What Therapy is Needed for Speech Delayed Children? | www.agentsofspeech.com

Oh, hi, everyone. So, long time that we haven't done live, so I'm just gonna do here and talk about some stuff that I recently learned and also to answer some questions. So if you're watching right now, just let me know where you're watching from. It's always nice to see everyone around the world. In fact, you know, like, it's just really cool to see people from Germany, from Sweden, from, you know, like all around the world joining us, including my cat. So anyways, so let's talk about the, the therapy stuff that you're here to listen about. So, like therapy, which ones are needed, which ones are not. So a lot of times we don't know. We really don't know until we do a lot more of therapy. Right. The reason is because a lot of things cannot be diagnosed right away. And it's, it's so true that, you know, like, even in places that are. What's that called? America. Right. Some, some speech therapists, the generic ones. I'm a generic speech therapist therapist too, don't get me wrong. But they really shy away. I mean, they, as in, like my colleagues in, in America, they, they would shy away from giving a diagnosis for stuff that's such as practical speech. Right. Because it's so niche and so specialized that they don't feel comfortable doing so. Right. So how do you know when you just started? Well, it really, you really cannot do any. Do much. And in fact, in a lot of like, third world countries that. Not third. Well, I would say developing countries. So in a lot of developing countries, I'm, I'm right now in, in a developing country. So, you know, like a lot of times they would put all these into one basket and maybe they would call it autism. Right. And I see this happening a lot, quite a lot in all around the world, basically, that the teachers and a lot of. What are those called, like caregivers, they would like automatically assume that it would be autism. Right. So. So I see. Good morning, people from, from America, I guess, through my eyes. What's up? And Jennifer, always good to see you, hear from you. Can't see you. I was about to say see you, but I never don't see you. Anyways, so that being said. Okay, so what kind of therapy, like, okay, let's talk about like a case study that recently I've got a parent, parents that I've been working with and there's a little boy, they're from Ireland. Right. So recently they told me that, oh, actually this boy, he has some speech disorders and Also some language delays. Right. So recently we found out that he actually has gotten some retained reflexes. That is quite astounding. Right. So there must be something going on that is causing all this. That is the root reason towards why he has a speech disorder. Because he's been lacking in some sounds. Right. He's been lacking in whatever. And we've been trying a lot of behavioral methods, such as from myself, I've done some behavioral tactics to help him. And it strongly suggests that he has adhd. Strongly suggested. But at the same time, why is there adhd? Is this to do with like the retained reflexes and whatnot? We don't know. Right. So I'm following this case very closely and it's very curious and it's nice because I love learning and I learned through like teaching people and talking to people. And it's not, it's very different from when I started. It's through books and talking to like, different, like senior therapists and learning on the job, where now is like, I'm learning more and more through parents and kids over the Internet, which is kind of cool. So at the end of the day, what the kid needed was actually more of occupational therapy. And I find that occupational therapy, their lens of looking, looking like at a child is very different. Right. So they think about it in sensory terms. And there's a bunch. I'm. I'm not expert at this at all. Right. And how would I love to incorporate some of the things that we teach, like we teach online to have this kind of like multidisciplinary thing. But all in all, I would say that, you know, I want to stick to my, my field first. Let's get it done first. Let's get all the things that I know and like industry wise and that we're doing research with a bunch of. What's that research as in like not the peer reviewed stuff, but going through a set protocol that can help a child go from like no words to words. That's what I'm trying to work out right now. Right. So let me see a question. So Jennifer asked the benefits of grounded bed. So I have no idea what grounded bed means. So I have to tell you. When I don't know. I don't know. Grounded doesn't mean the electricity grounded. Is it like that? I have not heard of it. I guess it's the electricity grounded one, because what else could you be grounded about? Right. So no, I haven't heard of it. No, I am not aware. If you would, if you would like to Enlighten others. You could, you could do so here, Jennifer. So, yeah, anyways, so the stack for therapy, there's always a bunch, right? There's ABA therapy, there's early intervention, there's speech therapy, there's occupational therapy, there's physical therapy, right? So but the problem is each of them, they, where ABA serves a very niche audience, right, as autistic individuals and nowadays it's getting more and more and more and more is that if you don't know the reason, we're going to put it in the bucket towards like, oh, suspected autism, right. But what I'm trying to tell you is that a lot of times we don't know whether it is or not until we do a lot, whole load of therapy. So when parents tell me, oh, I'm on a quest to know what the diagnosis is, I'm on a quest to know all this stuff. The biggest problem is that you don't even know. You only know by doing more. And we have a name for that in the industry, it's called dynamic assessment. So what that means is whilst we're doing therapy, we're trying different methods to see which one sticks. Right. And a lot of times I feel like nowadays it's very, how to say, it's in the bucket now. Like everything is in a framework. Oh, I'm going with pecs. So a pecs is going to help or whatever. It does help. Yeah. But at the same time you have to tune and fine tune the details inside. Okay. And the way that you teach children who are delayed is that like I was writing out some, some training for parents just now and I realized that I remember something I learned from a senior therapist is that therapy at the end of the day is to find cues that work to perform a certain task or certain like whatever. So certain goal, right? Let's say I want the kid to do whatever it might be to understand the who question, whatever. So what kind of cues and prompts can I use to achieve that? Right? That's, that's therapy. Whereas teaching most of the time in the modern day world is quizzing. It's like, oh, what, what is whatever? You just keep on asking questions. That isn't very helpful when you're dealing with like delayed children. The best way you, you do something is by like cuing and prompting, right? So to find the correct queue and prompt is the therapy, right? Is the therapy itself. And what, what therapy is, and I've talked about this in another video, is that to provide support and then it's like scaffolding right? And a lot of people would have