Why do Children Understand But Not Talk?

Does your child understand everything but refuses to talk? Do you think that your child is lazy and doesn't use the words that he already has? When he wants something, he'll usually pull your hand. Then this video is for you. So a lot of parents tell me, oh, my child understands everything. When I say something, they understand the command, they know what I'm saying, they give responses, they walk over, they show me stuff, but they just won't use the words. So what we do here is that we have to make a distinction between receptive and expressive language. So I'm sure you've heard this before and I'll get into deeper topics later on in this video, but I just want to get this out of the way. First of all, receptive means how much can they actually understand versus expressive how much they can actually say? And expressive language can be in terms of speech or gestures, sign language or like other means of communication. So we'll talk about speech versus language in a bit. I just want to tell you that for a child who is there will be a discrepancy between receptive and expressive language. Just think about if you speak a second language, you will have a difference between how much you understand and how much you can actually express. So for myself, in terms of Japanese as a foreign language, to me, I can understand quite a little bit, but when I'm trying to say it, I lose the words. I can't retrieve it. And there's a lot of different reasons to why is because it's always easier to understand something versus to retrieve it from a brain and say it out loud. Okay? That's just how we learn language most of the time. And people will say, no, my, my child actually talks more than they can understand. That's actually a different matter. Most of the time those are memorized phrases. And we coming as a non native speaker for a few languages, I would say that I do have some phrases that I memorized for certain things. So for instance, if I go to Japan and I go into a restaurant, I will be able to ask, what's your recommendation? And when they talk back, I might take out some keywords and I understand a little bit. And I guess so a lot of times when parents say, oh, they understand everything. It's not really that really that sometimes and most of the times children use compensatory tactics and which we use a lot as well. We take keywords from a sentence and we try to string it together in a mind and guess what the situation is, right? We hear the words that understand that Usually speaking the context helps a lot, right? Whether if there's some pointing, there's some eyebrow, eye expressions and face expressions, it would help someone to understand the situation, right? So if I was driving, let's say I was driving in Italy around a few months ago, and then when I saw someone tell me I cannot park there, I didn't understand it's Italian, right? But then there's a bunch of gestures going on. I knew what that dude was trying to tell me. So you have to understand there's a difference between receptive and expressive. And even if your child looks like he or she understands everything, most probably there's some keyword approach, so some contextual cues, some compensatory methods and strategies that your child is using to understand what you're trying to get him or her to do. A very easy thing I always tell parents to try is like if I hold up a scrunch up piece of tissue, which I have here conveniently, and I give it to a child, 9 times out of 10 if I say I can say anything, they're still going to throw it in the bin, right? If I say put this on the sofa versus put it in the bin, it's going to yield the same result. They're going to go up to the bin and throw it. So you have to check it out, you have to think about it. And if your child is currently understanding things based on context or a single keyword, then to think that the expressive language is one level lower than the receptive literally means nonverbal. If they can understand one keyword and then they cannot, one keyword, like one word, one piece of information within one sentence, right? Then one level lower would be just gestures and sign language. So that's why children who are slightly delayed or slightly behind when they try to express themselves the expressive language is less of than they're receptive by one level, then it would come out as not talking, right? The second thing is speech versus language. I've talked about this a lot. I feel like there isn't enough of an emphasis on this matter. Parents usually don't know what the difference is. So speech is the sounds that you're hearing from my mouth right now, right? It's a part of language. I can express myself in both speech sounds and gestures or facial expressions, right? Or I could type something, I can write something. Those are all means of communication, those are the message. But how I convey that message is through talking. Like in this video, I am to you, right? So speech versus language. Speech is that your Child has some issues, some problems with creating those speech sounds to convey the message to you. Right? And maybe they can do this with their hands and the hand pulling or whatever. Some people consider handling a form of communication, some don't. I do. That's fine. But at the end of the day, what we want to do is to teach children to talk to your speech. Why? Because that's the most efficient manner us as human beings, we can use. All right? And it's the most widely used kind of communication, right? So when there are some parents who have children on the spectrum who we call non speaking, non verbal, whatever term that you decide to use, people say, oh, we have to accommodate for neurodivergent people, children. But the problem is most of the world is using speech. It's just like someone, everyone's using a certain type of, like an iPhone, and then there's one friend who uses an Android, right? Or vice versa. If you're in Southeast Asia, everyone's using an Android and you use an iPhone, then it's going to create inconvenience, right? So speech versus language. You have to understand why your child isn't talking about, is it a language problem or a speech issue? So if it's a speech issue, you have to get an assessment to see what's going on. It could be their oral motor has a problem. It could be that they have a motor planning problem. Right? All these words I'm throwing at you, you don't have to care what these truly mean just yet, Right? What you need to do is to take the first step to assess to see if it's a speech or a language problem. If it's a speech problem, no matter how much your child understands, they're not going to be able to talk with the highest efficiency possible. And you'll always see that gap. The gap isn't in the language, but in the speech. Right? Whereas if it's a language problem, then it's very simple. All you got to do is to teach them to imitate you verbally and then see what their true ability is currently, how many words they have, what kind of sentence structures can they produce. If not, then just teach that. Whereas speech is a little bit more nuanced. Whereas you have to know the reasoning behind why they cannot use the articulators to create speech like I am right now. That's something you have to explore with a speech therapist. Okay? Thirdly, the incentive to talk. A lot of times I was talking to a parent