What's the Best Type of Therapy for Your Child? | www.agentsofspeech.com

Hi, guys. Today in this live, we want to talk about what and which therapy is the best for your child. This sparked from someone. Actually, a lot of you guys will ask me, hey, what type of method do we use at Agent of Speech? Do we use like ABA stuff? Do we use speech, the speech therapy stuff to be used like playtime or, you know, floor or whatever you call like, I don't know, there's a lot of like floor time, whatever. There's loads of different methods to do the same thing. Yes. And is there a better way for a child? May probably. Most probably. But is there something that is universally correct? There's a whole crazy debate about this. A lot of people do not like aba. In fact, we have a whole video about why ABA might be bad or might be good. It really is about the person who's doing it. Okay. At the end of the day, any therapy will make your child stressed out if it's not like, you know, if we don't take an approach where the child's well being is number one. Okay, that's what I'm just going to put out there. All types of therapy. No matter how you do it, it will stress out kids because we're telling them to do something they don't know how to and they don't want to. Right. If they knew how to talk, they would have already, and if they liked talking, they would have done it already. If they wanted to listen to you, they already have. Right. So if you're telling them to do something outside of what they're comfortable with, then obviously that in itself is actually stressful. Okay. So whenever you remember you learning anything, whether it's like a new language, a new sport, a new like, skill set, or you know, like just music in general, it's going to be stressful because you're learning a new thing. So let's go through what and how therapy can be stressful. Okay. I can, I can only speak for the two types of therapy that I know, and that's speech therapy and aba. Right. So speech therapy, today someone asked me, hey, are you open for assessments? Whatever. I'm not open for assessments at this moment in time, sadly, because of the pandemic. And I, I don't want to say the reason a little like anymore. It's just right now I don't think it's the best time to open in any sort of fashion. So my whole focus is on agents of speech. So if you need my help, just within agents of speech is fine, but physically not open. All right, so I told that parent to find a clinic that I know of, of a senior inside, inside of Jakarta. She's great. I'm not going to say the name here, but if you DM me, if you want someone to look for, like to do therapy for a child, that's the best bet I can give you. I haven't seen them working at all because, you know, I haven't been here for a whole long time. But at the same time, you know, there's no. So I told that parent, hey, this is the place that you, you should go to for an assessment. And then the parent said, oh my, my friend's son went there and, and it really stressed him out. Right. He couldn't do it. He was really stressed out. I don't want the same thing to happen to my daughter. So I didn't go there. Thanks for your recommendation and so on. Right. So my point is, even if, like, you know, that place is good, it's still going to stress out some kids. Therapy in general is stressful. Right. Okay. So Veronica asks, could I book a virtual session with my daughter? I don't do virtual sessions. All agents of speech is about, is about teaching the parent what to do at home. So for me, I don't do teletherapy. I don't do that through the virtual sessions with the kid because it's very difficult. I don't know how to do it. If other therapists have mastered this craft, then by all means. Right. But you know, for me, I don't think it's the best. I rather believe I teach you how to fish, so you don't need to ask for fish from me. You know what I'm saying? Like as the old saying goes. So no, you cannot book a virtual session, but what you can do is that you can join our courses and you can ask me about how to do things at home after you do. And you know, that's how I think I can help you the most. All right, thanks, Mohammed. Thank you for a thumbs up. Anyways, so let's keep on going. So you see, even a therapy center with a good reputation will stress out your child, right? So how do you navigate that? The answer is that Try. Right. The only good way for you to try out therapy is that you collect as much information as you can about that place and then you go try out. And then if after a month of therapy, your child really doesn't like it, and no matter how good the reviews are, your child just dislikes it and detests that kind of stuff, Then don't go anymore. Okay? Try somewhere else. Okay. Doesn't matter how good that therapist is for teach about teaching your child, if he or she isn't having a good time, it's not worth it. I mean, it's just down the road. It's just super hard to get them out of the place. Even sometimes children come to me, they don't really like. Like, I have some clients, like a small portion of them that they don't like me. You know, it just happens. It's