When Should You Start Worrying About Speech Delay? | www.agentsofspeech.com/micro

Hello, everyone. Today, tonight we're going to talk about a little more about when you should start worrying if you have a speech delay child or not. And the reason why we're doing this tonight is because there's a lot more people, mothers who are contact me, contacting me, asking me, oh, my child is like 24 months old or like less than two years, and they're like, oh, do you think they have a special aid? Or what do you think about, you know, like the, the signs of autism or whatever? And my answer to that is always, hey, I haven't seen your child yet. I don't know enough to help, like, diagnose. Right. And that's only for the speech delay part. And I'm in no shape or form. I'm going to make a disclaimer right here. I'm in no shape or form or in any way that I'm suggesting that these are the hallmarks for autism. I'm not a person who diagnoses autism. I'm a speech therapist. I only diagnose about speech and language problems. Okay? So with that said, with that out of the way, I do want to address some of the questions and it's a very general guideline, okay? If anything, you need a diagnosis, you must go to a certified therapist or a practitioner or whatever you call it in your area and get someone to do a language, speech and language assessment or like autism screening or examination. Okay? And for speech and language, you go to a speech therapist, all right? Not anyone else. For autism, you go to a pediatrician, a specialized one, or you can go to a clinical psychologist. Okay? So only these two are more of a reliable source for telling you at this moment in time. And there's a lot of people who are telling me, oh, in the United States, you can already do a screening for someone who is. For someone who is below 2. Like a screening, right? Well, I don't know anything about that. We're not in the usa. At least I'm not. So I don't really care much about. About it. And by the way, in my experience, okay, like, it's just me, right? It's just me. Is that if you have a child who, who is on the spectrum, sometimes, sometimes something changes at around three and they have a big shift. All right? That's what I've heard, that's what I've seen. I'm not saying this is the truth. Don't quote me or anything, but if it's too early, it's quite easy to miss it. That's what I think. Okay, so you don't need a test. I can see and see your comment. All right. Okay, cool. Okay. Any questions? Put it down here. And the next thing I'm going to talk about is early signs of speech delay. Okay. We're going to talk about speech delay. Speech and language delay first and then autism. So let's talk about speech and language delay, where the short form of speech delay. Right. But obviously we're talking more about language. So the first question is to get out of the way. What's speech versus language? Cool. Speech is the sounds we make when we're communicating. Like I am with you right now. I'm using speech. Right. So that, that, that's that it's just the sounds. Okay. Language is more about the symbols, the, the, you know, the message inside. So if someone's doing sign language and stuff, that's the language. All right. If someone is writing, that's the language. It's not only talking about verbal. So there's like the speech, the sounds that we make, and also the language which is the content, the concepts, whatever. All right, so when we're talking about a speech and language delay, we're talking about a child who is unable to communicate with you using those symbols. All right? And speech is only one of those symbols. All right, so let's talk about by one and a half. These are very general milestones. If you want to, you can just go online and check. Milestones are all on the Internet, but just as a general guideline. Right. One and a half years old is the latest that a child should, should start to use one word sentences meaning they are using like mama, papa, eat, mom, mom, you know, sleep, drink, you know, or I want, like, want, maybe like toilet, pee, pee. One words, right? There might be like some people say, oh, it must be more than three words. Doesn't matter, as long as they're using like one word consistently for the real meaning. Meaning they don't say mama for everything. They don't call your the daddy like mama. That's not cool. So one and a half years old is the latest. A child should start using consistent one word, like to address a specific thing. All right? They're not calling everything mom. They're not calling everything lala or something. It's specific. All right? That's up to one and a half years old. If your child at one and a half cannot do that or, you know, they have a lot of what they call hand leading, like pulling your hand, whatnot, then you know, you might have to start being a Little more vigilant, meaning, you know, pay a little more attention to your child. Okay, but is it a good time to send a child at one and a half to like therapy or whatever? I don't think so. Okay. Because long, long time ago when I was a kid, I didn't go to school until I was three. All right. Nowadays, because I don't know for what particular reason in our like culture and society, we all go to preschool at like 2, which is, I don't know why, because like, you know, children, some of them are not ready to leave the parents. Right? And I'm saying this because I've seen it myself. It's not because I've read it from a textbook. It's just because I feel like, you know, one year old to two year old, like that gap, like one and a half to two is not a good time to start therapy at all. If you came to me at like one something, I can barely do anything, to be honest, the only thing I could do is to teach you how to communicate better with a child. Which you don't need to come to me. You can just sign up, you know, at agents of speech.com and we have a micro course on that. So go check it off if you haven't. Right, so one and a half to two. What you do too is you don't bring them to therapy yet because most of the time that money isn't well spent. Okay, why not just spend more time with the child, talk to him, observe a little more about how much he can do or she can do and then by the time she's like two and two and a half, it's a better time to go to therapy because now you actually know what they want and how much they can play and how long they can sit around, hang around with you and then you can do some therapy work. Okay, Just two to two and a half is a better time to start. I would say that three is even a little better because three year olds, I can typically get them to sit down and do a lot of stuff. All right, okay, I digress. Let's go back to around two, right? A two year old, what should a child be doing? Okay, a two year old children should be using two word sentences. Okay, so, so meaning it's just very simple. It's even like the grammar is totally wrong. If you have grammar in your language, some really have a very free form. Right, but we're talking about maybe