yesterday. The child was 16 months old. He was A little bit too. Too young for our coaching services. So they joined and I'm like, oh my God, it's a little bit too young. So we had to refund them. And I gave them a call and I'm like, hey, what's going on? How come you're joining at such a young age? So they were a little bit scared because at 16 months, their son was already using some words, but it wasn't directed a hundred percent at the things that he wanted. It was a little bit random. He would use words to talk about, like books, TV or whatever he does say. So it's not really a speech issue, it's more of a language issue. But the problem was the incentive to talk, which was lacking. So I was like, so what's the problem? His parents said whenever we asked a question, he used to care, but now he doesn't care. He doesn't really respond. I'm like, okay, so when you ask something, is it out of just wanting him to respond, to quiz him or what's going on? So I don't know. I'm just like, wanted to ask a question or shouldn't children, all children just respond when I ask them stuff? I'm like, no. Because if you start asking questions that have no utility, no function, no direct impact on their lives, children and humans are start. We are going to be like, there's nothing in for me. Why am I going to answer that? What's going on? So sometimes we have to take a step back and understand there are different personality types and children, right? Just as me and you, we all experience this world a little differently. When a child like you see children who would like, point at everything and share everything, right? There are types of children who don't really want to share much. They're like, what do you have for me? Why do I need to answer this? So if you ask like, where's papa? And it's obvious it's right next to you, after a few times they point and there's no specific effect, consequence, fun for them, then that that behavior will diminish because very quickly the child who is cognitively sound will think, what's going on? Why am I answering? What's the end goal of this? I. Am I supposed to. Because I can find dad. He'll give me a hug, he'll tickle me or whatever. That's none of that. It's just that the parent was just asking for a response, right? As if I see a lot of parents, they ask something and they go like that. Like, if you do that all the time. It's not going to create a very language rich environment because you're basically just quizzing the child, just wanting to hear what they say, right? So there must be incentive. It might be an activity, a reward, like just a simple hug, a high five, tummy rubber, whatever it is, there must be an incentive. There must be, or else you're teaching your child to ignore you. Okay, so the fourth thing I want to talk about is work, working on other language functions. So a lot of times when parents come to me, they say, oh, my child only talks when they need something. So this is what we call need based language. And a lot of times when doing therapy, we always start off with requesting, because that's just the most easy language function to shoot for. In AVM they call it. There are different names for this. Basically, if someone wants something from you, then you learn to say, I want something. So other than this function, we have to teach other things, okay, which are commenting, right? Answering questions, asking questions, greeting, all these different language functions. All you got to do is just go on Google and search for language function speech therapy and you'll see a whole list of it. What I would usually go for after requesting is describing, right? So after they describe something, they get to do what they described. So then there's an incentive for them to describe whatever they wanted to do. So it's very simple. So if you have a play going on, you have a play routine going on, it might be anything, you might be pushing a child on the swing or whatever, as long as they say to describe what they hope to achieve. And this might be a little nuanced because you're thinking, oh, isn't that just requesting? Not really. Because when you ask what's happening or tell me what's going on, that kind of phrasing, it immediately changes it into a comment. Because requesting is to ask for something without seeing, without it happening just yet, right? When you're eating it, you won't be, I'm eating candy. You won't do that. What I want you to try is to demonstrate something, right? For instance, you might blow bubbles. I'm blowing bubbles, right? How about you? So daddy's blowing bubbles, right? So daddy blows more bubbles and then I'll blow more, right? Commenting is always the second function that we shoot for. Okay? And by the way, if you're getting like a headache from listening to me and trying to give you as much information as possible, just go to agentsofspeech.com course we have a whole community of 15,000 parents inside and also a bunch of free courses and resources that takes you step by step to learn how to do these things. Okay, so the last thing I want to talk about is finding a language level and thinking about how to train, which we do talk about in the free courses, too. Okay. A language level breakdown level. That's just the lingo we use in speech therapy. I don't think it's very widely used when talking to parents. I think it's a mistake. I think you should know exactly which level your child is operating at, and therefore you can teach just one step higher than that. Right? So you have to find that, and it's not that hard. All you got to do is to write out all the things that here your child say and then analyze what those phrases are. So if your child isn't talking yet, that's easy. Then you just mark down what gestures they have, how they can communicate with you. If your child is talking, write down the sentences that they're making. Is it that washing is always washing hands? Put is always put on. Going is also go out. These are frozen phrases. That's fixed. Some people call it just gestalt. And then if your child does change things around, you can just write down what kind of structures. Is it always a subject plus a verb? Is it always a verb plus object? Is it always subject, verb, object, so on and so forth. And then you can think about, oh, now that I know that level, I know how to train my child. So if they can speak that much, all you got to do is to just add one word at the back every time they speak. Right? A lot of times it's not about a child being lazy and talking. It's just that adults don't understand, parents don't understand where the language level is at. So if you're always trying to get your child to do something above the pay grade is going to be real difficult. Just think about the things that you're at work, and then someone tells you to do something outside of your pay grade or you just don't know how to do that, nine times out of 10, you're just going to try to ignore it and pretend like nothing happened and stuff. That's exactly what's happening at home with your child. All right, so that's it for this video. If you really liked it, give it comment below, let me know. And then again, all these things I talk about, we teach it in very in detail inside of our courses and our community. Just go to www.agentspeech.com. course. I'll see you inside. And at the same time, please check out this video here. All right, see you.