heard of this before, right? You make a scaffolding, you build a building and you get rid of scaffolding. The scaffolding is the cues and prompts. So you find the stuff that helps the child build up and then you get rid of it so that they can do it themselves, right? So at the end of the day, this whole concept works in different therapies, right? No matter if it's speech, it's aba, it's occupational therapy, it's physical therapy, right? Everything needs to be progressive after it becomes progressive, even psychotherapy, it needs to be progressive that the. The patient so, so the client can lean on you to, to ask for help and support. And afterwards you get rid of it so that they can live their own lives, right? That's the whole point of it. So when the problem with children, not the problem also, the beauty of it is that they're still getting older, they're still developing really quickly. So therefore a lot of things are not uncovered yet because they're developing with something that is incomplete somehow that we don't know about, that we cannot find. And only like the client from Ireland, right? Only then we find out that, oh man, there's some primitive. I wouldn't say primitive. Is it primitive? I forgot. So there are some like reflexes that were retained that didn't go away. So some of them are like, you know, like the grasp one, you know, a baby, you know, like when you put your finger there, they just do that, right? Or they tickle the bottom of the feet and then they curl up toes, right? Those are reflexes. So somehow he re retain some of those. And a specialist occupational therapist, that's. Who specialize in this kind of stuff is working with them on that. And that's more important than trying to push forward with speech or with behavior. Because at the end of the day, the root cause is that there's something going on there, right? So therefore, you know, I always stick to my thoughts about saying that, you know, diagnosis doesn't matter. It matters needs to what to say. You need to go ahead and do the stuff, do the work so that you uncover more things and more, more responses from a child so that you know whether or not something is true, right? Therefore the diagnosis, right? So all the. To this is a message to all the other parents in the world. Like get, I don't know, like 10 plus messages every weak saying, oh man, is this, is this autism? Is it a sign of autism? Is it like, whatever, I don't know, I really don't know. Whether it is or not doesn't matter. Right? And even if it's autism, there's like whole loads of like, that's just the first layer of the onion, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like, so what? And then if it's asd, then is it like, how's the sensory going? Like, do they have any speech disorders? Right. Do they have any behaviors that create certain problems? Right? So for example, do they tiptoe too much and it, it destroys their legs, leg, muscular structure, Right. All these things that I cannot do, right? Depends on other professionals to diagnose. See it, see it and then think about a way to prompt and queue to get rid of that. You know that there was a. There was a. I think one of the things that I don't like is prompts and cues that cannot be faded out, that can't be taken away. So for instance, there was a autistic woman. I would say maybe she's watching now anyways, when I was teaching her, like, she was having like a tiptoe thing and how she would get rid of it was to put a heavy backpack on top of her shoulder. Like, she'd wear a big backpack and it would put her. Her feet down because it gives her more sensory input. But the thing is, that is such a crutch, right? That does not fade out a bow. Yeah. And it's kind of like, you know how like science is now talking about, you know, the whole fad about maybe you're not into this kind of thing, but, you know, the flat feet, you know, the. No, the. Sorry, the barefoot shoe will help your foot health, right? And the reason is because, like the. There's too much arch support. So if you don't have the arch support, then for a foot, right, Then it becomes you're reliant of that and therefore there's no way to get rid of it. And I myself, I'm like, nearly flat foot. So I came into like the whole rabbit hole of such kind of like you guys going on like Google searches and that's how you found me, kind of. And so, you know, like, at the end of the day, you have to find out, you have to find out what are the cues and prompts that works. And you need to rely on people to observe and you do your own observation. Don't go into too much of rabbit holes. Try everything that you can and then learn from your mistakes, right? Because to be honest, there's no set thing. The more you know about something. For instance, from my perspective, the more I now know about this subject matter, the more, the more I don't know. Like, I, I would think maybe like three years ago I'd say, oh, this case you just need to do this. Right? Or this case you just need to do. Nowadays I'm like, I'm not sure. Let's. The only way to know is to try it. And to try it means that I might be wrong and when I might be wrong, I might, you know, the client might leave, but I'm okay with it. Whereas before it's, it's very different. So the more I know about therapy techniques, the more I think, how many layers are there down below and why am I doing it? Right. And what, what's the, what's the, what's the biggest goal inside of it? Like, what's the main objective? Am I doing the main objective or not? The other things, I don't care. Right. And you know, like, this is increasingly difficult for, this is increasingly difficult for everyone in the world because like, therapy needs are going up, the costs are going up significantly. And oh, someone actually is talking about so. Well, a lot of people here. So I wasn't even looking into Joseph from Caribbean. That's crazy. What's up, Joseph? Via from Philippines. Great. Jennifer sharing her knowledge about grounding, which seems like to be helping everyone, not just like kids. And Lynn says waiting for 5 to 10, 5, 5 to 7 years of any funding. Yeah. Choosing a therapy that can be afforded. Yeah. So the problem is like therapy in itself is, you know, myself, I went to, I took a master's degree to learn and it's something that pays a, you know, something that I paid out of my parents. Paid out of pocket. Right. And then that's, that's a whole load of costs. And you're talking about someone who is post tertiary, as you call, like, like, what do you call that? Postgraduate. Yeah, that, that's what you call it. So it's postgraduate. Right. So therefore the amount of money you need, like, you know, pay for someone who knows stuff is quite expensive. Right. And if you pay for pennies, you get monkeys, as they say. And it's true to a certain extent because I was a monkey before as well, in the very beginning. But the problem is that are there any people, like helping those monkeys, so to speak, to teach your kid? If they aren't, then they really aren't. Don't know what they're doing. Right. So the thing about all this is that, look, therapy is getting more expensive you have to choose your therapy. The more you know about your kid, the more you think you need other things in their life. Right. And a lot