What if Your Child is NOT Imitating You No Matter What?
Ming explains why your 4-year-old might not be imitating sounds and how to fix it. Check if they understand what you want, can physically make the sound, and actually want the reward. Some kids take a year to start imitating, so record yourself practicing daily and be ready to wait.
Chapters
Hello, this is Ming from agentsofspeech.com we teach parents how to treat the speech delayed children at home. I'm going to read off one of the questions from our community and this is Pranika and asking that she's been following our course, which is free by the way, at ww.agentsofspeech.com Course I'm reading off here. My son, 4 years old, to imitate sounds, he's just not getting it. Is there anything I can do that's not already in your videos? Okay, my immediate response is what do you mean by your child not getting it right? I think we can deep dive a little bit and I think there's a lot of parents out there who try to teach their child something and they're just not doing it. And so when you understand there must be a lot of repetitions until a child or a person is able to suddenly click and get it. When parents come to me and they say, oh, I've been trying this and trying that and I haven't gotten results yet, it's very hard for me to understand exactly how it is at home. So that's why we always want the parent to take videos of what's going on and send it to us. And we do this through our group coaching programs. And at times when parents do like, do take videos they send in the group and they're able to watch it themselves, they start to understand some cues that why it's not working to get your child to imitate after you. No matter if it's a sound, an action or a play, you must understand that you have to have a good working relationship with your child. That's why if your child is not getting it, first of all, do they understand the context of that they have to do something in order to get something right. Secondly, is it within their ability to actually say those sounds okay or a word? If that is the case, then you have to degrade, go down one level and try some actions first. The third thing is, does your child even find the thing that you're offering rewarding? Okay. So that's very important for you to understand. If you want to go into this whole home therapy thing, you have to first of all understand it takes a lot of practice in order for a child to get it. And when the whole question about should I give up what I'm trying right now because it looks like it's not working or should I try something new? So it's very hard to answer this question and a lot of people who are like a lot of professionals even have this problem. Like we might have a breakthrough in the sixth month, in the first week. I don't know, it might take a long time and we might not know why. So let me give you a story, an example that I've shared before and I also want to share with you one more time. I actually have three of these stories. The first one is a child who has a rare genetic disorder. So a lot of therapists have been trying to get him to imitate but could not. So when he came to me a long time ago, maybe four years ago now, he was non verbal and he didn't do any PEX, picture exchange communication system or any type of iPad, AAC, alternative augmentative communication devices. What I did was I started off with the pex, with the picture cards and then slowly I moved on to speaking. And it's very funny because this chart had a lot of vocalizations but when you asked him to do something, he wouldn't say anything. So we then downgraded and started doing actions. And for a long time, for four months he couldn't do it, he couldn't get it, he didn't do it. So if in this case this parent, Pranika is asking, oh, he's just not getting it, at which level is he not getting it? And a lot of the times in agents of speech we always say what's the breakdown level? At which level does he break down? For instance, that particular child, he couldn't even touch his nose. Well, how do you think he's going to be able to imitate a sound? So afterwards it took six months until he could start touching his nose and following some mouth shapes. So then what we did next was to try the sounds and it took another four months and a bit for him to really start trying. And it's very funny because like her, his mother would see that before he couldn't try, he couldn't even if you got too close to him or you touched his mouth, he didn't know how to move it. So slowly he finally did it once, twice and it wasn't consistent. Maybe 30% of the time he did it. A lot of parents will say how come he can do it once, he can't do it every time. Obviously it's not always as simple as that. So for instance, if you've played a sport before, there are times that you might be able to pull off a certain move at the right circumstances and when you feel like it and stuff, you can't explain it just I can pull it off, but during the match, you screw it all up. You can't do the layup, you can't hit the ball, you can't whatever, you can't run as fast. And like swimming, let's say swimming, even for the world, records are always broken during practice, but during the real thing, no one breaks it. I know this because I've heard of my friend, used to be in the swimming team of the country I live in, and she told me, a lot of people break different record during practice, but no one's able to do it in real life, in the real race. Why is that? And it comes down to chance. And it's the same with your child who is delayed. So you cannot think that, oh, because he does it there, he can consistently do it. It doesn't always work that way. All right, so this is the first story I want to tell. The second story is a child who went through our group coaching program, and he actually took a whole year until he started to make sounds and imitate sounds. And we didn't know whether to give up or to keep on going. A lot of the times what we see is, like, the parents just giving up real quick. But the methods that we use aren't, like, groundbreaking. It's not whatever. It's consistency, perseverance, and, like, a heart of thinking about, okay, is this prompt or cue effective or not? If it's effective, it's helping and your child is, like, trying, then that's already, like, 50% of the battle. If your child is not trying, then we have to think about, is the reward something that will push your child to go through onto the next level, outside of the comfort zone, outside of the limits, to try and do the thing that they didn't know what to do? Okay, it might take a long time. It might take a long time because there's a lot of issues going on. It might be a sensory issue, it might be just a muscle issue. It might be that he doesn't truly understand what's going on. And whether you want to give up now or not, that truly depends on. Have you been paying the tax of trying every day? If you try, I don't know, like a month, and you say it's not going to work, then I don't really think that you truly understand what it takes for a child to learn something, especially if their speech and language delayed or they're even on the spectrum or they have other complications. It really takes a lot of work. All right? And I'm not saying this because I want you to join anything. I'm just telling you, it just takes a lot of work. All right? That's why therapists have a very high turnover rate. They think that, oh, I'm not doing a good job. I'm wasting this kid's time. I'm spending the family a lot of money. I'm using the resources, I'm taking up the time, and there's nothing that's happening. So I want you to change your mindset and start thinking that way. And I wanted to answer other questions from the community, but this particular question got me ranting. If you want to ask questions like these, you should put it inside the community, which is www.agentsofspeech.com course. The link is also in the description below. Just press it, go there, put in your email address, and then you will be given a link, and you will have to enter your email address again. But then there will be three questions. It allows you to apply to get in. Okay. It won't be immediate. We'll look through every application. We have 10,000 parents inside ready. The community is very vibrant. There are a lot of questions going on, and I want you to. To join. Ask those questions. Watch our free courses, which we use to sell for money. It's already free. Okay. And it teaches you from go to zero words to sentences, how you can do that at home with your child. Okay? So that's this week's video. Just as a reminder and also to tell you that, hey, man, ask more questions. Let us know. Take videos of your child, watch the courses, evaluate, think about whether something's working or not based on the time you've put into it, but the quality. And also, if you've asked for feedback and you've tried over and over again, trying to refine and improve on the cues and the prompts that you use, the instructions and also the rewards that you use. Okay, that's it for this week's video. I'll see you guys next week. Bye. Bye.