in English, right? English, they can say like mommy eat or like eat biscuit or like bye bye milk. When they finish drinking, they say bye bye milk. Like you know, as a way to say, to reject it and say it's finished. Right? Because they can't say finished. So any two words put into a sentence that's around the level of a two year old should be. And you might say, hey, but my friend's children, they're speaking in like whole chunks of sentences where they're two. Well, yeah, that's like, you know, the minimum they should do is two words, right? Some children, they already sound like an adult by the time they're two. And I've seen a whole bunch of them, okay. Which is kind of cool. And you have to understand that these language milestones are done long time ago, not long time ago, but relatively like long. Like for me in Hong Kong, the last time they did it was pretty long ago. It was like 10 to like 20 years ago. Okay, like, tell me if I'm wrong. Maybe something came up new. But some of these milestones can be quite old given that, you know, everyone's been using it and they don't want to like go out and do another research. So these minimum milestones are from long time ago and long time ago. Children's like, language baseline wasn't as high as right now. Because, you know, we go to preschool at 2, right? We teach, we go, we have baby lessons even, right? So it's not crazy that children's level, general language level is increasing, right? And sometimes, you know, it makes me think, okay, that's actually making the gap between the typical developing children and the speech delayed or language delayed population. The gap is increasing because of that problem. Right? So anyways, I digress again. So by two, if your child isn't using two word sentences together, then that might be another problem. Okay? But if by two they're using like one words consistently for different items, specific items, they can reference the correct ones, then I would say, okay, just wait a bit, maybe two and a half or something, right? And then when it's two and a half is basically still like two words, two to three words. I'm talking about like the base level for typical developing children. And they can actually start to answer some questions like, okay, what like who or where. These where, maybe not what and who is a little more solid, right? Yes and no's what we call binary choice, meaning, oh, you want this or this in front of them though, not like out of their, their site. Right? That one is a little harder. Okay, so by the two and a half, right? If your child is having that kind of like, they cannot really answer questions at all, especially yes, no, and the binary choice ones, then you really have to, you know, be careful because it means that their comprehension isn't that great. Okay. And what I would encourage you to do is to go see a speech therapist, get an assessment, if you can, during corona. If this is a problem, you know, then educate yourself a little bit more about how to provide a better language environment for a child. And these, you know, if you search on Google, you get a whole load of them. You know, talk at the level, you know, talk slowly, talk simpler, you know, describe rather than asking questions. I mean, you know, you don't need a. You don't need like a speech. You don't need to pay a speech therapist like 100 or $200 an hour to tell you that. You can just go on Google and check it out. And we also have a micro course here. It talks about some of the less conventional advice because, you know, the stuff that I talked about, the conventional advice, it's everywhere nowadays. If you're in a developed country, you go inside a clinic room or like, you know, a pediatrician's pediatrician's office, they would like, tell you to read a book called It Takes Two to Talk, right? They might even have like a poster or whatever tell you what to do at home. So do that first. Do some, like, what we call language facilitation. First between two to three. All right? Maybe it should be fine. And which brings me to my next point, okay. Which is, you know, recently there's a lot more parents joining our micro course. And that's because I've been running some ads, right? And some people. That's why more people are asking me questions. And then some. Someone said to me, oh, have you heard of like, the Einstein syndrome? Does my son have it? Like, is it legit? What about it? And I didn't know what it was, right? So I checked online, and it's basically the Einstein syndrome is like, oh, whoever gifted child are always, you know, slow to talk in the beginning because Einstein only started talking at 4. And then I'm like, okay, so at the end of the day, right, doing therapy or you know, you know, doing therapy, bringing them to bring yourself to learn about educating your own child at your own house is because of a fear, right? The fear of your child might not catch up, okay? Or your child might not be able to fit in and cope with the world outside, right? So at the end of the day, it really is risk management, right? Because what If. What are the chances that, you know, if your child's like Einstein, like a late talking genius, then, you know, hallelujah, great. Nothing to worry about. Okay? But what I'm trying to say is it's better than to be safe than sorry, okay? And these techniques are, you know, if you just try, it's going to work. It's been around for a long time. Well before, actually, not well before, it was in 2000s when this kind of like parent facilitation skills came out to the majority of the market. Right. And. And this really helped a lot because, you know, right now, if you're watching this and you've tried getting speech therapy, if you're not paying a private practitioner like myself, you will have to wait for a long time because resources are very, you know, it's very scarce. It's skilled labor to some extent. Right. So at the end of the day, it's really up to you, okay, Whether you think, oh, should you take the risk, should you wait? Or whatever. I really think that you can wait until the maximum. From my point of view, my opinion, there's no scientific research behind it, is that, you know, you can wait until 3 if you want to, but the signs are very, very, very obvious by two and a half. Okay. If your child isn't like, understanding any questions, hasn't spoken a word yet, okay. Most of the stuff he talks, he uses, you cannot hear because it's like all the wrong sounds are like just alien, quote, unquote, alien language. Right. Then you don't need any more signs. You should seriously just go find a speech therapist and see what they can tell you. But, excuse me, by the time you're two and a half, your child is two and a half, and then he's using some words, answers some questions, then obviously you can wait till three. You get what I mean? Okay, and let's go on to talk about autism now. So I've been working with autism for, like, autistic children for quite some time now. I mean, I started from my first job as an ABA therapist, and