What to Do When Children Repeat Your Questions | www.agentsofspeech.com/micro

Hello, I'm live today, tonight, Monday, is that we are going to talk about questions. So questions of, you know, when, when you ask a question to your child, right. Is, is like, you know, if I ever got a buck for answering this question about how we. Why your child won't answer your question, I'd probably be pretty well off, you know, and the reason why your child, like, if you don't want to watch this longer than you know you want to, you know, I'll just give you the gist of it. Children don't answer your question or repeat your question because they don't understand it. They don't understand you. They don't understand whatever, okay? That's why they're repeating your question, okay? And we do it all the time. We do it a lot. And I can tell you by, with my experience, if you. It's not your first time here, welcome again. If your first time here, then that's cool as well. So what I'm trying to say is if this is not your first Monday live or, you know, you've been through the micro course already, this is old news to you, okay? So when we repeat a question, it means that we don't understand. And it comes from the fact that, you know, if you've been traveling well, nowadays, we're not doing a lot of that. In fact, you know, for the past few weeks, actually, the world has become even harder to actually travel around in. Things are getting worse. But I digress, okay? I am living in a foreign country when I don't understand a question, okay, someone asked me a question and very fluent Indonesian. What do I do? I try to repeat the first, the last few syllables. Look at them just being quiet so that they will try to, you know, They will try to like, explain a little more. So I give them a look, a stop, I pause. I may be like, you know, repeat the last few words to tell them that I am not a native speaker because of my accent, because of the words, I'm pronouncing it totally wrong, you know. So your son or your daughter, your child is doing exactly that. What they are trying to do here is that they're pausing, they're repeating, they're trying to find a solution around your question because they don't know how to answer you right? So I do this all the time here as an alien foreigner. And your child does it to you as well because he doesn't know what to say to you, okay? That's the main gist of it. So in today's live we're going to deep dive a little bit more, talk a bit, talk about it, you know, just having a chat, hanging out and at the same time, you know, we go through this inside of the micro course and it's just bite sized lessons that you can, you can like, you can learn from all the frequently asked questions from parents like yourself and yeah, so like if you have any questions you can always put in the comment section right? Now if you're watching this on a recording, then you know, obviously you can still put it in the comment section. I will try my best to get back to it. Okay, so the questions part, how do we stop the child from repeating? Right? How do we stop the child from just ignoring your questions or you know, just saying the last few syllables as if they're trying to do whatever, like just trying to not answer your questions. Right. So the first things first, you have to understand if they, your child knows, they would have said it to you. That's the first thing you need to understand for a child who knows how to imitate you, knows how to follow your directions and it doesn't have much of a problem, you know, playing with you or whatever, you know, following you in the supermarket or whatever. If you ask them a question and if they know the answer and there's no reason not to like, no, there's no reason to ignore you, then most probably they would have told you already. So I want you to think about that first. Okay? If they knew, they already have told you. That's very important for you to understand, okay? And I'm saying this because a lot of parents just think that my child just isn't answering me. What am I going to do? Like they, they keep on repeating, they ignore my questions, they can't even answer yes or no. So I'm going to like go in deep a little bit and talk about yes and no questions later on and the types of questions that you know, children should and should not be able to answer, which is a little bit too much for the live here. So if you have any specific questions about your child, you can put it in the comments so that we can go through them here without me having to reply all the emails that you guys send me and I can do in one go. That's the best thing, the best way that I can teach, I think. So first of all, now that you know that your child will, should and will answer you, right? Hi, I don't know who you are, so I need to check on Facebook anyways. So now that you know that Your child should and would answer you, right? So what should you do when they don't answer you? Well, think about it. They don't understand you. They're trying to get around to talk to you and so on, right? So the best way is to simplify your question. If you're asking why they're doing something, most probably they don't understand that I've got a student who's like a mature student who isn't a kid anymore. And when I ask her why, she would just say, I'm asking her, why did you feel happy? And then she'll just say, because happy. That's all. But if I asked her what happened that made you happy? Then she will be able to tell me, oh, because, you know, I ate ice cream or something. So you have to remember sometimes by changing a little bit, making it easier for a child to understand for anyone. It's gonna make a whole load of difference. So simplify your question first. Okay? If it's something that cannot be simplified, such as, what are you doing? What are you eating? What is that? Okay, these questions, you