just not a good fit. Well, it was more the case when I just started, but nowadays is very seldom that way. Maybe like 1 in 20 would be like that. And I would like, oh, please go here. Maybe this person would be a better fit. You know, I would do that. I wouldn't want to keep them here just because, you know, I can't get through them in terms of having a good relationship with them. So it would be that way. And by the way, for this kind of information I'm talking about, the thing is, you need to understand all types of therapy will be like that. It depends on the person and your child's connection. It's not about the method, so to speak. The method is one thing, all right? The rapport is another thing. If you have rapport, no matter what method you're trying, it's going to work to some extent because the child's like, oh, okay, I'll try. I'll bite. And they will listen. So I see Mohammed's asking a question about, like, a roadmap for therapy. Hey, Mohammed. It really depends on what you need to see a speech therapist, right? Cochlear implants, you know, it really depends how severe the child's hearing is. Hearing impairment is. And then, you know, and you say, like, what steps, right? The first step is to get an assessment, right? I cannot tell you what to do. There will be, you know, because the child. We don't know how much the child can. Can hear. So for cochlear implant. Implant, you have to have the speech and language assessment along with the hearing test results for the therapist to look at. And then we. That person will devise a plan for you. I cannot just tell you from start to finish. It's. Everyone's different, right? I mean, if you. That's the thing about therapy. It's. It's totally. You know, if there was, like, just a guidebook about, like, how to do things from A to Z, then you wouldn't need to see a therapist because it's not individualized. The problem about therapy and the beauty of it is that it's totally individualized. We don't know. But as a gist in general, Mohammed like the steps would be assess how much your child can listen. Is he. He or she still losing decibels some after the cochlear implant. So if usually what we tell parents is that we're only doing one side of cochlear implant because we want the other side to leave room for technology to advance so that later on maybe there's something better than cochlear impact down the, down the road. And then you have that other year to do it. Because once you do cochlear implant, there's no reversing of which. Right. You can't do anything other than that. You can't like make it higher, make it. There's nothing that you can do. Maybe you can change the thing, but you know how it magnetically connects to the outer device. I think you can only change the outer device to some extent. I don't know about the inner. I'm not an expert, I'm not audiologist. I'm just telling you what I know. Okay. So having that, the first step is to know what sounds your child can identify. You will be very, very, very familiar with. What we call Ling6 is by this speech therapist called Daniel Ling, who's a. Was a white guy from 1970s. Really cool. What read his book parts of it because it's out of print. But the ling6 just basically are the consonant sounds that a cochlear child should be. Should be identifying. Actually just a hearing loss person should be identifying in order to hear all the speech sounds. So we do it every before each session we check out the link 6 for cochlear implants. Most probably the higher frequency sounds, like the S sounds might be missing. So usually what that happens is, um, for really young children, we incorporate, we incorporate a lot of sign language. Okay. We use a lot of that. And don't worry that they will be like very into signing because signing in itself is very functional. It's very effective. And if you have like two, like if you've seen two deaf people just talking to each other with sign language is really entertaining. I mean like they change their faces and whatever and they're really into it. And it's really communicative though. So yeah, sometimes if you have two deaf people who do that, you know, they won't. They would rather sign and talk. Right? But because a child who is like deaf and so on, they need to Interact with us, of which we're not very good with, like, signing everything. So therefore, they still need to learn how to talk. Right. So what is the Roma? I don't know it really. You know, the first thing you got to do is to teach sign language. Make sure that the cochlear implant is working well. The other side, you should have a hearing aid that is working perfectly and you check it all the time. And with the link 6 sounds. And also to teach them to start because you don't know how to hear it. After the cochlear implant, it might sound rather robotic. So you can try online on YouTube to search like, how does cochlear implant sound? And then you can hear the difference in, like, naturalistic speech and cochlear implant. It just sounds like it's going through a microphone, you know. So a lot of the times for younger children, what happens is that we teach