I don't know how long it's been now, maybe six or seven years. So I would say that I know quite a little. A little bit about it. I'm not like an expert. Okay. As a lot of people would put themselves to be. That's never the case for me. I don't think so. There's so much to learn from them, to be honest. And let's talk about some early signs that, you know, the majority of people talk about. Right. So first of all is lack of eye gaze, eye contact, or you know, just in general, like joint attention. So you might not know what these words mean. Okay. Eye gaze just means are they looking at the stuff that are important? Right. If you put something down, can they catch that thing as important? Right. That's eye gaze. Right. Are they tracking something? That's eye gaze. Joint attention means if I'm looking at something and I'm laughing, it means that thing is interesting. So it would make sense for another human being to see that I'm looking at that thing that's giving me something, some entertainment. Therefore, we will have a joint entertainment, joint attention, because, you know, the child wants to know what's happening. All right, the last one is eye contact. That's super easy to answer. Just that are they looking at you when you're talking? All right? And parents tend to be very, very, very obsessed with eye contact. Okay. If you force eye contact, you're actually repelling eye contact. And I've talked about it many times. In fact, if you can just go to like the YouTube channel or the Facebook page and you know, search for eye contact. I also have a more in depth lesson inside the micro course, actually. Here. Here. Right here. Here. Yeah, there you go. So agents of speech.com micro and I don't think, to be honest, my opinion, okay, eye contact is a very huge thing that indicates autism. Right. I think that from my point of view, my own opinion, again, I might get sued if I say this, but anyways, I feel like eye gaze is, or joint attention is more. Is a. More like. It makes more sense if you think about it. Okay, so what is autism actually like, if you boil it down to like, let's not talk about the DSM definitions, right? We're talking about someone who doesn't understand why they need to have certain social interactions, okay. They don't understand that it's beneficial to them when they, you know, when they focus on what people are doing or like when they think about what people can give them, they never think that way, right? They're always thinking, oh, what can I get now myself? I'm always trying themselves, right? There's one kid when I was like, he was five and then I was in my second year of working and then he was on the spectrum, obviously, because I only worked with them. And then we were trying to teach him like the where question, right? So we were trying to teach him like, okay, we hid something. And by the way, this is something that you can surely work with your child at Home, Whether it's speech delay or autistic. Okay? So we hid something that he wanted inside the room. And then he's like. And then we would bait him. Like, we would tell him. We'd tell him that, hey, we've got the certain item in here. We've got chocolate in here. Go find it. Go get it. Go get it, go get it. And then he would, like, try for, like, 10 minutes until, you know, he can't. And then we have to prompt him, like, oh, where is the chocolate? And then we'll tell him. Right. Well, the first time, we were just taking a baseline, meaning we didn't even do anything. Right. We didn't even prompt him in a way that we're teaching him. Right. So what happened with that? You know, for the 15 minutes that he was trying to find that thing, he didn't ask at all, because all he thought about was the prize. Right. He didn't think that I had the information. He didn't think that by asking me, it would be easier. Never occurred to him. Okay, so that's basically. So basically, that is what I see, like, a. Children of. With autism is like, they don't know why they. They have to talk to us. They don't understand that information with us. Right? So. Oh, we've got a comment. Great. So on YouTube, hello. Susie says, oh, good evening. Oh, it's just say. It's just comment. Oh, thanks. Thanks for your support too. All right, cool. I was saying, okay, so eye gaze and join attention. They don't know why they should pay attention to something external. All right. And the other thing is that they try to do things themselves a lot. All right. And I think the last, you know, a lot of parents are saying, oh, just in your opinion, do you think, you know, like, do you think that my child is autism? He does that. He does this. Right. The second myth I want to talk about is, like, verbal stimming. Okay. Or babbling or whatever. I don't really think that's, like, a really strong indicator, to be honest, because a lot of children who are just language delayed, they do a lot of babbling in general. They do a lot of, like, singing songs that, you know, that they're familiar with anyways. So it's very difficult to say that, you know, babbling, alien language, verbal stimming, singing nursery rhymes by themselves is a particular autism, you know, characteristic. All right. All righty. So what can you do at home if you think, okay, my child might have autism because, you know, they're not really looking at What I'm doing, they don't care as much when I find something funny. They will only laugh at stuff that they find funny themselves. And they wouldn't share with you, right? They wouldn't come up to you for help. They would. If you don't touch them or talk to them, they can just sit there for a very long time. Right? So someone asks, Jasara, sorry, if I'm getting your name wrong. Do you know why kids with speech delay are often confused with kids that have autism? Okay, so first off, that's a good question. Well, that's a very good question because it really does happen a lot. Especially for. I wouldn't say it would be a problem in the professional world. It's because nowadays autism awareness is a lot higher. So whenever a parent, a parent's friend, like, you know, your friends, a teacher or in general, like a doctor or something, they see a child who is behind, they will think that the first thing is that, oh, because like autism, especially in Southeast Asia, like, they don't even try. They see them for five seconds or five minutes and say, hey, this, this kid, I've seen like 100 of these kids. This is autistic. They don't even think about it. So I really think it's about the awareness of autism. It's going higher, right? Secondly is because now it's called a spectrum, meaning, oh, everyone's on the spectrum. And like, you know, from this guy to that guy, they're all spectrum. They're all on a spectrum, meaning like a huge, a huge range of different abilities and characteristics. Right? Whilst that's correct. But you can't just say, okay, because he's spectrum, he's on it. And I've heard a lot of teachers say, oh, this, I think this, this kid is Asperger's. And I'm like, what? So