have to understand a lot of parents, and this is where moms will start laughing. Because it's exactly as if I know what's happening. And it's not because I can read minds or anything. It's because I've seen it too many times, okay? So if you ask, what, what is that? And you quiz them a lot, and this is, we talked about this a lot inside of the micro course and inside of our agents of speech courses, right? When you quiz a lot, when you ask these questions for no particular reason other than you want them to answer you, then very easily a child will learn that, ah, these questions that even if I answer, there's nothing that happens, right? For instance, what are you doing? What are you playing? What is that? Tell me, tell mom, what's that? What are you doing? Like, what's the end goal of that? You just want them to answer you. And after they answer, what's the consequence? Probably you just say yeah or like, good or whatever. The consequence is minimal. It doesn't add to their play, doesn't make it more fun. It doesn't make it more fun, Right? It doesn't make it any more satisfying or anything, right? So let's see. So let's see. I think I'm getting your name right. Please tell me if I am or not. So 32 months, just learned simple pronunciation. Ma ready speak it. He know the pronouns, but refused to call MAPA no matter how to encourage he just won't call it out. Yeah, well, I'll answer your question right away here, and then we'll talk about it more. And this ties into what I just told you, right? If you don't have a reason for a child to answer you or call you, then most probably he won't use it. Okay. Your encouragement. What do you mean by encouragement? Do you have rewards? Do you have, like, social reinforcement consequences like such as tickling or whatever, you know? Do you have a strong routine that you can teach him in order for him to learn to use those words? Right? And Guan continues. The most frequent sound he makes is da or da, okay? Depending on if it's Mandarin or Cantonese hits in English, meaning, I know that, but thanks for telling other people here. He repeats the sound with a different tone when he's angry and wants to scold people. Okay, that. That means. What that means, Kuyen, is that he doesn't understand totally. He doesn't understand how to use other words. Okay, so what you need to do here is to stop doing the words first. You need to start by teaching him gestures. Go through the course. I know you just joined Kuyen, so you go through the course first. Teach him some easy, easy, easy. Gestures. Don't start off with like ma, whatever. Although you already know that he has it in his repertoire or his, like, vocab. But you ask him to say it doesn't mean it's easy for him. If it's easy for him, he would have been using it already. Got it. It's a mindset shift. So you need to understand that you need to go through the courses, especially in the micro course, to understand. Hey, your child doesn't owe you to say ma. No matter how much you encourage him, if he can do it, he'll be doing it already. The reward is breastfeeding. And months he calls out, okay, I think that's a little bit too troublesome. Use something else like you use. I know. He's rather young, right? Can you use something else, like a snack or something that I can make into smaller bits that's easier for him to like? Once he says he just gave it to him and he doesn't need to because it's troublesome, right? If you're breastfeeding and then so on. So. Sorry. Technical difficulties today. The wires are kind of loose. Okay, so go through the course first. Learn about it more. Of course, you can keep on asking, right? So what I was trying to say is you have to have a reason why you're asking him to Talk to answer a question, whatever. Okay. If your child knows how to do it, he or she would most probably do it anyways. Okay. It's just that sometimes when a kid can do something, doesn't mean it's easy for them every time around. Okay, Right on. So here we have someone else, probably from the group here. Okay? So if you're from the group, if you want me to know who you are, you can press that like the link inside of the description. It says I'm using like Streamyard or something. That's the software I'm using to broadcast myself. Okay, so it's Linda. Cool. I think. Is it? It's Linda Lee. I think so. Linda says I've been hearing my 3 year old trying to imitate how we speak. But softly, not clear, but we understand. He will understand all instructions. I'm still at loss. Can call mama Lip to lip and call nine. Nine can't spell papa yet. Gonna school die Called Covid. Let's do it with him. Help text. Okay, so it's. If that's the case, I really think, Linda, that this problem you're facing is more of a speech disorder. Okay. Would I say that I would use pecs? I don't think so. At this moment in time. Teach him more gestures to, as we always say, right? To alleviate, to, you know, help him with some very everyday stuff, right? Everyday activities that he struggles to say. Teach him a sign or something so he gets it out of the way. But at the same time, because you said lip to lip, right? That means he needs, he requires your sound input and your visual input in order for him to say it. Okay? Mama. Should be a very easy sound. Okay? If you tell me that a child cannot say mama and he needs to look at you and look at your mouth and listen to you and say at the same time, then most probably it's a, it's a speech problem, not a language problem. I know right now because, you know, as I said, you know, coronavirus and everything and even Singapore is starting to lock down again, right? Such a well controlled city. But this life is not about, you know, current like issues and politics and whatnot. But anyways, I'm talking about. I know it's difficult to find a speech therapist for now, but what you need to try