them all the language we can through just speech and also, like signing and pictures and so on. And then as they progress, they will be slower than usual because they're missing a lot of information. Right. So as their language progresses at around like four to five or something, the main thing that we also do is to. For them to identify the sounds because they're going to work much harder, fill in the gaps when we're talking. All right. Especially in English, if. I don't know, in English is rather difficult because all the sounds blend together when you talk fast. Right. I can't speak for other languages. I believe, like in Chinese, my. My mother tongue, it's. It's syllabic time. So we go like one word at a time, and we don't really merge them together. So, Muhammad, I'm not sure about your language. All right. So I hope I answered your question here. Okay, so, Mithali. Sorry if I'm getting your name wrong. My child has speechless. Still has. But she's improving. New words every day. Talking sentences, struggle to pronounce words properly. Her sounds are incorrect. Okay, so her question is, what do I do? So it's easy. Go see speech therapist. Because we don't know what kind of sounds are missing. All right? Each sound that are missing are. There's a reason behind it. Okay? So we cannot treat a child without knowing what sounds are erroneous, as we call it and why is it wrong? Okay. And we always treat what we call for mythology, your pronunciation. Right. That's actually a speech disorder or speech delay. And it's not like a language problem. So they have problems with producing sounds. Right. So the problem with the thing about it is that we don't have any courses about this yet. So the best thing is to see a speech therapist because it's very specific about the errors. So I really don't know. And you really need a trained ear to listen to it and give you feedback about. Okay, so he's missing the S sounds, the T sounds, whatever this is incorrect is replaced by what? And then why is it replaced with that? Is it because her tongue muscles aren't strong enough? Is it because, you know, she's listening to this sound as the sound she cannot like, identify the difference? Is it because that for some odd reason she just couldn't do the sound because she couldn't identify? Yeah, there's always those reasons. Either she can't identify it through her perceptive, like perceptively, or. Or that she's unable to create that sound with her mouth muscles. Right. So what do you do? See a speech therapist. Okay. Veronica says my daughter is. Okay. Tract and vented. She only says four words when she puts on passy. More. I don't know what that is. Let me just search online. Passy. What? More. All right, let me take a look at what that is. See, I don't know a lot of stuff. Oh, okay, cool. Okay, I get. I. I know that what. What that is in Chinese. I don't know what that is in English. Right. Okay, cool. So when she puts that. The valve on, the best thing you can do is the same as what we've been saying about Muhammad's child with a cochlear implant. We want to help her with a lot more gestures. Because if she's on a valve, then the problem is that. And she's tracked and vented. That means when we talk, we require air to come out. Right. And when she is struggling between breathing and talking and she hasn't have that strong like that coordination going on. So we always talk about in speech, your child's problem is a motoric problem. So it depends. It's. I'm not sure how she is doing right now. Okay. I don't know the details of her child, Veronica, but most probably is that when a child has these problems like have tracked and vented and so on, she is battling between breathing and talking. And most probably most of the time she would rather use on breathing like all of us. Right. So I would say that use teacher more gestures as much as you can. If she is physically able to do different signs, then, you know, help her with it. It doesn't need to Be accurate. The sign language. You get it? So you can search up, like, baby sign language on Google and see what types of common words that a baby should use by what age. Okay. So you can take a look at that and then teach her that way. The thing about this is that she needs to build up her. What's that called? Her breathing coordination better. And then we can do a lot more speech, because right now we don't know whether, you know, like, I haven't seen your child. Maybe she's. When she's trying to say something, it's very difficult for her to do it. And then when it's difficult, she doesn't want to. When she doesn't want to, she won't do it. Right. And when she won't do it, she gets less practice. And when she gets less practice, her language doesn't catch up. Okay. Yeah. She knows more signs. So introduce as many signs as you can to give it to her. I'm not sure if she's in the best shape to, you know, to speak. I. I really don't know. Right, okay. That's exactly what happens. Great. Yeah. So if. If that's the case, then your. Your best bet for now is sign language. Okay? If you push her to talk with these physical limitations, it's gonna have