of times parents, you know, I don't, I don't want to say this, but parents do treat therapy as extracurricular thing, right? And they would say, oh, this clash with my, my son's piano lesson. Or maybe this is only an Asia, right? Oh, clash with ballet. It clashed with whatever. And my question is like, yeah, but which one's more important? Why would you care if your child would, you know, it goes drumming or whatever? I know, like, yeah, he needs to develop holistically. But, you know, some things come before drumming. You know, I'm saying some things come before singing, you know, and while singing can help a lot of children with like speech disorders by a lot because, you know, like, it's, it's also some sort of training for speech. Right. I really think a lot of times there's like a problem with prioritizing which one's more important and what to do. So this is what I want to tell you guys. So today's topic is actually like, what therapies do you need for speech delayed children? So the answer to this is, yeah, just like everything in the world, it depends, right? There's no good and perfect. There really isn't in the world. If you had to make a choice today, there are so many pros and cons. As I grew older, as I growing older, what the biggest lesson that I learned is that there is no perfect man. Like, you just need to take the cons and just, you know, take it like a champ. So. And it's the same for like therapy in the world. Yeah, you could pay a whole load of money, go to Hong Kong, go to Singapore, go to, to like, I don't know, in America. You're gonna pay a lot of money and get good therapy, right? End of the day done for you. But that, how much is that gonna cost? Like at the very least 5 to 6k USD per month. For some people that's like their whole, you know, like the whole thing, the whole income, the whole household income. And that's only one kid, Right. So how is it going to be more affordable is that the parent needs to become the therapist. Right. I've always talked about this and the knowledge needs to be passed down. And of course there's going to be parts where, you know, it's going to be difficult for you to learn because even for me, like, I want to also be able to teach you guys about like sensory stuff. So later on, Agents of Speech, we're talking about like years. Like this is, this project for me is I'm going to put like a five year, a five year plan for Agents of Speech. And hopefully by the fifth year before hopefully we're going to have a lot more, a lot more knowledge and sharing about not just like speech and language and behavior, there might be like more about sensory. The more I know now, the more important it really is because if the century is out of sync, there's no way you can like get their behavior back in check because it's not up to them, you know, so that's something that I've learned and something I have to, you know, like, chew up my ego a little bit. Because back then when I just started, I was thinking, nah, there's no behavior I can't deal with, right. You know, I've got bite marks on me, I've got my worst scars, I can do anything, right? So at the end of the day you really have to, yeah, take, take, take a kid in a very holistic manner. And if you're, if your whole goal is to become is, is to, is to help your kid talk, then by all means do that first. Right. And then you just need to keep on working as you hit plateaus. Just like anything in life, right. Even for Agents of Speech, even building this online thing to me, which might not, you might not like listening to this, but there's a plateau every, every corner of every level. Right. And the same for your child, right. It's just that some, some plateaus are easy to break through, such as like the hand pulling, the snatching, already know how to do it. It's pretty easy, pretty documented. If you search on YouTube, especially on our channel, and you see, and maybe you, you can look on Facebook, the Facebook group, you can see that people have gone through that plateau many, many times. The second plateau of which is from single words to word combining. Also easy plateau to break through. The hardest plateau for me to do online right now is usually the behavior, right? But just because behavior is so like customized and takes the parent to have like a really strong will to like deal with it. And the other thing is sensory issues. Sensory issues, although like oral and also like, let's just oral sensitivity is something that can be worked out. The other things I really don't know how to do and within this time frame that I'm working at, Agents of Speech, I want to bring that so that we can have a more holistic view. And it needs to Be working. Okay. Anyway, so Mercy asks, how long do you need to learn to become a speech therapist? Well, it depends on country to country, right? I mean, where I'm from, the bachelor's degree for a speech therapist is around five years, right? Whereas I took a master's degree for, for the same thing, but it was like cut into two and a half years. That means I have no summers. I don't, you know, I need to go to class on Saturdays. It was gruesome. You know, out of 45 people, only 27 people graduated. It was kind of crazy, to be honest. I've, you know, in America it's a little bit harder, I believe, but I think the lowest is actually four years in, in the uk because in, in Australia and the usa, you must do a master's and of which you need to do one more year of, of what's that called? A clinical fellowship. There he goes. It's called CF or something. But anyways, that's besides the point. Mercy Prachi says, I want to know how long it takes to, for autistic children to speak, communicate with normal kids. Does it take years and years of therapy? Look, the thing about what you're thinking is what do you mean by normal? And what do you mean by speak and communicate? Does it take years and years of therapy? So there are different levels of speaking and communication, right? As I just said, so you don't need to look so far. You need to deal with it one by one. You know, like, obviously you're asking this question, but you know the answer already because the answer is it depends. And the problem with this is that you cannot see in the future, right? You don't have a crystal ball. You're not sure, you're unsure. That's why you're asking this question. You don't know how many times I, I've been asked this question too many times. So I'm going to tell you right now. I don't know. You wouldn't know. No one knows. Right? So the problem with your, with this mindset is that you're, you're thinking, how do I get rid of autism? You can't get rid of autism, right? You can't get them to communicate like normal people. They can cope and try and act like they know what's going on. Most of the time they, they really don't really care and don't really want to know what's going on, socially speaking. Right? So how do you get them interested is that, you know, through training. So at the end of the Day look, at what level do you want your child to be in the short run, right? This might be your long term goal, but what's the next level you want to get through? And just focus on that. Only think too far because the more, the further you think, the more headache you have. And then like some, some