what if. So what if he is. So what if he's not? Right? If you're not going to do anything about it, right? It's all about the actions you take. It doesn't matter if they have autism, ADHD or speech delay or language delay, because all you do is just putting a label on it. You're not solving the problem at all. And in general, autism is rather misunderstood. There's another day, there was this day where, you know, an adult student of mine, she was saying how another psychiatrist from Southeast Asia, obviously not obviously. I mean, like maybe. And the whole world is also like that, right? I just don't know that. She said, you don't have autism anymore. You're cured of it. You don't have it, it's just gone. Right. And obviously that's a huge misconception because it's a lifelong thing. You have it, then you have it. You can't get cured about it. You can cope with it. Right? You can perform as if you can function in this world. But doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that you won't have it anymore. And if you've talked to any adult with autism, they will tell you that's the truth. Even if it's a speech disorder. That's the truth. Anything with a disorder is usually pretty difficult you can cope with, but it's not something that will go away. Delay is when you're late and you can catch up. So to answer your question, Jasara, Jasira, sorry if I'm killing your name here, is that, you know, autism is not well understood. It's people call a spectrum disorder. So they want to put it like, they just use their experience and say, okay, this kid's on the spectrum. Right? I don't like that. And by the way, even if you know, if you do, then so what, you know, you still need to go through the same therapy in the beginning. And you know, it's highly individualized. But there's no use saying that a kid has autism, okay? Most of the time with a kid has language delay or speech delay, we don't know the cause, all right? That's why people try to lean on like autism, because it is the known cause. Right. Okay. I forgot what I said the first time already. I'm so sorry. Okay. Alrighty. Yeah, so I'm going to talk about what you can do, all right? Because a label is a label whether on whether your child has a speech disorder, speech delay, language, you know, which within language, there's receptive and expressive language, which in speech, there's phonological, there's phonetic, you know, there's article articulation, there's oral motor deficiencies, whatever that means. Right. There's apraxia or whatnot. Right. What can you do without it? What can you do with it? Right. Before that, let's see this question. Wait a minute. So naturally, Mary says, my three year old has been in therapy for a year with improvement. He requests with phrases nice, not really conversational. He does sign. He have signs of sensory issues. High receptive delay. Okay. Would ABA therapy be better? Well, I don't know, Mary. The thing is, ABA therapy is more catered towards the children on the spectrum, okay? And that's because they make their reward system the behavior system. Meaning because children on the spectrum, they don't understand social rules. Therefore, ABA creates a very strong, like, environment for him to learn something. Okay? So I would say that your child, if he can request in phrases, I can understand what you mean. So he says, like, I want something, or like, give me something in a phrase, right? It's not really conversational. Every time you ask for it, maybe you have to ask what you want, and then he. He says it, or you prompted to say I. And then he goes, I want whatever. Maybe it's like that. I don't know. I don't know, Mary. So if that's the case, I think what he needs right now is to continue what has been working. Right? So I don't know what kind of therapy you've been to. Probably speech therapy. I wouldn't tell you to try ABA per se, because ABA is more intensive than speech. All right? It's like, to be effective with aba, apparently, with their scientific. Like the ABA crowd is, the ABA therapist crowd is more hardcore, shall we say, about their. Their research stuff. So therefore, they would tell you that, okay, you have to come in every day for two or three hours, okay? And then if you. You don't have improvements, then they will tell you to, oh, it's not good enough yet, which is kind of true. You need more time, right? So I would say continue what's working already, all right? Because it's been working, so why stop it? Because he's got improvement. So obviously the next step for him is to start to have some conversations with you, especially you, Mary. What I'm saying is that he needs to say things to direct you, not just to request. Say things to clarify, ask some questions, answer questions, have different types of language functions instead of, you know, just asking for stuff. Okay? That's just the beginning of therapy. There's a lot more to be done, and I'm sure you're going to know it later. All right? So let's talk about what you can do at home, given your circumstances. Okay? So first of all, if you haven't Shameless plug again, go to agents of Speech.com micro. There's a lot of advice that I give there that I just always give in the first two or three sessions to parents. And I feel like everyone can benefit from it. Even, like a teenager who hasn't, like, who doesn't speak that much and benefit from it. And that's because someone told me I didn't intend for them to buy it. Right. So what you can do at home, basically other than following the course, is that identify what your child can and cannot do. Right? Obviously. For instance, for Mary just now, if you know that your child cannot do anything other than requesting, then you think about what else you can teach. All right? Is it that you can teach him some rejecting meaning he needs to say no, all right? Or is it that he needs to start learning how to comment and by the way, all these things, who's the best person to teach you if, if you're spending the most time with your child, if you can model that language over and over again, he will know when to use it and how to use it. For instance, if we're talking about teaching how to comment with like phrases like Mary just now, I would stick to around one to two words around his level and just keep on commenting on things that are happening next to him at the right time so that he think he knows that. All right? So whenever this happens, mom going to say this. And then soon when he can anticipate, he will start like looping it in his head and anticipating that you will say something. And then slowly he will kind of understand which words are for which and then he will start, maybe he will start talking. All right? So Mary actually says he's afraid of his sensory issues would cause him issues at school. You need a consult occupational therapist for this. It's quite. There are some remedies you can put in the classroom that will help him a lot. So this is something that you need to. Need to have an assessment, right? Maybe