When Should You Give Up on Therapy? | www.agentsofspeech.com

Welcome to our Monday lives. Every Monday, 9pm My time, I'll go live and maybe we'll make it a little earlier. But it's just to cater for those who are in maybe in America or whatever the time zones that you can watch it in the morning. Okay. Without waking up at like 6 or something like that. So I just want to say thank you for everyone who watches this. I'm just going live a little bit earlier, around five minutes earlier, just to get people notified on a different platform. So if you haven't and you're watching this on a recording, it's because you missed it. So press the bell icon for YouTube and also press notified for on Facebook if there's that kind of button there. And let's talk about when to give up. And this topic, why I want to talk about this is because parent who I've been teaching for the past two years has decided to. Does that stop? Normally I'm totally, you know, it's okay with that. But this one is a little more sentimental because she was one of my first ones. In fact, her video is actually, her progress video is actually on the, the channel and also the YouTube, sorry, the Facebook page. And it's a really, you know, she was in tears and obviously we didn't talk really that much about it. She had the, she, she thought about this and decided to go ahead and stop for now because number one, she had personal issues. I'm not going to disclose it here. It's something good, not bad. Okay. Second of all, the kid was, was going to online school and then you know how online school works, right? The parent needs to be beside the kid all the time to facilitate and so on. So she's getting pretty, pretty busy and the kid has some homework to do as well. So she was like, okay. So now when we started like two years ago, he couldn't even say a word. The only thing he could do was animal sounds. And the mother would. If you're listening to this and you know who this is, I'm not going to say the name. I mean it's pretty obvious who it is. She would drive a motorcycle all the way there to the hospital for like, it's like a 30 to 40 minute ride. Go there. The kid cries in the hospital room for like 30 minutes and then they take the bride back home. And that's why she kind of just kept on emailing me and asking me what to do. And I'm very happy because now the kid at least can say some simple sentences, can at least understand what's going on? And at least count to 10 or actually 20, actually. And can function as a person inside of online class, which is excellent. I wouldn't have thought that we have. We would have come this far only on online methods only. So that's why Agents of Speech was created. Right. We were doing this way before COVID hit and she reached out because she didn't know what to do. And I was in Jakarta. I'm in Indonesia now. I was in Jakarta seeing clients. Now I'm not because of COVID But by the way, it's getting a lot better now in Indonesia. So thank God, it's really getting a lot better. And I don't know why, but it seems like it's going away somehow. Fingers crossed. I don't want to jinx it. Right? So back then, you know, I didn't have any of the things I had right now. Like, I didn't have the courses. I didn't have the YouTube channel. I didn't have anything. So she really helped me understand how to teach a parent over the Internet. And that's why I can do what I do here nowadays. Right. So thanks to her. And today's topic is when you should give up. So it's a really sentimental thing. Obvious. The obvious answer is never, right? So. But at the same time, at different times, you need different things. It doesn't mean that every time I would recommend you to get therapy, sometimes I would say, hey, maybe go. Going to a kindergarten would be the best bet. Maybe going to a play school would be the best thing for a child, right? Maybe some. Your child isn't ready for speech therapy, just like one of the students that I've assessed. And if you're watching this and you're like, hey, man, I thought you were not seeing any, anyone. Well, that one has been booked long, long time ago. Okay? So I think there's different times for different things. Okay. I'm not saying that it's always appropriate to see a speech therapist, right? If your child, number one, if your child isn't able to sit down and work with the speech therapist or maybe isn't able to concentrate for very long, there's a lot of disruptive behavior, so on, so forth. Maybe it's not the best time to speak, see a speech therapist just now, because we don't. We cannot most of the time. Speech therapy is quite expensive by the hour. And what you don't want is that, you know, you're spending like the hour, maybe like 30 minutes managing their behavior. That'd Be a waste of speech therapy money. Okay. Where would be a more appropriate. Maybe go to a OT occupational therapy to really calm them down with like cross motor activities, number one. Number two. Or you can go to like some sort of ABA center. Even if ABA has a bad reputation, right? And most of them, and some of them I've talked about in this channel and is that they're not very good at what they do sometimes, right? They're, they're not, you know, they're good enough, they're not