now, which is very hard by the way, Linda, is that you need to start thinking about like how to like see how much sounds he can do on his own. For instance, ma. Just ma. Not mama. Just Ma. Can he do it himself after you say it? Like upon imitation, not simultaneously lip to lip, as you say. Right? So I would say try out. Can you do pa, ma? Can you do just the vowels? Ah, e, oo, E, o. Can you do like double vowels like I, oi, o, you know, ew, all these sounds? Can he do all those by himself? Right. And most probably if you know you need to do lip to lip, then that means sometimes prompt therapy will work quite well. And what is prompt therapy is basically just using your hand and creating and telling him how to move the mouth. Okay, for instance, I'll give you some here, but I can't give you everything, okay? Because it's gonna take forever, dude. You know, like when we learned it, it took us like three days and it cost like a thousand bucks. And then at that you still had to like practice and learn it by yourself. Right, Linda? So I'm going to give you some so that, you know. So for instance, like M, like ma, right? Put two fingers here and then a thumb up for M. Like that, like that. All right? So you. So that you can slowly fade out your mouth shape. And that's the whole thing about speech and language. You need to get rid of the cues and the prompts or else they'll never do it by themselves. All right, so you need to check out a thing and you can go, ah, I, U, you know, E, O, these simple vowels by himself without being lip to lip, as you call it. And then we can think about what other sounds we can teach him. All right, this is a very speech related thing. So if you can, if you can afford it, if it's feasible in terms of health and conditions, then go to a speech therapist and, and excuse me, just had some pizza. My bad. And see what, how they can help you. All right? By the way, we do have other, like parents and moms who are going through the same thing as you, Linda. And how we, like how we're trying to do it all over the Internet is that we have a membership that's kind of closed here. And I'm only talking about this because I wrongly sent an email out to everyone talking, telling them about, you know, the, the zoom session we're having on Thursday. So if, if it interests you, I'm not gonna like take it away or whatever, right? Then you can go there and check it. Or are you inside already? I don't think so. Right, Linda? Anyways, so Linda says he can do ie. You remember the video I posted? Yes, that's right. So you can now try the I, you know, like put two together Right. I, A, O, you know, ui. Can he do those? Can he do any of those? Like when you put two vowels together? Right. So try that. Okay, so let's go back to Kui Yen, and I'll go back to the topic about questions. Sorry, I just like answering questions. It's fun. Says yes. The reward is breastfeeding. Once he calls out ma. Okay, Read that already. If you insist not to call using snack, but pull my hand to. To. Into his mouth instead. Yeah. So therefore, all you need to do is to teach the open palm gesture a video 5 of the. Of the micro course. But obviously, please watch the micro course from 1 to 10. Okay, we have 10 videos now, so check it out. Yeah. If you know, if your child is having problems with pronouncing, producing speech, having a speech disorder, then more the man. Stop it, Slave. So more the. The. The. The reason why you need to start off with gestures, all right? Get him to imitate easier sounds. Get him to imitate some, like, actions around, like, using his hands and using his mouth. Like, just mouth shapes even. And right now he's just physically manipulating you in order to get what he wants. All right? So you need to do that. All right? You need to get him to do the gestures. Man, man, man, My cat's about to bite me. Stop. Oh, stop it. Okay, Anyways. Anyways, so we're gonna keep on talking about questions. Let me get rid of this thing. Okay? So how do you, like. Let me remember what I was talking about, right? So I was talking about how, you know, your questions about. What is that? What are you doing? What are you. What. What color is that? What goes after a. Or that kind of silly questions. They serve no purpose to the. To the kid. It's not fun. It's not like, routine. It's not sociable. It's just you quizzing them and questioning them and see if they would talk to you. That's all right. So how do you do it? Is obviously don't. Don't ask those questions, right? Wouldn't you be very. Wouldn't you be very, very, very annoyed of everyone? Just. Someone just comes over and asks you, hey, what. What is that? You know, what's that going on? Like, okay, let's say that you're studying something that you learn already, right? If someone comes up to you and asks you, hey, what's like, I don't know if you're studying math, right? What's eight times eight? You know, that's what we like to do with kids a lot, right? Some kids will like it because they can do it, right? But the kids who are bad at math or, you know, not up to par yet you ask those questions. You're just asking to be disliked by the child, right? You. You don't want to do that. Oh, man, what's up with her today? Anyways, so don't ask those questions. Instead, if you do ask by accident, just answer them by yourself. Just answer it by yourself. The reason why is because a lot of times in a. In a language interaction, what we do a lot is that we ask for those things a lot. We ask for your child to talk to you, but most of the time we're not giving. You're not giving enough language. All right? And it happens a lot. And it's the same how I was educated. Even on the scale of a master's degree, I was. We. I would say we. Okay, we were. We kept on being questioned all the time without anyone giving input. And most of the time when we gave the correct