it's that you can give him some. Well, I don't know about, like I'm not expert, right. But for instance, one of my kids who's in primary school, he's got this sensory issue for his like legs or something and the occupational therapist told him to put like bands on, on the like elastic band on the table, all right. And then he could step on it and whatever. And it helped a lot. So really you should consult a professional on that. All right? Okay. So susie says my 6 year old have difficulty express himself because he's speaking in English. But we have our home, we talk and that's Filipino. Right? But I have him checked by a developmental pediatric here and the doctor said he is delayed. Okay, so he probably is delayed if he said if your pediatrician said so. Okay. But the thing is, is he really fluent in English? That's my question back to you. Maybe he isn't even that good at English as well. Okay, so you got to know that. All right? Another thing is it happens all the time that children speak English and parents speak their mother tongue. And, you know, if you don't, if you don't want that to happen in the future, just don't, you know, just don't talk in English for him, you know, or else later on, when he's older, when he needs to talk about something serious with you, you will have to force yourself to use English. Okay? Which is not cool. All right, so speak in your mother tongue when you're with him if you want him to listen to you in that language. What I'm saying is. Okay, all right. Sorry if I'm getting your name wrong again. My son is trying to speak, but I don't understand what he's saying. He's three years old. He doesn't imitate the word we said yet, but he understands instructions of what we are telling him. Hey, Ferns, you should see a speech therapist asap. Tell me if you can in the comments later on, like, you can type it now. There's a delay, right? So if he imitates a word, like, give me an example how it is. Is it totally, like, super different or it's kind of the same, but you don't know. Like, there are some errors, you know? So tell me. Okay. All right. Apasana. Hope I'm getting all these names correct. Okay. Can a child regress in language due to stress? My child would talk in two words till she was two years old, suddenly stopped talking. Speech developed fully, but language regressed. Can stress trigger language delay because her environment and other things changed after she's two? Okay, my answer is I don't know again. Okay? Because it really is dependent on what happened to your child. Did the development. You said that speech developed fully, right? So her speech sounds good, but her language has regressed. What has happened at 2, you know, externally? Okay, that's something we have to know. Is it that she doesn't speak in certain situations or she only talks to you, or in general, that everything has, you know, has, has, has delayed? I have seen language regression in children, for sure, but other than, you know, stress is one, but I've never seen one so young, you know, and usually what happens is the regression I see is because they need to perform. They. They can see a clear gap between him, herself and the peer, and then they start talking less and therefore the language becomes worse because they haven't developed fully. Okay. So I don't know about your child. Upasana or Apasana. I'm sorry about your name, but anyways, Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Have you seen a therapist about this? Right? Have you seen a therapist? Have you seen a doctor about this? I mean, she's only two, So I'm not trying to, like, scare you. I really am not. But the only thing that I've seen. I haven't seen something like this so young, to be honest. The only thing I've seen is more frequently is that by the time children get to three, they start changing. And apparently that's because of brain structure changing because of autism. But to be honest, I don't think, you know, I don't think it changes at 2, and I've never seen something like that, so. Oh, she's 2.5 now. Cool stuff. Well, tell me about, like, what happened. Is there any, like, obvious trigger. Is there an obvious change in the environment? Did you change schools? What happened? You know, fill me in. Okay, so Susie says, you know, he's doing great in school. Kindergarten. Okay, yeah, no problem, man. Tell me how I can help. Cool stuff. Yeah. Okay, so she's been diagnosed with express language delay only. Okay, so that probably means that she was stuck on something, right? Is it, like, answering questions? There must be something that she got stuck, she didn't understand. Oh, see, there you go. Like, see? Yeah. You change country, the language changed, right? So, yeah, that's. That's the main reason, man. That is the main reason. It's not only stress. It's because, like, I've changed countries before. I was in Hong Kong, I was in Indonesia. I don't talk as much. I can tell you that. Think about a child who has. Who's going through culture change, language change, right? Give her some time, all right? Give her some time. Make sure that you reassure her all the time. That's fine. Because, you know, it's different if she understands you. She only has expressive language delay. Tell her more. Tell her, like, stories. Reassure her that it's fine, you know, I don't know. Just. I'm not very good at this stuff, you see, I'm not very good at, you know, like, psychological triggers, you know, or, you know, change environments. Because it really is up to you. Because you. You know your child best, you know how to soothe them, to make them confident again, right? So really up to you. And she's only 2.5 years old, so don't worry. If it's only expressive language delay, it might be, like, misdiagnosed as well because you changed countries. So a lot of children in Hong Kong who are refugees, they get misdiagnosed all the time because of the language difference. So might be that. Go figure. So if you've already gotten a diagnosis, that's good. All right, so Sin says I have less worry after watching all your nine videos in micro course. Oh, thanks, That's. That's very, very, very generous of you. So I think all parents, regardless of their child, speechless, shouldn't or should not? Just the idea. Oh, yeah. So the main idea, what we always talk about, is to describe rather than talk, to describe rather than test. Right. It gives a lot of stress to the child. So don't ask them all the time. Do not ask them all the time. Like, what's that? What's here? What's this? How do you say that? Don't never do that. That's gonna. That's not gonna let him or her thrive. All right? So I'm so sorry. I don't know how to say this. Is it kumichi. Sorry. So anyways, my daughter in some period like, said some words like roti, satu, hao, chi. But after that, she never said words even. Oh, okay. Hey, this happens a lot, Kumichi, right? So maybe it's because. Maybe. Maybe it's because you've been asking her too many questions. Okay. And it happens to a lot of my students is