excellent. You know, the industry standard isn't very high is what I mean. I don't mean to like trash on people that are very good ABA therapists. And I'm not talking about in this, in the country I'm living in. I mean all around the world, okay? The, in general, therapy is something that is not regulated very well after graduation. And that's why you see, like for instance, for me, my master's program, dude, like around just over 50% of us graduated and became a speech therapist. You know, it's, it's quite difficult to, to attain a degree or attain a certificate or something, you know, because it's, there are gatekeepers and people want to, you know, there's a status quo which is also a problem in this industry. I want to, I don't want to talk about, in this life, right, about, you know, when should you really give up? That's the thing. So we did talk about whether your child is ready or not. So when should you give up? I think you should give up individual therapy when your child is able. When you see that therapy is starting to slow down, you see that your child is able to interact with the therapist very well. It seems like whatever the therapist teaches, it gets done pretty quick. Then it's time to move on to something harder. Okay. And it's not really the therapy that has a problem per se, is the, it is the environment or the, you know, as we always say, we have the generalized across environments across different contexts. So if a child is doing well inside of therapy room, a clinic context, excellent. Let's move on to something else. Let's move on to like maybe a group setting that we can do within the clinic. That's also okay because you're improving, you're increasing the difficulty of the whole thing, right? So that's one. Number two is that if you are going into group therapy, it's best that your, your therapist who is there to look after it. So you can give up in quit. You can say, ah, no more individual therapy. I Think it's enough for now. I want my child to be ready to school. I think that's more than fair enough. I would, I'm. You know my biggest reason for this. What's that called again? I forgot the word to dismissing. Not really dismissing. Anyways, to let go of a kid is because, hey, my resources here are not good enough to continue. I did this like two of the, of the students I had here and asked them to go Singapore because they had the resources to. And it was excellent. I mean they were able to go somewhere else with the, with the resources that I don't have here as a solo therapist. And what does that mean? Meaning there are more people inside of the place to generalize with, to play with, to interact with. That's number one. Number two, there are more people to instruct people around. What I mean is if you have like three or four speech and language delayed children in one classroom, or even autistic, right. You need, it's labor intensive. You know, it takes people to actually help those, those children to, to operate. Okay. Because they're used to individual thing. Okay, so when should you give up that. Okay, so I would give that up when it seems that they have already gotten used to it, they're okay with it and then we can move on to the next one which is basically just shadow. I would say like get a shadow teacher to shadow them. In a real school, the best shadow teacher is obviously you, the parent or the therapist. But you know, the therapist who has been working with your child probably in a practical way is too expensive, number one. Number two is that it's just not practical because they have to see other students as well. Right? I mean, it's just you'd be paying crazy money to get your, your, your main, your previous therapist at the clinic to come shadow you. It's just like that. That's the industry, you know, you pay someone's, what's it called, travel fees. And I don't know where, how it is in your, where you are. For us in Hong Kong, we will charge even for the transport fees. Right. If you are living over there or the school was over there, I would start my clock when I start traveling, you know. And the reason is because the time that I use traveling, I could have used it to see another kid and made the same amount of money. Okay, that, that, that's the logic behind it. I think it's fair to a certain extent, but at the same time, you know, should it be totally on the, on the parents? I don't Know about that. Okay, so let's keep on going. So to give up therapy, that's the good side, right? The bad side is that when she give it up. So for instance, the mother who came to me and now is like, discharged. That's the word. She discharges us. She said, ah, quit, so on and so forth, right? Her first therapy experience at the hospital, why she left was because it wasn't working. Okay? The kid was having a bad time. Then you can give up. Okay? Maybe children, usually they need like two or three or even four sessions, maybe four weeks to get used to a new place. And if after like a whole month, nothing has changed and it's all crying and all tantrums and stuff, I don't think it's the best idea to keep on going, you know? So I think that's a good time to give up and find someone. Someone else. Okay? Another thing is to give up a type of therapy. So I