answer, what happened? It was taken for granted. It was like, oh, yeah, you should know that. Oh, whatever, you know, And I really think that this transcends above just teaching children language. It's about teaching anyone anything, right? If I were to ask you what, like, for this whole video clip, I'll just ask you, hey, why do you think so? Like, why. Why not? You think first, right? I think that's stupid. I need to give you enough knowledge for you to, like, at least. At least think about. At least know enough or change your mind about how you should think about things. And then I will ask you, if I ask you, like, why does your child not answer your questions? You will probably say the. They're lazy. They just can't focus, right? They know it, but they don't just want to say it. You know, they're being a trickster. Whatever. I've heard it. All right? It's not the case. Children do want to talk to you. All right? But if they know it, they will try and at least you know, you will know. But if they don't know, they will repeat or ignore you. All right? Okay, so let's go to how to teach them to answer questions. There are a lot load of ways to do that. A load of question types that you can start off with. The first question type you should nearly always start off with. Nearly always, I say is not yes, no, because yes and no is something that anyone can. Any child can already. They can already answer you, but not just in words. You know, if you ask me present to them Something that they don't like, they either push it away, you know, or run away or give you, like a sound or something, right? I've got a student. If you give him something he doesn't like, he goes, yeah, right. But he can say no. It's just that it's a habit for him to do, so it's faster, right? So they can already answer yes or no in their own way. All right? But they. The method that they use is not appropriate. So I wouldn't start with yes, no first, because when you're teaching no, it's very emotionally driven when you're teaching yes, as usually to answer like, do you want it or not? Right. Obviously the answer is yes, and they're trying to grab it from you. And probably teaching a gesture is better than answering yes. And your question is asking, do you want that kind of stupid, right? Without a better word. Because obviously, you know, he wants it. Why are you asking? Just tell him how to get it. So yes or no is. I think it's off the table for the first one. The first question I would teach a child to answer is, like, what we call man. I forgot the name for it. Like, usually I remember it, but anyways, you give two choices. Okay. Forgot the technical name for it for some reason, suddenly. Anyways, so when you hold two things up, have one that is highly desirable, have one that is not desirable, right? So when you do that, it's very easy for. For. For a kid to want to grab the thing that is desirable. And then you can teach him or her to say the word when he wants to grab it. You know, if, you know, if he doesn't say the word or doesn't do the right gesture or whatever or point or whatever you're using to teach this interaction, like a choice between two, right? Then what you can do is, like, you can give him the wrong one and act stupid. It works. Give them something that they don't want, and they're like, oh, you want this one, right? Okay, here you go. And then they were like, ah, okay. Okay, this one, right? Okay, now do it. Okay, cool. Here you go. Or you can teach them, yes, like, let's start this or that. Or teach them the word for the thing that they want. Okay? So I would always start off with that because there's a. There's a social consequence because if they don't express themselves nicely, they would get the thing that they don't want or, like, less wanted. Okay, so that's that first. Okay, how do you teach yes or no? Someone asked within the members group, most probably, if you're watching this, you're also might be in that group. I don't know how Facebook works anyways, so yes, no questions is difficult. All right. As I said, you cannot teach a child from saying to say yes or no with do you want whatever. Because that's a stupid question. You know already there's no point in asking. And there's no point in them answering you because they either grab it or they run away. So why would they answer you? Right? If you think about it, only children who are a little older or more mature or, you know, more language developed, they understand, they need to talk to you. That's why they say yes or no. Okay, so Ku Yan says gesture. What? She asked why gesture is better than yes or no, like using a sound. I noticed early intervention program also emphasizing gesture, wondering. Yeah, well, the thing is, I told you, right? If children who are speech or language delayed or and like both, right? Then making a sound is hard. So if you ask, would you drive a manual stick on your car or automatic drive, Right. Obviously you're going to drive automatic. It does the same result with the easier with less effort. And that's like using gestures is more of getting to the same result with easier. Like the process being easier. You know what I'm saying? So let's say that I'm trying to learn how to. Yeah, I learned how to drive. Obviously, if I wanna, you know, I don't want to care about all the other, the stuff, I'm going to drive an automatic, right? And you know, you need to remember, children, they don't want to talk. They just want that thing. That's why your, your kid Koyen is trying to put that snack into his mouth with your hand. They don't want the talking. They don't want to learn to drive. They just want to get to the destination. They just want. They, you know, it doesn't matter. Like an airplane, helicopter thing attacks. It doesn't matter as long as it works and it's easy as human nature, right? So yes or no is something