that they. They've been imitating words, they've been, whatever, doing a lot of stuff, but parents are pushing them too much, so. And they don't see a point, so they just rather not talk. You know, it might be the case here, especially at two something. There's something about those parents who keep on coming, like, keep on asking the same questions about the same thing. So I know you're already inside the micro course or the full course per se, so go ahead and watch those lessons about how not to stress your kid out, okay? Because obviously, I think there's something to do with that. Yeah. So Vern replied. She's like, oh, he can say like two words like brush teeth, wear shoe, or pronunciation not very accurate. You don't say the word when we asked him to, only when he feel like saying. Okay, so first of all, first you have to understand it's super hard for a child to talk. Okay? If your child can say two words like brush teeth, wear shoe doesn't mean it's two words. They just put it together. All right? Can they say like. Like, I don't know, like brush shoes, you know, can they say brush shoes, brush the table, brush the toy, whatever. Then it doesn't count. Like, I always say that brush teeth is just one word because they just remember it together. If their pronouncing pronunciation is not accurate and then you ask him to say it, it's not because he feels like. Only when he feels like saying it. Okay. It's because it's hard for him. It's super hard. All right? It's very hard. And the more you ask, the harder it becomes because it's stressful. So my, my, my advice for you is to keep it easy, say it and don't expect that he will reply. Okay? Do that. Yeah. So Oopasana. Sorry, just tell me how you say the name. Man, I'm going crazy here. Okay, so everything changed. We locked down. Yeah. So that's also a problem. Right now some children are thriving children during quarantine because they have a lot more parent time. Right. Others aren't doing quite well because some children are just very outgoing. They need other children to help them with their language development. So for you, I would say that then you would have to step up even more. If you have siblings, you really have to group them together, play together and really control. Not really control, but lead the play with them so that they can get to use some of the language. Okay. Sin says. Yeah, she means describe rather than ask. You're right. We've been conditioned to be question machine. Okay, so Sarah says my child is two years old recently. She can label things. Word approximation. Do for dog, half or hat. Turtle. Turtle for turtle. Oh, that's pretty cool. She doesn't have hearing issues. I've tried saying words only. That didn't help. Do you think I can do it differently? Thanks. Cool. So accept approximations. Firstly, because she's only two, there's no point in over correcting her. If you correct her all the time as a two year old, she will be very defeated because her mouth is just not developed yet. Okay. So her approximations aren't bad at all. Okay, so she's leaving out the last syllable, obviously. And yeah, she's leaving out the last syllable. Right. So if I were you, what I would do is I wouldn't drill her too much, Sarah. I would tell her, oh, da. She goes. Do I go? Yes, dog. Good. I think dog. You know, that's it. All right. You might want to exaggerate the sound a little bit. Like dog. Oh yeah, dog. That's right. You said it. You said dog. Right. So the aim is not to correct her to see if, when you do that, will it help her. Okay. So just imagine yourself trying to say A word in the language you don't really know, okay? If someone kept on trying to tell you to say it nicely, you would get frustrated because you just haven't had enough practice. Okay? So it might be that. It might be. Okay, I'm saying might be that your child is lacking in practice and saying those words, okay? But she needs like maybe a hundred times just to understand that there's a G behind the dog, like do, right? So these things you cannot tell her explicitly because she's only two. You cannot go up to her and say, look, dog has D, O, G. Two year olds don't know how to spell yet or they don't understand. What do you mean by. Like the G is after the O, right? It's a. It's a sequential thing. So all you can do now is to keep on saying it, right? Keep on affirming that she's talking to you and you understand what she means, okay? And don't try to over correct the kid. All right, Sarah, I hope this is good. Nabil asked, how do I help my child to report what happened in therapy? Hey, who knows about what happened in therapy? Did you know what happened in therapy? If it's only her, then it's just up to imagination, right? To be honest, like, if your child goes into therapy herself, you don't go in. The only person who knows what happens in therapy is your child and the therapist. And you're trying to report, Ask your child to report what happened. How are you gonna, how are you gonna prompt her if you have no knowledge what happened? Right? So something that we do for I. I've talked to Nabil. I know your child's level. She obviously is not that level yet. Because this is what I do with, like, kids who are in primary, like three to six, right? When I ask them to recall something, right? There will be some questions, like some elements within a certain story, okay? For instance, where did it happen? When did it happen? You know, who was it with? Okay? These three elements, like setting, like a movie. Like, for instance, if you say, oh, Star wars, long time away, far, far away from. I can't even code it, whatever. So you get what I'm saying? It needs to have a setting, right? So usually if you want someone to recount something, you will tell them to write down who, when and what, okay? And then you will write, okay, can you tell me two things that happen inside? Oh, for instance, if you tell me to recount my weekend, it would be Saturday morning, I was in this hotel, you know, and what was I doing, I was watching TV and then I had lunch. You know, there's two things for you, right? And then it's much easier for you to like, make them talk because you already sucked out the content out of it. But in the build your kid, I don't know, if you ask her those questions, will she be able to answer? All right, so that's something you have to think maybe reporting isn't the best thing you should do. Now, as we were talking about last time, I think your child should be doing some picture description or where you both know what's happening, correct? If I'm wrong, because speak to a lot of children and parents every day, so I might have remembered wrong. I'm sorry. But if you know if it's correct, then you know if this is the correct goal, then do what I just said, okay? Meaning ask them the questions about the setting and then two things, what they did during that time according to the memory, and then draw it out with your, like, even I use like Pigman, like, what's that, Stickman? And children understand it, so