cannot say for other types of therapy. I would only talk about the only two that I know, which is speech therapy and applied Behavioral analysis. I would say the time to give up speech would be, as I said just now, if the. That the good side, right? The bad side is that if the therapist isn't working on something that is the main point you want to work on and doesn't have a good enough explanation to persuade you to do so, then, you know, by all means, go away. You know, go find with someone else. The. You know, the world is big enough to find someone who will, who. Who can work this out. Okay, so have I ever had this problem? Yes. You know, I've had, You know, it's not like everyone's going to suit everyone, right? Of course I'm going to have children who leave me because it's not compatible, right? But is it. Did I have clients who cried away, like, all through, like the whole month? No, I didn't have that. But it's something that is common, especially in ABA therapy, that the child takes very long to get used to it and they get really upset because it's just too. How to say? It's just too. It's just too structured for a lot of kids. It's too long sometimes. And I think, right, I think if you know about it, that's the. That's the pretext, right? If you know about it, then by all means, stop it. But most of the time you don't know. So what you need to do is, like, you need to go to the ABA therapist and request for videos number one and Number two, if there's like a single way mirror. Is that what you call single way glass? I forgot the name. Right. Or one way mirror? One way, whatever. Okay, so if, if you got one of those where you can observe from another room or outside, then you should do that. You can take a look at how the therapists are doing. Obviously an aba, you know, as we talked about in this channel or in this Facebook page, the, the quality of ABA therapists are, is, is large. It's huge. Okay. So when you go, it will scare the ABA therapist. I've been there before. It's my first job, man. You know, like if I see a parent there, I get pretty anxious. I don't know what to say. It's like I've got marbles in my mouth. I can't even talk. I'm scared that I say the wrong thing. I'm scared that, you know, I do a lot of things that the parent doesn't like and I will lose that student and therefore I do a bad job. You know, like that kind of thoughts. So when you go, just be very mindful about therapists there. They might not be 100% experienced, especially with dealing with parents. You know, it took me a long time to learn. You know, as I told you, I, after I graduated from master's, I immediately worked on the most competitive street on in Hong Kong. And therefore it really accelerated my, my way of speaking to parents and dealing with parents in general. I don't think a lot of people, a lot of therapists have this because they work in the government. They, they work in government funded projects so on or NGOs for that matter, that they don't need to do this right. So therefore this is the most important thing. If you need to give up therapy, make sure that you have talked to the therapist and had a thorough discussion. It's very, actually quite hard for the, you know, it's actually quite hard for therapists to be well trained and explaining stuff to people. That's why I'm doing these lives. I've been practicing talking to you since three years ago. So on, on, on camera, right? I've practicing talking to parents since like 2014. You know, it's, it's been a long time. So that's why I can talk, I can talk to you like this and I can try my best to make you understand, but this is a luxury for a lot of therapy centers, I believe. And that is the, the one thing that I think it needs to improve on. Okay. So if you think that the communication Part is also not good enough. You should also also give it up. Okay, so that's all I wanted to share today. It's just a short little live to tell you about just my feelings so far. You know, I feel like whenever I, I leave a kid or a parent decides to go, no matter what the charge are, the fees are okay, even if it's a free service, a high end service, whatever. I feel it's like a breakup, you know what I'm saying? And I feel like when this happens, it's like life gets in the way and you know, sometimes it's difficult because you know, to some extent that student is also how to say it's a, you know, I see them every day, you know, so it's, it's a, it's a, it's a cool relationship and it's difficult, you know, so that's why I made like the online stuff Agents of Speech. If you want to check it out, go www.agentsofspeech.com if you haven't. I'm grateful for you watching this. I know that sometimes I go through things. If you not the first time you've watched this live, you will know that I go through quite a things like a few times because you know, it takes a few times for you to truly understand what I mean. Okay, so that's it guys. Have a great night. Have a great evening. I don't see any questions tonight and I, I don't think I have the mood to answer anything in detail tonight. So let me know in the comments or send me an email or something. Go check out my website, agentsofspeech. Com. And that's it for tonight, guys. I'll see you.