and for people in the USA that's 10:00am Eastern Standard Time EST. All right, so thank you so much for tuning in. I'll see you next week and most probably the be some new videos coming out in the next coming weeks. One week. Oh sorry, one video a week. Yeah. So that's all. See you guys. Bye bye.