just draw it out. Okay? All right. Vern says mostly a word, then can put into sentence, what should I do? What should I do to make him speak? Well, if you join our micro course, most of the stuff that we tell you is that in the beginning we didn't know the true ability of our kid. So if you say that he only talks during, when he feels like it, which is not really the case most of the time, is that, you know, children don't know how to say it, they can't do it, and it looks like they only do it when they want to do it. Right. So therefore, what I'm trying to say is find something he wants, he likes, he really, really, really, really likes, and use it as a way to, whatever you call it, bribe, reward, motivate. I don't care what the verb is, get him to, like, imitate some sounds to see if. Is it really that he can't say those sounds right. Just take out a book of a book with a lot of words. Try it. Okay? Just go up to him and say, okay, say this one carrot. See what he says, okay? And then you will know that's the true ability of him because he wants something from you. He's trying his best. Okay. At this point in time, I don't even know his true ability. It's very hard to tell you. Burns. Okay. Getting a lot of questions nowadays. So. Adeline. Damn, I'm so bad at names. Please correct me okay, I'm going to call you Adeline. I'm sorry. Adeline says, my son is 2.5 years old. I try to ask him to call my husband Daddy. He will sometimes say something like, but not fully. Daddy responds by saying, call Daddy. Call Daddy. But he still did that. How would you advise me? Oh, okay. I would say that you shouldn't instruct him to call Daddy in the first place. You know, it might be crazy for me to say this, but why is it that he needs to call Daddy? Right. Something that you should do instead is to tell him, is to model the fact that you're saying Daddy, as I was saying, because right now he's 2.5 and he keeps on saying dead. Dead, but not Daddy means he's trying. He's already trying his best. And at 2.5 is very hard for him to, like, try. So what I would say is, whenever you see your husband, you should call him Daddy when he's around, like, daddy. Like that. See, if he tries, okay? If he tries, then you tell him. He most probably would try. I'm telling you, okay? He's not like. Because you said call Daddy, he would do it, right? So in a playful way, if you're, like, demonstrating, oh, this is that Daddy, hello. Like that. He would most probably try as well. So I would tell you, like to put two fingers up, say Daddy. See if he stops at two, okay? Because he's going like that. Okay, I just want Daddy or Daddy, whatever. Okay? If that doesn't work, try clapping your hands and stop it too. Like Daddy. Like that. Okay? Try that. I'm not sure if it'll work because I don't have enough information. So. Yeah, Vern, no problem. Most of the time we asked him to say the word, he would be quiet and see that? Yeah, see, that's very typical. If you tell him to say it, he won't say it. Because it's harder for a child to say something when you. When you tell him to imitate for some reason sometimes. Okay? And you have to be mindful of that because if I put you on the spot and I say, like, imitate me to speak some. Or you are Chinese, so I can't say Chinese. Imitate me to say, I don't know, whatever language, like French or something. It would make you, like, a little nervous. Think about a kid who's 2, so try not to ask them to stay the word. Just demonstrate it a lot more and accept it. Even if he says it really bad. Like, if he says it like Totally. Like, really, really, like, really. You don't understand it, but you. Other people will understand it, but you understand it. You will have to be his voice and say, oh, you mean whatever, right? He will have a lot more confidence if you do that. But you know, confidence is a wishy washy word, right? What do you mean? So what I mean by confidence is that when you do that, he's more comfortable with using words around you. Therefore it doesn't become stressful. And when a kid isn't stressed, right, he's going to be able to perform a lot better, just like you. Okay, so I'm sure that you would talk to your friends very fluently, but if you were on a stage with like 200 people looking at you, then, you know, you would stutter. Okay? So think about that. All right? Okay. These names are really, really, really, really testing me. Okay. Alariska. Okay, cool. My son is 3.5 years old. He cannot speak clearly. He's not focused lately. He often play with his hands and pulls. I'm very worried about him. Okay? So I'm sure I've said it like the hundredth time, hundredth time within this Facebook group and page and YouTube channel is that, you know, there's no such thing as being not focused. I'm sure if you want something, he's super laser focused. If he's playing with, he's watching a video or something, he's super focused watching it as well. You know, there's no such thing as not focused, just not interested. He's not interested. So he didn't. He's not like he doesn't want to talk to you. Right? That's why he's not focused. He doesn't understand why he would rather play with his hands or like pull your hand and get the thing, get, get the thing done and run back to where he was in his mind somewhere. Okay? So for you, Ellariska, if I'm getting it right, is that you can go to agents of Speech.com micro. Okay? We've got loads of advice here. I cannot tell you all of them, but I'll tell you one of them just because we don't have enough time. All right? If I were to sit here and talk about all the things that I've already put inside a course, it would take me a long time because I'm not prepared to do so. Okay? So for you, you have to make him interested. Okay? You don't know whether he's like, just as I was talking about to vernt just now, is that, hey, you don't know whether your child's true ability is that he can't speak clearly. Maybe it's just that he doesn't care enough to speak clearly. Okay? Maybe he thinks that whenever he's hand pulling you, and then you ask a question like, hey, what do you want? And then he just needs to imitate some sound, some sort of sound from the mouth, and then you will give him what he wants. And this has been going on for a long time, and therefore, now I'm really projecting. Now, I'm just guessing straight up, but what I'm saying is you don't know whether if his clear is because of. He's just, you know, it's his ability or it's really that he doesn't really care enough, okay? So first of all, you need to get something that he wants in your hands and use it so that you can teach him and see where he is at. If you don't know where he's at, you would always be under or overestimating him. That's the end of it. Like, because loads of parents say, oh, I know my kid can talk. I know my kid can whatever. He can sing the whole song. He can memorize the whole cartoon. He knows what's coming next. He can say the word, but he just. He just won't say it with me. So they kind of overestimate a