parents will say, oh, how do they go to university? I want them to go to the same university that I did. I went to Duke or some Africa, something like that. It's like, I want, I want to go to Brown University. You know, our whole family went there. I want them to go. But now he's not even speaking. How's that going to happen? Like, okay, dude, like relax first. That's not going to happen overnight. Your kid's like two too, right? Anyways, do we reckon some diet? No, we don't, we don't really care about the diets. We don't know. We're not nutritionists, we're not dietitians, we're not doctors. So there's no diet that will improve speech. There's diet that will improve gut health. Those diet that will improve, you know, like they might be sensitive to certain foods, they might be allergic to certain things that irritate their behavior. But that doesn't mean that it will improve their speech, so to speak. Because let me give you an example. So if you wanted to, if you wanted to, I don't know what, what, what people want to do in their lives, okay, for, for instance, for me, right, I wanna, I wanna be a better therapist, right? So I change out my diet. I, I don't drink alcohol. I don't do whatever. I don't, I don't, I don't smoke. I have a lot of greens, you know, like I clean up my diet and make sure that's good. What's that kind of, is that going to make me a good, better therapist? No. Right. It's going to make the baseline of my like concentration and mood better. But it doesn't mean I, I still have to do the work in order to do it. It's going to make the work easier, if you know what I mean. Right? And I've seen children who have been, if they're, if they eat the wrong thing, they went, went across like they, they did something wrong about their diet, they will be more irritable during therapy. That's, that's the truth. Right? But it doesn't mean there's no like thing that you eat and then you become better at a skill. Right? This doesn't happen Yeah, I answer this all the time. No problem. Mercy says starts AV therapy, speech when he was 4. Now she is 5. Her speeches improved daily. I'm so grateful. Good for you, Mercy. Good for. Good for what's going on. Always good to hear these because like there's so much negative biases on the Internet because you don't like. Okay, you do see some parents who say, oh my kid used to be like this and now they're like this. Right? You do see that. But then the vast majority of people on the parents, the moms on the Internet like my kid is not talking yet. So you like keep on seeing this kind of things. But these, these things happen, man. Or else we would be all out of business, you know, because it doesn't work. Right. So we would be all out of business. It's a snake oil, right? But it does work. It's just to varying degrees. You cannot. This is not like guarantee even in medic. In medicine. Med medication like medicine and whatnot. You don't react to the same. Don't even talk about like behavioral measures. Right. So Shiva says my son speaks for his needs. Such as I want sharing about experience how to help him do it. Okay, search on our YouTube channel or just on Facebook. Search on Facebook if you want for a video about like how to get away from need be need based. Need based language. How to get away from need based language. Something like that. Like need based language, agents of speech. Search that on YouTube. Okay. So yeah, think about that. So yeah, biotherapy. Yeah, I guess it's biochemical. Some, Some biomedical. That's what they call it. Right. But it's. I've seen like parents who have. They know so much about this stuff, it's kind of scary. But at the same time there's no one food that will make everything, you know, go your way. It's going to help but one piece of the puzzle. So don't think so far away about that. Right through my eyes says will you amplify porches for children that are saying phrases My child no longer speech label advertising. Yeah, we actually like. Yeah, I actually put a hold on that is. Well I was going to call the course called Verbal Reasoning. And my reasoning for not releasing that yet is, is because a lot of things. Because the format of the whole. Of the whole agent of speech is going to change. So I am thinking that it's either we have like a front course that is a coaching thing and it includes all the like I'm going to strip away all the, all the courses soon. All right. And it's going to become part of coaching because I feel like parents need and should send me videos. It's not something that I've gotten to a point where I can just give you a bunch of videos and you can do it for yourself. I've tried it for like three years. Life is good on my end because I just need to watch a course and you ask some questions. That's it. But the best feeling in the, in my life is that you send like, you ask me questions and I tell you what to do and it works and I'm right. That's. That's what I feel the best about. So therefore this whole verbal reasoning thing which I've been already doing with like parents in the membership and I'm gonna lay out the process very soon and put it inside the membership. I'm thinking of a name for the membership, something like Secret Moms Club or whatever or I have no idea. Like, I'm open to suggest suggestions, but the, the How Agents of Speech Works is like at the front there's gonna be the eight week program to get from. No, no talking to talking. Right. And that's the coaching part. All right. That includes me telling you what to do and you sending me stuff so I can feedback. Right. That and then the after that, when people graduate or kids who are already verbal, they go into a membership, which I haven't thought about the name yet, to be very honest. So I'll think about name right now still called the AOS membership Agents of Speech Membership. So like the membership, all these are paid, right? Just to let you know. And then there will be courses and frameworks inside and what are those called? Activities that you can like just copy and paste into your life. And we've got like so many recordings of parents doing these things in the membership that we can just take the videos there and make it into courses. So just, you can just see what works, what doesn't work. Yeah. So I'm pretty confident that once we do have those course. Sorry, I decided to do a U turn. I was, it was supposed to come out very like last year, but I decided why not? I serve the vast majority of people. So for instance, like the, the word combiners, not a lot of people join it as opposed to like the other ones. And the reason is because the vast majority of people who are searching for, for solutions are the other moms who are like, oh, my kid's not talking. Help. They're all pulling my hand. Help me. Right. So I have to service those People and then at the back do this as well. So it's kind of difficult. So yeah, through my eyes don't know what your name is. But yeah, we do have the membership of which we're serving also like older children inside and you know, like you can graduate from it. It's very easy. So I'm thinking about like all this and that if there's no. I'm still struggling with the thought. I'm just being very transparent with you. Is that with the coaching? Maybe that's where you guys can pay me. But