Why Children Won’t Answer “What Did You Do at School Today?”

Hey guys, this is ming here from agentsofspeech.com today we're going to discuss why your child cannot answer certain questions like how do you do at school? What do you eat for breakfast? What do you do just now, how was the training? Or whatever. Okay, so these questions are about like, it's in a different time, right? It's in the past or in the future and you're trying to get them to answer you something that they've done. What happens is that a lot of parents will tell me, I think there's something wrong with his memory, his, his short term memory or long term memory. I don't know. Parents throw all these kind of words at me. And really, to be honest, it's about their language ability because even if they knew, they wouldn't be able to actually answer you because of the language level. So children who are like the mo at most one or two words, they are at a stage where we call here and now. And what we mean by here and now is that they are only capable of talking about here and now things like stuff that is right now right in front of you. They can only describe that because that's the level of which they can describe. If you ask them these questions at a different, like outside of their language competency, of course they're not going to be able to answer you and they're going to repeat your questions. Therefore, at this point, point in time, what you need to do is just to tell them the answer. And it's very difficult to tell them the answer if you weren't there. So don't track your son or daughter and don't trap yourself because if you ask, what do you do at school today without knowing, that's not going to help them because they don't know how to answer. And they go, what did you do this school today? And they just repeat you to help them answer it. You must know what they did so that you can prompt them using questions or just telling them right on or drawing a picture or whatnot. So you need to know what they did. You need to know the answer or else no one knows. The one who knows. Your child doesn't have the language ability to tell you. All right, so what should you do once your child starts to talk about stuff that is not here? Meaning they suddenly remember something and they talk about it. I think it's they're ready. They're ready for you to start to talk in there and then. Okay. What I mean by there and then is obviously the opposite. Here and Now, So there and then meaning something that is over there in a distant, you cannot see it. And then like back then or in the future, right. Usually we talk in past tenses so we don't want to ask questions about there and then stuff. And we're introducing something like that we are usually describing. And how we describe it is that you can give an account. So a lot of times when parents ask me, they cannot answer this kind of question. What should I do? Well, obviously the best thing you should do is to model it, right? You can go to a mall with them and then afterwards directly tell them. Or you could ask yourself a question. Oh, what did we do today? Well, we first went to like Ben and Jerry's, we got ice cream, right? And after that we went to H and M, whatever. So you can tell them about it, but keep it short, okay? Remember your child, if he or she is operating at like one or two words or at most three, just think about how much they can actually absorb from you, okay? I always talk about, and I repeat myself a lot in this videos and the reason is because I need to change your mind. I need to keep on telling you over and over because parents who are learning about this stuff will forget, will forget. It's, it's, it's just a thing, a human thing. I need to remind you over and over. So remember, if you are learning a foreign language, even if you can speak in three in a three word sentence, right, it doesn't mean that you can understand a full fledged sentence with all the grammatical inflections and whatnot. You know, it's very difficult. So keep it short, keep it simple at gestures, at pointing, tell them multiple times slowly. And that's how you model language to a child. Just as if someone who's like maybe deaf, partially hearing impaired, or someone who doesn't speak your language, you use a lot of gestures, use a lot of facial expressions, use a lot of help from digital devices or whatnot just to tell them exactly. And this is a thing, what we call with fancy language, total communication, right? And we want to use that so that our message is brought across correctly. When to shift from there to then is when your child starts to talk about things that are not here right now and you know what they're referring to and you know exactly what they're trying to say. Okay? And when I say this, it might sound kind of wishy washy, right? Well, for those parents who know, will know when you hear it, you will know, oh, he's ready, you know, he knows he's talking. He's referencing that time where he went to the aunt's place or something. And. And he might be using a different word for it. Okay. I had a student who told me in front of me that he wanted, like, noodles or something. And basically what he meant by noodles is going to his aunt's plates to eat noodles. Okay. And therefore he was just referencing it back then when he saw the toy. Yeah. And the mom picked it up and told me, because the child kept on, like, noodles like that. And then the mom's like, oh, auntie, whatever is placed right. And then he just kept quiet. And then the mom would know, the dad would know. I probably wouldn't know because I'm not spending the most time with them. So there you go. This is what you should do. Do not panic when your child cannot answer those. What did you do at school today? What do you do just now? What did you eat for breakfast? These are questions. That means you're testing your child and you're trying to get something out of of them. Right. You're trying to teach them by asking questions, which doesn't make sense. So what you should do instead is to model and only model when they're ready. Okay, so that's it for today's video. If you haven't, go check out our checklist on agentsofspeech.com checklist. There's a list of tools and toys we recommend parents to get when they just start home therapy. Okay. So see you guys in the next video. Bye. Bye.