kid, right? Because, you know, if they can't use language for the intended purpose, which is to communicate with you, then obviously they're not very good at it. Okay. Or you might underestimate. Okay, okay. I don't know which one I'm doing here for you. You might say, oh, that all they can do is, like, not speak clearly. They're not focused, whatever. But then if you use the correct techniques, tell them to sit down and tell them, hey, look, you want this? Tell. Tell me this first, or copy this first or learn this first. You will be surprised. All right? You will be surprised. I see that on an everyday basis nearly before COVID That is not nowadays. But I hope that this really has opened your eyes a little bit. If I'm getting anything that I'm saying correct about your child. All right, please tell me if I'm wrong, But most of the things that you need to know about teaching a child like this is in the micro course. So go to agents of Speech.com. micro. Okay? It saves us, all of us, a lot of time. All right, So I got really blown away by the questions you guys asked. That's great. I really like it. And I'm going to go back to my last point. In this little live video. All right, so what can you do at home right now? Okay, that's what I was intending to say. You have to find out what they can and cannot do to the best of your ability. All right? If it's speech, print out, like, the ABCs. I don't know, Put out some, like, get, get, get. Get a book with, like, words inside, with vocabs inside. Tell them, set them down, have something they like. Tell them to repeat the words there. See how accurate they can say it. Right. If it's a language case, see how many words they actually know. All right? Give them instructions without using your hands. Okay. What I mean by that is a lot of parents come to me and they say, oh, yeah, they understand whatever I say. If I say, oh, put that in the bin, they will put it in the bin. If, if you say, if I say switch off the lights, they'll go, switch off the lights. Or, you know, know, grab me a towel. They will go, grab your towel. And. And then I say, okay, you show it to me in the clinic. And they, they would, they would do this. They were like, oh, oh, honey, give me that bottle in the bag. And then it's like all the pointing, you know, the child doesn't need to listen. All right? So I would challenge you to talk to your child without using any gestures, just with your words. Then you would know whether they really understand you or not or if they're like, half guessing. Okay? And I'm sure if you, if you like, if you say throw it in the bin, but you're pointing at something else, they will grab that something else instead of throwing something in the bin. Okay. If they have a problem in language. That's what I mean. Okay? So that's what I'm telling you guys to do. Go find out as much as you can about what your child cannot do. Okay. Is it that they cannot answer questions? Right. What type of questions can they answer? Yeah. Is it that they are unclear in speech? Can you sit them down and ask them to, like, say some words and mark down, like, just now, who is it? Someone said, oh, Sarah said, right. Should do word approximations like do instead of dog. Is that the case? Write that down. Okay. Is it that sometimes when you ask them to imitate, they won't. Well, that's not their ability problem. It's about their motivation. They don't understand why they need to imitate. If you keep on asking and nothing happens Right. So that's what you have to do right now. They don't care about whether it's a speech delay, is a language delay, phonological disorder, whatever disorder, autism, adhd, don't care about that. Make sure you know how to make them sit down, listen to you and do some stuff which we call learning to learn skills, or learning how to learn skills, as people call it, which are all covered in my. In our micro course. Okay. After that and then we have something to talk about. All right? If you can't talk, get your child to, like, listen to you, follow some instructions, okay? Show you their true ability. Then, you know, what's the point of us discussing about whether your child has autism or not? Because there's nothing we can do about it at the moment. Right? So go try that first. I might sound, like, really pessimistic. I'm not. I'm meaning. What I mean is you guys can all do this. It's pretty easy. As long as you get something that they need, they want from you and then see what their true ability is. Have you been underestimating or overestimating them and not just saying, oh, they have autism. That's why. That's not. That's not the case. It's just because they don't understand it yet. Just treat it as if. They treat it as if is they always can learn it. But the thing is, the way right now is not correct for them. All right, so I think this will be my last question for tonight. We've been going for a whole hour today. That's cool. So Shamala says. I'm pretty sure about Shamala. It's easy, easy name to pronounce. She says, my daughter is 2 years old. She understands everything. But don't speak a single word. She don't imitate. Okay, so then, Shyamala, you should really start teaching your child some gestures. Right? Because most probably if you say that she understands everything. Yeah. Again, I challenge you to try not to use any gestures. No pointing, no whatsoever when you ask her to do something. Okay. If she can really understand it, then very good. That means you're only dealing with a speech or, you know, expressive language problem. But if not, then, you know, it's the whole thing. But anyways, no matter what problem it is, always teach the gestures first because it's something that you can help. Okay. What gestures you're asking? Well, first of all, you can teach the open palm, you know, some easy verbs like open. Just very easy stuff like maybe like a phone. If she likes you know, playing with the phone. You can say phone and give it to her, eat, you know, drink these easy kind of gestures. You can. And I go much deeper in the micro course. Okay, so with that said, thank you so much for checking in everyone today. If you haven't, you should really join Michael course already. I've said it so many times. But anyways, I'm here to help. Let me know what questions you you need. Just reply in this thread of the live video or you know, if you haven't, you should join our Facebook group. It's 1,000 members today. Wow. And yeah, it's getting more and more lively there. So if you want to hang out inside Facebook group, that's also cool. You can ask me anything basically in the comment section and we'll roll it over. I'll most probably reply you in text and I'll roll it over to next live so I, I can repeat it to other parents and we can talk again on next Monday. Okay. So next Monday it won't be like this anymore. I'll be moving out. Okay. So thanks for tuning in. Wish you guys have a safe and sound night. I know it's kind of late already. It's 11 where I am right now and that's it. Thank you. Bye.