if there's no coaching, by all means you can use the information that I'm using to serve the coaching clients. I'm thinking about that strongly. Don't know yet because the stuff about like, of which I do is very different from other subjects. Right. If, let's say that's about training your dog. Right. Then obviously people are willing to pay because dogs are expensive. Right. But everyone can have a kid, right? Everyone's kid could be delayed for some reason. It doesn't matter your social, economic situation. You know, I've talked to this really rich Dubai person who bought an online consultation. I also done a bunch of free consultations who are people who use their 4G and they can't even sustain a connection. And we're still having the conversation. Right. So it really is like that. And I want to make sure that this becomes useful and everyone can access it. But then it also needs to make sense from a business standpoint because. Because you know, like you see how many speech therapists online or like therapists online that they cannot make this work. And I'm one of the few of them that could. I'm very happy about that. But at the same time, yeah, there's a very long question because this is always at the back of my mind. We do have. We don't have courses yet, but we have solutions for children who are older. And the reason why we don't just slap a course is because there are interest, there are small parts to the things that I cannot cover. Exactly. All the logic behind it. Maybe with the AI, with ChatGPT, if you guys know about that. Maybe if you type in your thing and then through AI and it learns so much from our interactions with me and our team talking to parents that can give you scenarios, answers to different scenarios. Right. But right now we can't. So therefore, of course just slapped on. I think it's very good for basic base knowledge of which there are loads online. You know, there's a bunch over the Internet like Speech Sisters is a huge one. The other one with a, with a. Who's an ABA and a mother of autistic child. Her name is Mary for her last name. So super big on the Internet. Right. But you know like the, their courses are as such. Right. I haven't joined them. I should join them and take a look. But yeah, you know, you get what I mean. So I think how I defer from the like providing a service is that I think, yeah, Mary Barber. There you go. Lynn knows her stuff. Yeah. So they're very good. It's just that at the end of the day I've tried slapping a course on the Internet and hoping that it would like people would understand. But the, the thing is to create a product so good that it would solve all quest all questions and problems and all iterations of a speech delayed kid is super difficult. Right. And therapists like us, we are not product builders, we're service providers. So what I think is that I would provide the service for first and then we'll use the, the results from the service I provided and turn it into a better product. And then therefore I will. I can make myself obsolete slowly. Right. That's my two cents about it. Right. So like this is how it would go as well. Like if, if we were to bring in like occupational therapist who knows his or her stuff very well and they can create some such, a, such a program to help children to get into the mood of learning or like getting rid, not getting rid, coping with their sensory issues and whatnot and helping with like fine motor writing and stuff and have a program for that. I think it's far more valuable that other than knowledge and all the information is free on the Internet, it's just well curated and that's why it's, it's. It's. It's pricey. Right. So yeah, what I'm trying to say is I'm leaning towards making a. Making a community online that's off Facebook and that you know, off Facebook and then there's more. The information there is free. But if, if you want to then you can come and work with us, our team that I'm trying to build. Right. If you know anyone let me know if you're interested also let me know to coach parents to help them with every level and of which I split right in the middle one, those that are non verbal to verbal and then the other half is like verbal up which is actually a lot of stuff. So that's why it becomes like a continuous continuity program that you Keep on going. And obviously that is a lot cheaper than trying to get therapy. But at the same time you don't pay with money, you pay time. Right. So that's the, that's the logic behind it. Right. So long answer to your short question. Right, yeah, I look forward to advanced language delay course. Yeah. So yeah, it's, it's already like the stuff you're looking for is already here. It's just inside of our membership and so yeah, I'll definitely put it together. It's just taking a lot of time to, to do everything myself. So definitely looking for help here as well. Kind of at my wits end sometimes. So yeah, and probably the membership itself is going to be open and from two weeks from now as well. All right. So the eight week program is already full for, for, for February. We don't want to take anyone else that's already full. We're working on it. And then two weeks later the membership will open with a new light. Is that there's going to be a lot more documentation before right now it's just like you submit videos to me, ask me questions, I tell you what to do, that kind of thing. But I feel like from now on it's easier if I document everything. Not me, maybe someone in the team or whatever, they document everything, write the, the steps with different activities and then examples from parents around the world and, and it'll be super cool but you know it's going to take time anyways. So long answer to your short question. So yeah, that's pretty much it. So yeah, to conclude this live, just me going rambling, rambling on and on and I haven't been on, on a, on, on a live for a very long time because I've been moving houses. As you can see, the background's kind of different. So happy to share that with you and to talk about the therapy. I'm really, really. What's that called? I'm quite, how to say I'm quite grim on the, on the situation of therapy as a whole and the whole worldwide because the, the queuing and the funding and lack of human resources is the gap is getting bigger. Right. And at the same time the price of which is getting higher and less and less people are inclined to join the therapy force I would believe. And we're already shorthanded and plus when you're shorthanded and then most of people, you know, like they, they want work, life balance like a lot of us. And if you want like six hours straight, your therapy is going to kill someone. I've that you know, in my 20s I can tell you that it's not doable, not sustainable. So I'm quite grim about that. But I'm very optimistic and you know, I'm bullish about the fact that therapy is going to be at home, a lot more information is going to be more accessible and that hopefully I'm, I'm one of them. To facilitate that evolution of therapy of which is already happening. I did a YouTube video about like how the change of the culture in therapy, like a lot of cases places especially in Canada, they just throw you in the room and they observe you and they give you like things to do