a bad taste. You know, it's just not gonna. It's not gonna be rewarding or fun. You know, it's like a super difficult. It's exhausting, you know, because I've seen adults on. On track, right? And we cannot really communicate with babies or toddlers on the track. So I've seen adults on the track on a feeding tube. The way that they talk is so labored. And they're like. And they tell me that he doesn't want to talk. He's just, like, always like this. You know, the old men in the. In the hospital wards, they just keep on just telling me to go away, you know, tell me to bugger off. Because when you see a speech therapist in the hospital, what it means you have to talk and you have to eat two things that take up the same space as talking, you know, as breathing. Sorry. So the air track. The air track needs to close. When you eat the air track, you cannot breathe. You can only breathe out when you're talking, Right. You cannot talk when you're breathing in, you go. You can't do that. You can only when you're talking, air is coming out and it's vibrating your vocal folds here. So therefore, for now, don't push her to talk, it's okay for her to mouth it. Even teach her as many sign language as possible. Okay, cool. So all this kind of stuff, let's go back to the therapy side of what we're talking about, guys. If you haven't, go to agents of Speech.com and by tomorrow the micro course will be increasing in price and the reason behind it is just one word, inflation. Okay? So we're going to increase it. And if you haven't, just if you haven't signed up most probably now until tomorrow, it will be still be at like 14.97 USD. Okay, so sign up before that. I see a lot of people have done it already. I'm very happy. So about therapy and the one thing you have to remember is to try it. Okay? Do not think that just because everyone says, oh, Ming is great, Ming is like really good at like teaching children, you still have to try it out. You know, I always have a mindset of you come to me. Doesn't mean that you will be here with me forever. You know, I will have to give you off to someone else if things don't work out. Which hurts me personally because you know, it means that I'm not doing a good job. Right. Other than that, you know, sometimes we, you have to think about like the multi dimensional way of therapy. There's like ot, pt, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, right? There's, there's speech therapy, the three T's, the main three T's. And the problem with seeing multiple speech therapists in one time is that the methods of 1:4 therapy might, you know, make you confused about what to do. Okay? It might confuse the child. I think that's fine. To be honest. I really think that's okay because they're only there for like an hour or something. But if it confuses you, then you don't know what to do. If you're inconsistent with what you're doing with your child, then it's going to confuse them. They won't want to talk to you, okay? Because you know how children will always the, they know who to, to bully. You know, they, they see you, they're like, okay, this guy, I can get off with doing this and that, right? This dad probably. No, I, I won't pull dad's hair. Okay, Grandma. Yeah, I'm gonna take all the sweets from grandma. They know these things, okay? They're, they're speech and language delay. They're not dumb, okay? They're, they're, in fact, they're so smart they can Survive in this world without the language. That's what is, that's, that's what dangerous about, you know, teaching delayed children is because they find other ways to get around to what they want to do with you. Okay. It might be like snatching. It might be like running away. It might be like headbutting you, whatever. So the thing is, if you're not consistent with your child, then it will confuse him and, or her and then in turn is going to affect your relationship at home. Okay? So the biggest takeaway here is that test as like as many things therapies as you can. But do it one by one and make sure that you know, you stay long enough and you listen to the therapist. If you feel good about the therapist and he or she is giving you a good understanding about what's going on and, and educating you at the same time, then okay, by all means, like try your best to stay with them. Okay. If not and you don't feel good, then, you know the, the worst thing I hear about things is that if it, if a parent comes to me and they don't feel good about me and they keep on asking me and suggest stuff to me when I think it's wr, then you know, it's not going to be a good relationship. You know, I'm saying. Yeah. Veronica, the thing is agents of speech.com micro so micro course that I'll type it for you. Okay. I need to put www.help me do that. Okay, Maybe I'll do it now. Anyway, so you know, like I, I've had especially when I in Asia. Right. Others like to say, oh, I know what's the best. My kid. I want this to happen. Make it happen for me. I give you money, go do it. You know, it's a very Asian thing. I give you money, solve my problem. That kind of attitude, which is we all do it. I mean we do it to