that you teach later. It's something that you teach later. And you teach it when you have a social routine. For instance, we talk a lot. Like if you watch the YouTube videos that I post, YouTube is easier to search, much better than Facebook. So if you go to agents of speech YouTube channel, go to Play Skills. And then you'll see me demonstrating like using like, what's that called? A coin machine. Sorry, vending machine. My bad. And then like Mr. Potato Head, car slides, whatever. You will understand when they understand like a routine. And then you give them something that is outside of routine. For instance, the vending machine, you need to put a coin inside in order to get the drink. Right. If you give them like a coin that is too big and it doesn't fit, and then you ask, does it fit? And then they say no, then there's a social consequence for them to say no. Right? Because it makes sense when they say no, they get the right size coin, get it and the same as the car slide. If you give them something that doesn't slide on the car and they try it and it doesn't work and you say, hey, is that right? And then if they say no, then they can get back that car. And that works, then of course they're gonna answer you. Right? So you need to start off with not asking like, oh, what? How should I teach them like that? The language. All right, you guys, like, the kid wants the result and you just want the speech. How about you? We all go in the middle and let's learn some routines and play and then we can use that context to teach language. Okay. We talk about this a lot inside of the full intro course, if you're wondering. Okay. Always start off with the context. Without context, we don't need a. We don't need to communicate with you. Right. Will gesture driven kid to slower? No, gesture is a pre linguistic skill. All right? There's loads of studies that say kids who know how to gesture and know how to sign early on are better in language. That's all I'm gonna say, man. Like if you talk about it, like if you didn't know how to toss speak in Spanish and you went to Mexico or Spain. Why did I say Mexico before Spain? Anyways, so what are you going to do? You're going to gesture out whatever you want to say, all right? It's not going to make it slower. It's going to get the communication across. Speech is only a means to communicate. If they don't have the intention to communicate with you, there's no point in doing speech. So start off with building the routine correctly. Don't let them put your. Put his. Like pull your hand and put the snack in his mouth because that means that routine works. And he's not going to talk to you because, you know, I can just pull mom's hand to do anything, right? So you can remember that. Okay, so let's go to Aisha. Okay, so, but when a child will say yes or no or Proper reciprocation. What I usually ask my child, did you have your breakfast? And he never replied. He's having sentences, but usually when he use when he wants something, or you can say based on speech is fine now and features of adhd. Yeah, Aisha. I mean, like, why do you ask, did you have your breakfast? Didn't you see him have his breakfast? Or was this, like, afterwards? Because there's no point in anyone to answer you that. It's like a very, like a small talk thing going on. Like, if. If you think about it, right? And he doesn't understand, most probably kids don't understand why he has to ask you that. Because, you know, as a matter of fact, you know, I say this from a. From my perspective because. And how, like, I ask children who are older who is. Who is on the spectrum, but it was different from your child. Most probably. But they don't want to answer questions. People don't want to answer questions when there's no point. All right, so what are your yes and no questions about? Okay, so you mean proper reciprocation, right? So I know that typically typical developing children will answer you and say, yes, I had breakfast at this and that and whatever. Right? But you have to remember it's different. It's not lacking. Okay? It's not. It's different. Is different. The way that you talk to children who are delayed or disordered or, you know, on the spectrum is different. You have to understand that it's not like, what is proper reciprocation is what we think is proper. Right. You cannot, like, you know, a lot of times we use our measuring sticks, our rulers, to say that this is what you should do. This is like, typically developing. Those are guidelines, right? As long as it's functional enough, then it's fine. All right, so my question is, can your child answer a yes or no question during, like, a plate, like, during play? During. You know, if he's five, can he answer yes or no questions based on, like, during a board game where, you know, there are stakes, there's stuff on the line. Right. If, you know, if he really liked the game and you skip his turn, can you say, no, mom, it should be my turn? Or, like, whose turn is it? Is it your turn? He's more incentivized to answer it because there's a real consequence. If you ask him, is it your turn yet? And then he says, no, and then you skip his turn, he's gonna get angry. Given that he understands the game. Right. So you need to understand these small Talk this kind of socializing, yes or no questions that are very direct, you know, like very, very, very. How to say is very matter of fact. Right, right. So, Aisha, I see that you're writing something. So it's like back and forth communication. If a person is asking something every based on the situation, how a teacher answer question if someone asking something. Yeah, that's like just very broad and very general. First of all, like, first of all, you have to know what types of questions can they. Can they answer in the. In the very beginning, can they answer like who, where based on using a