instead, instead of them doing direct client contact. So Nick Ko Nico I think it's important our feedback got all data cause information out there but it's out of reality just by the book. We need real expenses, fails and problems. Yeah. So all the things that you read online are written by therapists, for therapists but they don't write it in a way that is like layman and understandable or they don't give real, real examples. They don't have videos, they don't, they don't tell you exactly why. And the intricate like small parts, the details, because the details are as such. Right. Nicko is, was one of like was one of our parents in our second group, second cohort of the whole eight week program for non verbal children. So glad that she's, she's been doing like her child's doing great and I'm probably speaking now. Yeah. So yeah it's very important because the detail is that for instance if I see a parent send me a video, the problem is that you're too far from the kid. How do you even know that? Right. Or that your face is too close to the kid and making them uncomfortable. Right. How do you read that from a book? You cannot. Right. And then the angle of your hand is too like that. So the kid cannot see the reward and what's the point? That's another problem. There's loads and loads of these small details that need to be addressed. Right. Is that if you're holding something and you only have one hand, you can't do anything. You need two hands. Yeah. What happens if they snatch? Do you allow that? Right. Are there any like telltale signs when your child is about to pounce at you? There are loads. Right. They put their front, the front leg forward. If you really truly observe, so do any people. Can you read that from a book? You cannot. Can you see other parents working right why? Why. Why are the dads usually better than the moms? But then the moms put in more time and you know, like these things you have to understand is because the dad. They give off a more nonchalant kind of. Kind of vibe. And that's why it's working more. So how do you do that? And it's not to be like. Not to put your face right in the. Into the kid's face. Not to keep on pulling, not to repeating the words. And these you can only. Only see if you video yourself. Because that's what happened to me. I realized that I was doing very bad things when I just started. And I had to watch that video with my supervisor and get harsh feedback and to learn. Right. Anyways, Katrine. To train more agents pieces support work. Yeah, totally. But then the. The problem is quality control. Right. And the problem is like. It's easy to say, but how do you. Yeah. It's just my concern that you know, like it's very difficult that they are. I can do this over the Internet to someone who can train other people. Right. So it really depends. And that's what I've been trying to do in. In the country where I'm staying right now, which is Indonesia. But the problem is that training someone is really hard. And I'm thankful that people have actually put in the resources to train me. So. Yeah, I saw I can't send my reply to email. Oh, can we at this point in time? No, sorry, because already full. But look out. Probably in March something we will reopen it or maybe at the end of February for the March cohort. Right. So give me some time. Give us some time. We cannot service so many people at one time. I tried that before nearly died. So I don't want that. And I want the best for you. More direction on how to support my son. Oh, that's great. See, there are good things happening online. Right? That's great. Teresa says sorry. No need to be sorry. I'm new here. Want to get inside? What are your thoughts of childhood practice speech? There's actually a. A video about that. If you go to YouTube. If you go to our YouTube channel, it's agents of speech. And then search apraxia of speech and you'll get it. But anyways. I have had one therapist diagnosed from a daughter two year old with this. We've had success with therapy so far. He went from saying five words and stepped 150. And jamba articulation is a mess and unpredictable. And often the one who can understand her during aging, our current program in the process. Ah, dude, it's too long, man. How do I. How do you see more? How do I see more? Dude, I can't see the end of it. In the process of tr. Trying, I guess. So maybe you can like double paste that. But anyways. So yeah, apraxis speech is rather. It's pretty sticky thing to. To do to. To treat and not saying that it's not doable. There's loads of kids out there, loads of adults out there who have apraxia of speech, and they get better every day, right. So obviously it's working, right? And the. And I want to clarify here, knowing the word doesn't mean the speech is correct, right? So you know, the word doesn't mean you pronounce it correctly. So here. Okay. We're in the process of transitioning to a new therapist, but the new therapist disagrees with diagnosis. Okay. What can I say? Or to advocate for her in the process. The health needs phone washer. Yeah, so about that, you know, like some. In some cases in America that the diagnosis is so different, the views from the therapist is that they go to court. Have you heard of that before? That's crazy. So the reason why they went to court is because. Oh, because you give this diagnosis, therefore didn't get the best therapy and therefore they wasted money, whatever. So I hope it doesn't go to that. I probably wouldn't. But I'm trying to say. Trying to say is like every therapist has a different view of such. So why does he. Why? Because he or she disagree. And you're right, apraxia differs significantly, a lot. And this is where diagnosis is very important because if you have apraxia speech and you try to treat it like a phonological disorder, you're gonna hit a brick wall. Most probably because it's like some techniques are like some. Some treatment things are similar. And it could. Is beneficial, right? It is beneficial. But even for. Let me tell you, right? So I've had a client, a student who's what, 11 or 12 in Indonesia, and he has been diagnosed with apraxia of speech, of which I did. After I saw him. I was a little shaky about the diagnosis and. But I agreed, right. But then they went to usa, they did a speech assessment. The speech therapist came back and said it wasn't apraxia of speech. Right. It was a phonological disorder of sort or a motor speech disorder. Whatever it was, I forgot. And then I was like, okay, so how. Like, okay, I don't care about the diagnosis of which. But what are the training targets? So their training targets became very, very, how to say, very sound speech. Sound specific. For instance, oh, I need to do the cluster of tr. But then the problem was that the errors were inconsistent. This is in your case because you said that the child, your daughter, articulation is a mess and unpredictable. So inconsistency is a huge thing that is a huge factor going towards a practice of speech. So if, let's say that it's unpredictable, right. And it's inconsistent. So what you got to ask your new therapist, what are the training objectives then? You know, are we going to go sound by sound? Are we going to. What are we treating? Right? If, if the stuff that she's treating is exactly the