doctors, right? We do it to like everyone. But at the same time I don't like it. And I'm sure like a lot of people who are professional don't like it either. So whenever you feel like you have to do that and the therapist is like you're, you're having a tug of war of like, of like power, then I don't think it's a good relationship anymore. Okay. In fact, I, I just refuse to work with parents who even pay me a lot of money. I just say no because, you know, I always put the kid first. If the kid is in between me and the parent, trying to like control what we're going to teach and what approach we're going to take, then I don't think it's the best for the kid. And it's not like I get paid and I just. I can just turn a blind eye. I don't want that in my life, and I don't want that in the child's life either. So I, you know, if. If the parent does that to me, I just leave. You know, I just say, hey, man, sorry it's not working out. Let's not do this. You know, here's a bunch of referrals, and then I'll just say, I'm doing a bad job. I don't want that for a kid. Go find someone else. I can't give you the stuff you want, you know, and that's it. I don't even tell them that. Oh, I think you're doing this. Your suggestions are whatever. I don't say that because, you know, it's just gonna be a bad thing for everyone, right? So. And I also invite parents to tell me that in advance as well. So I want you guys to go and find a therapist. Not me, okay? Not. Not me. Maybe me in the future, but not me. To have a good relationship with them. Listen to what they say, try out the things that they propose to do exactly as they tell you, and see if those things actually make sense. If it makes sense, keep on doing it. If it doesn't make sense for you, no matter how much you try, that relationship will not work. You know, it's just like any relationship. Like friendship, dating, you know, like working relationships with. With your boss and whatnot. If it's. The relationship is toxic between you and the therapist, meaning you guys are trying to, like, scheme against each other. Oh, I want the child to be talking like this, and you're teaching like this. Oh, you're doing too much play. I want it to be more structured or like, oh, it's. It's too fierce or whatever. Can you be a more friendly. Not on the same page. It'll be very difficult because you won't listen to the therapist to do what you're. You're supposed to do at home, right? And the therapist is going to blame you and going to be like, hey, what the heck? Come back with a blank sheet of home. The home practice paper. What's going on, man? And then you. You pretend that you did it and you scribbled whatever. I had that multiple times. You know, like, actually, every therapist has done this before, right? We create these homework papers in which some therapists take, like, put their lives, like put their blood, sweat and tears into making those so that you can have a good time at home. But some people just whatever. And the reason why some therapists are like, whatever, because they know that the parents aren't going to do it. They're going to come back with like, scribbles and pretend that they've done everything, but they haven't, okay? And, you know, that's just bad. Okay, so let me summarize today's topic. Today's topic is what kind of therapy is good for a child? The answer is every type can be working as long as the rapport is there between the therapist and the child. And also that you and the therapist should be on the same page. If you're not, then it's going to be really difficult, I tell you. And not every therapist can walk away from that kind of relationship because it's their job. Okay? I work for myself. I'm very happy about it and I can do that. And I can be frank and very straightforward with, with parents. But not everyone, every therapist can do that. In fact, most of them just view it as their job. And pleasing parents is one of the things that they try to keep you there. But to be honest with you, to be very, very and completely transparent, is that sometimes what you think, what the parents think isn't the best for the kid, okay? It's just period. Because there is professional opinions that you have to take into account. If you, if you don't want professional opinion, then don't ask for a therapist. Right? You can try your own way, okay? You go somewhere and you pay money for, for advice. You should take it. That's what I mean, okay? Not in a bad way. I'm not telling you. You're always wrong. Listen to me. Whatever. No, I'm not being a dictator. Listen to what therapists say. Try. If it sucks, then don't do it. You know, then change, change and find another one. Okay? That's for any type of industry. You go to one plumber, it doesn't do a good job. What do you do? Call another one. Right? That's the same thing. You know, like therapy or any type of business. Industry is always a means to an end. We're trying to solve one problem. If one doesn't solve one problem correctly, go find another one. Okay? But if you pay the money, please listen to them. And, and if you don't have a relationship, like, good relationship with