book, you know, based on, not based on. Now, I'm not going through the next point of this video, actually, I still have two more points that I want to talk about, but I've been busy answering questions, so it's dragging on a little bit. Don't worry, I'm getting to it. So, like, you need to understand there's a whole list from easy to hard questions, okay. And you cannot skip any of those. Like, you can't say, oh, my kid doesn't know how to answer, like, why you know, or doesn't know how to answer whatever. Right? So for you, Aisha, you have to know back and forth communication. Is that really the step that your child is at right now? Because you said your child will only say something when he wants. Has something from, like, he wants something from you. Right? So what I'm telling you is he has no incentive to talk to you. He doesn't understand the social context of like, you know, I should talk to you, like, answer a question because I want to have a good relationship with you or whatever. Right. They don't understand that it's different. So therefore, what you need to teach them is the, Is the, like is the interaction, right? You cannot just go in and think about. Okay? My child doesn't know how to answer yes and no because I asked him, did you have breakfast yet? And then he just ignored me. Okay? He didn't understand that he needed to answer you. And you're asking how to get him to, like, understand the situation. Right? So you need to do something that is rewarding for him first. Teach him how to play. Teach him how to, you know, play a board game with you. Make him understand that, you know, being able to. Being able to listen to you or whatever is, is. It makes him happy. Right? And that comes from. That comes from, you know, just teaching him playing, teaching him board games, teaching him how to read books, teaching him, you know, watching videos together, stopping asking him questions. This kind of thing, right? I cannot tell you exactly the footsteps and Aisha, as you told me. Okay, so this is a very good segue to, to like, what I'm about to say. The, like, if he can answer his name, age, where he lives, father, mother, name, but cannot answer other questions. Those are all memorized, Aisha. Those are not questions that children use their brains to answer, you know, with a lack of a better word. I'm so sorry, but you know, these are all memorized. All mem. Like, all memorized. Okay? And I'm sure that, you know, we teach this a lot and we call this social answers that we teach children to answer when they go to school. At least, you know, if the teacher asks, what's your name? They can say their name or how old they are and where they live and father, mother, if they get lost. It's very functional, right? But that is actually only the second level of questions. The first level of question is what is that? I'm sure your child can ask what's that? And then they can answer it, right? If you ask them like, you know, like two, two choices, right? What I was talking about just now, he can probably like tell you what he wants because he's good with telling you what he wants, right? But once you get to like, like who or where questions that require his brain to move, like to spin a little bit and to see what's going on, then he'll probably get stuck. And I'm not talking about like you pointing at someone and say, who's that? That's a what question, actually, because you're pointing, referencing to something in the world and you say, who is that? Then he just needs to look and then he just needs to label that person and say, that's mom, right? Or where is that? And you're pointing at a toilet. That's still referencing. That's still a what question. Okay, so at the end of the day, you need to start at not even like social interaction. Many parents ask me, oh, how do I get two way interaction? How do I get like them to be okay at school? I know you, you, you, you see this goal that you want, right? But you need to understand there are many steps towards it, okay? You cannot go in. And I don't mean to discourage you or anyone here, all right, that it will happen, but not like that. Like, not by me telling you something right now. Oh, you just need whatever, right? No, it never works like that. Okay, so what I mean by who and where questions is like, can he answer who is wearing glasses? Who here is wearing glasses? Can he answer Ming, right? Can you do that? Who here is wearing a gray shirt? Can you say Ming, right? Who here, you know, has black hair? You know, that kind of cool questions that he needs to look, identify and think, right? Who's a girl here? You know, who is the boy who's playing with the scooter? You know, this kind of questions, right? That he needs to look and then really understand the essence of who. Like where, for instance, where, where is the, where's the cup on top of the table? That's the answer, right? Where is daddy? Oh, he's in the kitchen, right? This kind of thing, this will this kind of question answer. You need to start there. You start there and teach him using a structured task. First, don't even think about like having a two way conversation yet. If you cannot even do that, then, you know, that's the thing that you need to work on right now, okay? And during this like whole lockdown and pandemic and whatnot, this is the best chance to do it. This is the best chance to do it. And despite all the bad things that are happening in the world, man, this really is a good chance to, you know, for parents to really dig deep because there's nowhere else the kid needs to go. They have 100% energy. They don't need to go to school. I know you guys are very, very like, especially the moms are. You are very tired because of all this going on, right? So you really need to stick it down and like, you know, at least go through the micro course. Understand how to interact with