same as the, as a, as a therapist who thought it was apraxia, then voila, who cares? That's my answer. Who cares? You gotta ask the treatment direction, right? But if she's gonna treat it and you know for a fact that it's very phonological, she said, oh, I'm gonna do a phonological based thing where phonological just means that it's a rule based error, meaning everything that, for instance, my L turns to Y. That's what we call colliding. Right. So sorry to like throw jargons at you guys, but you get what I mean? So from an L to Y is very rule based. Every time, every single time. It's like that. Every single time. Always the L becomes the Y. So if you say lollipop becomes yay pop, something like that. Right? So, so is it, if it's that consistent. Yeah. Then go ahead and do those things. Right? Do those like what they call minimal pairs, right. Do those like cycle approach or whatever that they call. So Teresa, to answer a question, sorry for the long answer, is that if they disagree with the diagnosis, then what's the treatment plan about this motor, motor speech problem disorder? What's the treatment plan? If it's the same, then who cares? Right? Because what your previous three therapist was doing is working towards the language part, which is great. But my question is your old, your previous therapist, the articulation part, is it getting better or not? Right? That's my, that's my, that's my question. If it is, then whatever she's doing, like I said just now, is all about finding the cues and prompts that works for a kid and sticking to them and then think about ways of getting rid of it. So if your previous therapist has found those already, then you know, who cares? Stick to those things. And as long as the new one, who. The who says I don't care, I don't care about the previous therapist, his diagnosis is wrong, which I get a lot, believe it or not. Then what was the treatment plan? Right? Lay it out. What are you going to try? How do you know? Then what about the inconsistencies? What are those about? Right? You got to ask questions, Teresa, especially if you're paying out of pocket for this, since she's going out of the program. So I feel like if she went from five words to 150 words, that means her language there probably isn't too much of a big problem. It's just that the limiting factor is her speech, right? So you got think and try out what it is. So you know, from my knowledge, I'm not a specialist, I can only say this, and you can take it with a grain of salt, is that apraxia of speech child she has. And this will overlap with other, other children, right? The biggest misdiagnosis between the AOS practice of speech, which also abbreviates as agents of speech. But anyways, the apraxia of speech is with dysarthria. And a lot of people brush off dysarthria to happen in children because this artery is meaning just the one muscle weakness that creates articulation problems, right. Whereas apraxia is very different. It's like something to do with like the motor pathways and the motor planning. So the biggest diagnosis between these two. So the thing is, are there any signs of what we call groping? Groping? Not in the perverted sense. Okay, don't get me wrong. Groping, as in trying to find the sound by the moving of the mouth, right. Is there something like that? So it's very different because I have. You see that when they won't move that much because they're weak, right. So therefore that's something you have to look for. The second thing is what we call a DDK rate. So I forgot what the whole word means. So I'm just going to search for it right now very professionally. It's called the diaco. I can't even say it, man. I'm not even going to try it. So this is search ddk, okay? So DDK meaning like how can they go sequencing sounds together, right? So the, the most famous one that we all use during therapy, treatment assessments is we go P, T and K. So we go pataka, like that as one unit and we go pataka, Pataka, Pataka, Pataka, pataka, like that. So it's kind of like beatboxing. Right. So you go five times, and then you will see that apraxic children, their errors are inconsistent every time they go. Whereas the sarfic child. And maybe it's a, you know, phonologically, if it's a phonological disorder and they treat the T as a K or the T or K as a T, then the error will be very consistent. It will always be. Or whatever. So if it's a dysartic one, there's a muscle weakness, then you will see that it's labored. Right? It's. It's labor. It's trying hard, and it's maybe the skipping consonants and whatnot. So it's kind of different. So at the end of the day, should you care that they don't agree with the diagnosis? I think yes, because the only reason is because it changes the treatment direction. Right. So if it changes the treatment direction, is it going to be more beneficial or it's going to be less beneficial? There's no right or wrong in treatments, you know, there's only more suitable. Like suitable or not suitable? Not so suitable. So that's a question you have to ask yourself. And after what I told you, did she do these, like, these DDK rates? Don't ask me how to read it. I really cannot. I really cannot. So, and then do you have any of those groping, any of that? There you go. Teresa says shadows of groping, especially with new word. They say the same words differently if repeated, especially vowels in the world. Yeah. Vowel change is a huge apraxia of speech thing. Because. Because this. Vowels, they don't change in phonological disorders, you know, they don't change in articulation disorders. They don't like. Okay, they do change kind of sometimes with dystrophic children. But the problem is, if even the vowels change, it means that and it's. It's inconsistent all the time. Then there's a problem because vowels always reduce. Always reduce. What I mean by reduce, they reduce to the normal line. And what's the normal line? What do you hear a person who's about to like, like fall sick or like about, like to pass out. How do they sound like? They go like. What's that? That vowel sound is called a schwa vowel is the most neutral and the middlest vowel there is. And a lot of times when a child has a speech disorder, they're reduced to that. They go towards where the tongue doesn't need to move at all. But whereas if the vowel changes all the time. It's not schwa. And there's loads of schwas in the English language because English speakers are very lazy, right? We don't have schwas in Chinese. We don't have. I don't know about other languages, but what I'm trying to say is that if the vowels are different, then how different are they? Are they, like, from r to e or whatever? If it's not reduced to a schwa, then there's a. From what you're telling me, it sounds more of a. Apraxia of speech. But again, what am I to know? I haven't seen your child. I haven't, like, listened. Listened to any samples. I haven't, like, you know, it's literally just been like ten minutes of you, of me talking over a bunch of words. Right? So don't take my word for what it's worth. You know, a lot of American people, when they hear, oh, you listen to a Chinese guy on the Internet about, like, this whole thing. That's crazy, right? So I don't care if I'm right or wrong. Hope I love it when I'm. I'm. When I'm