them, change it now because it's very, very personal, okay? If you have a bad experience, then it's very difficult. So, for instance, My child is 7 years old, still not speaking properly. What should I do? I'm from India. Okay, this kind of question is not that good. You know why? Because I don't know. What does not speaking properly mean? I cannot, you know, I cannot answer you. Impossible to answer. I don't know what you mean by that. So I don't know what you should do. You should go see a therapist. Mahima. If you're. If your city right now is not under lockdown, you should go and do it. Okay? Go see a therapist. Because I don't know what you mean by not speaking properly. I cannot guess. There's no magic ball here. I cannot like, look into it. And I'm like, oh, yeah, seven year old. Oh, this is why this and that. I can't do that. Sorry. All right. Zara says, how can I encourage child to say what they need instead of pointing? Take the micro course. Go to agentsofspeech.com micro okay, this question is a lot better because it tells me exactly what kind of behavior you're talking about. And I can tell you there might be different reasons why they're pointing instead of talking about. It might be that they have a speech problem instead of a language. But go through the micro course first so that you have your bases covered. And if you need more help, you can ask inside of our private group on Facebook. Or go speech. Go see a speech therapist right away. Okay? That's what I'm going to say to you. Okay? Agents of speech.com micro this one? Yeah. So I kind of typed it wrong. Guys, I'm so sorry. Www.that's what happens when you talk and type at the same time. You don't get it correctly. All right? So you better get it now because our prices are going up by tomorrow like 30%. Okay? And that's probably it. Guys, I. I just want to end it here because that's all I wanted to say today. The reason why I want to say this is because you know me. I. If you. You're the first time here, then you know this is something new for you. I don't like repeating myself, okay? There's loads of videos online and you can take a look at it. I mean, on YouTube, whether from me or from other therapists, they're all great. What's the name of the Facebook group? Right? So let me just put it here. Give me a sec. But we have the. The one for free here. And also there's one for people who have. Who are inside one of our courses. Okay, so there are two. Okay, Free one. I cannot really even keep up with everything there. We got 6,000 something people there. It's very difficult to keep track of stuff over there. Right? So this is the one that. This is the free one where everyone comes in, but we try to screen everyone that comes in. And this is the one that I'm more engaged in. But it's only if you've joined one of our courses, then you can join and for sure there are no spammers in there. Okay? Okay, so that's it, guys. Oh, what else I talking about? I was saying I don't like repeating myself and I like that when parents like yourself, you ask questions that are very direct and you explain exactly what your situation is. If not, it's very hard for me to answer your question and then it's going to be super. You know, you don't get your answers and I waste my time asking you more and more, right? We waste each other's time and everyone's time here. So I'm not being harsh, right? I'm just being straightforward. You want answers, then you know, ask the questions correctly and nicely and you know, tell me what you want to know instead of saying that, oh, what, help me. My, my son is 3 year old, not talking, help me. Like that. That's fine. That's not cool. Okay? Be cool and ask correctly. Ask. Say my child is like this pulls my hand, you know, says these words but doesn't use it consistently. He can say this word, that word. He can sing songs, but if he wants something, he will pull my hand. Something like that. Okay? There's a very typical case right there. Then the answer would be go to agents of speech.com micro okay, for other things like, such as all my very specific stuff, like my son doesn't have the S sound. What should I do? Right? My son would like to doesn't go to a toilet or something like that. My son doesn't know how to line up that kind of stuff. Also you can ask me. Feel free to do that, but please describe as much as you can, all right? Or else it's very difficult for myself to answer you. Okay, so that's it, guys. Thanks for tuning in for this live video. Anything that you want to ask, just put them in the comment section, even if you're watching a recording. Okay? I'll try my best to get back to you. And if you guys join the Facebook group, we do this live every Monday and you can chime in. And, you know, it's just free consultations, you know, just ask me anything here. And I've booked this time for, you know, just doing this for you guys after dinner. All right, so that's it for now. And if you haven't, go to agentsofspeech.com check out our courses. The micro course, for that matter, is increasing in price tomorrow. And that's pretty much it, guys. I'll see you next Monday. Bye. Bye.