the kid. Don't ask them questions they can't answer. Because if you ask them like questions that they don't answer, what are you doing? You're training the kid to ignore you, right? You're training like for instance, if every day the fire alarm went off here, right? And then I knew that it was of like no use. Like it was, it's just a malfunctioning fire alarm alarm. Would I care about it? No. It's going to be annoying, obviously. But I'm not going to run out of my building just because it's ringing. I know it's faulty. So. So you're teaching your child that you are like that, that you are a faulty fire alarm. You don't need to care about you. Then there's no consequence. It's not like they don't answer. You're going to beat them, you're not going to like punish them or anything, right? But when they do answer like do you praise them? Does he have any reward? Right, that's the problem here. Right? So start off with like structured tasks. Teach them step by step. Which, which questions go first slowly, like from like what to like who, where, and then to like simple why questions. And then some like what doing questions, what's he doing questions. Right. How questions, so on, so forth. Okay, so Ku Yan asked for an older child, 9 years old. He's good in speech but couldn't communicate well. He wanted people to focus on sharing his fancy world. Knowing that's. Then this probably. This kid is most probably having a social communication disorder. Okay, Social communication disorder, which is another thing. There's like stuff within language. If you watch the older videos or inside the full intro course, I think there's a part that talks about like, you know, language. It's not like there's a few parts to it, right? There's like being able to speak and pronounce the words correctly. That's important. If you speak very with a lot of errors, no one's going to understand you. The other part is like knowing the words and knowing the vocabs, how to put sentences together. And last part is how you use it. So you know, even if you spoke like Oprah, right? But you say the wrong things, then you're still going to be socially awkward and there's something wrong with you with your language. Communication right now that's the problem here. So Korean asks, reasoning is the communication bridge. Yes and no. I guess it's different for every kid. They have missing parts and in different situations. I cannot say that as a, as a whole truth, right? I can't say that. It depends on the kid. Right? Reasoning comes with a lot of things. I remember a long time ago when I first started working as a therapist, my supervisor said at the end of the day, all types of knowledge is to do with matching, right? Is to be able to associate different things with different, like one thing with another. And so is someone's facial expression when they hear you. Does it mean annoyance? Right? Can you. Are you able to do that? Are you able to match that, that face with that knowledge that you know, someone doesn't want to talk about it, you know? Right? So I'm guessing you're talking about someone else's child here, Korean. If he rejects his other language besides Mandarin, is that a problem? I don't know. It depends on like if, if he's living in China, then of course it's not a problem. Right? You know? You know, I'm saying like, if you're living in Malaysia, I guess that's where you're from. You know, it might be a problem. It might be. If you're in Singapore, might not be a problem either. I don't know, man. It depends on the situation of the society, right? I can't say it's a problem. And obviously if we try to teach him, the only way is to tell him about. The only way is to tell him about like, you know, teach him that lost opportunities of knowing more with only one single language and especially in his own country, which is in Malaysia, I guess from what you said. So I don't know if you ask me about this kid is out of context, it's very hard for me to give you a very good overview. You know, sometimes children, you know, like even for therapists, right, we take quite a long time to establish an idea about how to deal with. Not deal with, but teach a child who is. Everyone's different. Obviously in the beginning there's a lot of similarities and a lot of things that, you know, especially parents that will need to require to learn first. So that's why the micro course is here, right? They teach you at least the basics. Know not to keep on asking questions that you don't get answers from, right? Learn to answer the questions for your kids. Learn to simplify your questions. Instead of asking, describe right. Instead of, you know, describe more, don't ask questions, give language models instead of asking for language from them. Squeezing them like a lemon is stressful, okay? It really is stressful. I've seen a lot of. And I really think that sometimes we put our own agenda before the kid and that's why most of the time they don't like it that much. And I'm talking about like, I'm speaking from like for me being a speech therapist and I started off with as an ABA therapist, which is even more like that, you know, like we, we use rewards all the time to like, as my previous boss calls it, bribe. One time the kid wasn't like answering me. My boss was supervising me. And it was a high intense stress workplace where my first job was, you know, my biggest boss would, would sit right in front of me with a toddler's chair and watch me work, you know, and when that didn't work, he was like, why is it not helping? Why is it not working? And I'm like, ah, this, I think this one. And I was wrong, obviously, because I was young and stupid. But anyways, what he said, I'm not going to curse here. But he Said bribe that out of him, you know, whatever. Write the crap out of him, right? So he has some truth in that. A lot of people shy away from