right. But anyways, from what. From what I hear the most. You don't need to convince that new therapist either, right? Take a look at the treatment plan, see if it's working. Give it like two weeks or three weeks. See if it's really tackling some of the problems that your child has. Is she like. Or he. The therapist working on your child's, you know, repetitive. Repetitive syllables. Right. Are there any things that are working on her flexibility? Right. Are there any things that are working with functional words? Right. So in speech disorders, they're always. Your goals are always three things. Number one is to create more functional words that they can use without using their head, without using a brain. Right. Always finding the most frequent words to drill them so that it's functional, so that they don't have to think when it comes out. And it decreases the stress and it helps them with the communication. Second of all is when there's a speech disorder, you. You always think about how to increase the baseline of which. Right. So the first one is always to find new sounds that they cannot do. And this is across all speech disorder, no matter phonological articulation, you know what, all the stuff that we're talking about, as long as you're working on new sounds, and it's fine. Okay. The third one is more complicated. It's in between syllables. How many syllables can it Go. And inside of a syllable structure, syllabic structure. How complex can the syllabic structure be? And how flexible can you use those syllabic structures? So just now when I said those all consonant, vowel. Consonant, vowel. Consonant, vowel. So. Yeah, anyways, I am not a professor. I don't know why I'm talking about this. But. And obviously there are like, I've only read a few textbooks, to be honest with you. And I'm. I'm telling you that's more than the, the normal therapists out there. So. Okay. Yep. Yeah, totally. That sounds in my mind. That's crazy because I've never seen a kid who would change to so many vowels and not have any errors in the, in the consonants. That's crazy. Yeah. Anyways, so that's the end of it. Teresa, thanks for putting that question out just to help me revise in my mind. And I'm learning with you. That's great. Lazy. Yeah, maybe, maybe not. Who knows? Let's see how. And the program is really working well. Sounds crazy, but start using some straws, blowing candles and playing harmonicon speech sounds consistent and clear. Yeah. So you know, like all, all these, know, speech therapy techniques they have. They all have merit. Right. So it doesn't sound crazy at all because there must be a reason, you know, but since you start using Schwartz bone candles. Yeah. You know, as long as, you know, oral motor things are always good for the body, good for the mouth muscles. Always good. But whether if it translates into speech is a whole different topic. And at this point in time it means it's going well. Right? It's going well with. On your end. So it means it's translating. And that's good for your child because he knows how to, how to do it himself. He knows how to generalize himself. So it's good. Sorry, I might be saying your name wrong because there's so many accents on it. Sorry. Before my son turned 2, he had words learned from watching. And now he repeat after someone who wanted to say a word. And then one day I realized he lost his words and won't repeat a word anymore. Anymore. Yeah, that's a regression that happens quite often. So at this point in time, if I were you, I would go back to teaching him. Do some action imitations first just to let him know, because it seems like that he doesn't think the words actually help him from a day to day. Right. So he. If he gets what he wants all the time without talking or his ways are more effective than talking, then he would do so Right. And I'm. I'm saying this, but, you know, like, be. Be careful about what you. You see online. Having said that, I have read research in my life and have confirmed with senior speech therapists. Now, that's as far as I can give a. A. What's that called? A disclaimer. And people can cut this clip and say, I said this without any context. Right. So what I'm trying to say is children who are on the spectrum, their brain, the way that their brain is wired and works, they change at around 2 to 3. And I've seen this account, this sudden change of behavior, regression, loss of words quite frequently. I'm not saying that your child is on the spectrum. It doesn't matter if it is or not. But what I'm trying to say is that this wall that you hit right now is solvable. And I've done this multiple times, whether if it's online or offline. So what you got to do now is very simple. Get stuff he wants, and when you ask for it, teach him how to imitate a gesture or action, because you cannot put your hand inside of his mouth to make him talk, but you can take his hand and make a gesture so that he knows what to do. So if I were you, I wouldn't care about any word or any sound right now, and I would only care that I give him something he wants and teach him a way of communicating to get what he wants with gestures and actions. All right? All right, Cool. So that's it for tonight. Thank you so much. I gotta go. It's been like a whole hour trying to make up for not going live for a very long time. I know you guys never asked for that, but I feel like it's also a good way to connect and get to learn from you when I'm trying to teach. Just like just now when Teresa was asking about apraxia speech. Because my previous boss, he did a PhD on apraxia, and he made me read a bunch of stuff, and that's why I suddenly had to dig it, and I suddenly remember it, and it's good. Right? And if I don't know anything, then I will go ahead and learn it and try to learn it. Right? Like all that virtual autism stuff, I thought, you know, like, what. What's that? So I looked into it, made a video about it, learned a bunch. Right. And also, like, teaching children how to go to toilets all around the world. Right. Going one step at a time. Yeah. Dealing with tantrums, whatever. So that's cool. Thank you so much for joining me. It's been quite a long time now. Thank you for watching. And just the parting note. Is this right? No matter what the therapists tell you, they must have their rationale, they must have their reasons, right? And the reasons must convince you. Because if the reasons don't even convince you, then there's no point because you're not convinced. And you won't do the same thing as the therapist that who tells you to do whatever, right? So when you go to a therapist, make sure that person can convince you. I'm just like. I'm not trying to make myself look good. I'm just good at convincing people by default whether I'm right or wrong. So take my words with a grain of salt. Sometimes I'm always evolving, so I'm always trying to learn. Sometimes I feel like, oh, no, I'm totally wrong, and I try to make up for it. But anyways, you got to find someone who can convince you and make you feel like, oh, yes, this is the way. Let me do it. And stick to it until it works or stick until it doesn't work and you change, right? Either way, you got to do something. Right? Cool. That's it for tonight. And that's all, guys. Have a good night. Or good morning. Bye.