using, you know, bribes or rewards. Instead, what they do is they repeat the question over and over and over again, right? And for the child, it feels like banging on the wall over and over again. Just keep on banging. You're doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result. And from, from. What's that called? A fake Internet quote, which is called the definition of insanity. Is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. That's a fake quote from Albert Einstein. That's not. He didn't say that. But there is some wisdom in that. Stop doing the things that are not working and do the things that are working. The stuff that are working are stuff that we say all the time. It's not only me. I don't care if you watch someone else, watch someone on YouTube who is a speech therapist and talk something around the same as me. Go like, I mean, not everyone is around the same, to be honest. Like, we have the same education, we learn from the same studies, we learn from our mistakes from the very beginning where there was a lot of punishment and a lot of questioning or whatever. Now we know better. Now therapy is the best it has ever been, I would believe, at least record it. So I'm gonna close off this live very soon. Aisha says, I appreciate you. I appreciate you too. And I mean, it's very hard for me to talk to you as a mom and you have to sit here and listen to me and say a lot of this kind of, this load of stuff because obviously it's difficult. And to some extent, every mom blames themselves. You know, every mom that I talk to is like, ah, it's my fault. Or you know, like people are blaming me or whatever and it feels bad and I feel bad. I don't want to blame. I'm not blaming. I don't want to. It's not your fault at all. It's not your kids fault, not anyone's fault. It's just the reality is like that and we have to deal with it, right? It's something out of our control. But we'll control what we can control, which is don't ask those silly questions again. Don't make your child stressed out. Teach the stuff one by one, right? Control what you can control and think about is this something that they are able, like your child is able to do right now. If not, then think about what's the building blocks toward it because there's always, you know, you go to a adult special needs facility, like for my job at least, and you see a lot of children, adults actually, who haven't spoken yet, right? And at the same time you see a lot of hope because you see a lot of adults who didn't used to talk, suddenly now they can talk and you know, they're doing all sorts of things in the world and I really hope most of them are like that, you know, like I'm not old enough to see a child from like a toddler to all the way to like whatever. My first student is still in primary school, right? Still is about to go into secondary I believe, but still, I don't know. The best I can do right now is to, other than, you know, teaching one child at a time is to teach you. That's all I can do. And especially during this corona, my hands are tied. I, I'm, I'm not gonna, you know, as sad as it is, right, there's some clients of mine who have, haven't been so fortunate during this pandemic, you know, they've suffered and I don't want to be inside of that narrative. So that's all I can do right now. So I'm just going to answer this last question. Any questions that come after, I'm just going to answer them with words, okay? I mean like typing. So Koyan says our daily communication is 100% Mandarin. Should we make an environment different, different language? Will that be helpful? Not really. There's nothing that, you know, I wouldn't say that making the environment different will be helpful. In fact, it will be quite stressful. Right. If you're talking about that nine year old kid, you need to let him understand why exactly he needs to learn other languages. Right? And he might be correct. He doesn't even need to learn Bahasa Malayu or sorry if I'm saying it wrong, right, Or English per se because daily communication 100 Mandarin anyways. And you might be living in a very like a Chinese packed environment. Like I don't know where you are, to be honest. I don't know. Like my friends from Malaysia, they all speak Cantonese, so. And I speak to them in Cantonese as well. So you know, you're this nine year old guy or gal, probably does not require to learn other languages or else he or she wouldn't have survived already. So to some extent he's right, doesn't need to. But if you make the environment different in a different language, it'll be stressful. He needs to know it from the heart from, you know, you need to slowly and make him understand that he must learn like the reasons why the benefits are these are like this, right? Because he's nine, he's smart. It's just that he's socially a little bit awkward. I would say if, you know, does require some therapy of some sort. Okay, so thanks guys for tuning in. Obviously, if you haven't, you should go to agentsofspeech.com micro join our micro course and at least put your first foot into the door. You know, there's already been a thousand right now a thousand something thousand or more parents who are engaged in this in this micro course. So you know, if you need more help, just reach out. Just email me@mingagentspeech.com preferably you would have already watched some of the stuff from the micro course and we can have a better chat there. And that's probably it guys. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you next time next Monday. Oh, and if you saw the live for you know, the live the Zoom call for Thursday, you're more than welcome to join. I, I really screwed up. I sent the wrong email. But I'm sure that, you know, it'll be fun. You can join but don't expect that you're. You'll be able to send me videos and whatnot. Okay, that's it. See you guys. By.