Ming from Agents of Speech explains why "following an autistic child's lead" often fails in therapy. Many autistic kids find typical play unrewarding, their play may lack meaningful interaction, rigid routines limit what can be followed, and embedding learning into play requires skill therapists often lack. Structured strategies work better.
Hey, this is ming here from agentsofspeech.com let's talk about why following an autistic child's lead won't work. So you've seen a lot of things, maybe you have been searching on the Internet about following child's lead. You've learned more about the Hannon program. We've talked about the book here as well. I love it. I like it a lot. But at the same time, does it really, really work for all kids? Not really. Not all. The reason is because autistic children or people, they don't care. They just don't care, and it's not rewarding for them. All right, so let's say that you are trying to engage your child in, like, throwing balls or whatever. Does the child care about throwing balls? No. What are you trying to do? Are you following the child's lead or are you teaching a new play? So usually when parents are trying to follow the child's lead, they're trying to set up a game where the child is having fun with them. But that doesn't really happen most of the time because if an autistic child is doing their own thing, they're doing their own thing. And that means it's something that is. You don't understand what. What the sequence is about. You don't understand what the heck they're doing. And you're trying to follow. And therefore, when you're trying to follow, you're trying to. And you don't get what they do. What you're going to do is, like, you're going to start showing things around and see what sticks, right? And that means, like rolling them cars, rolling them balls, you know, like blowing bubbles, so and so forth. So are you really following the Charles Lee then? Not really anymore. Right. So that's why it's hard. I. And it's not rewarding for either of you because you guys are not having a good time together, right? It's a constant of, oh, you don't like this anymore. Let me get another one. Oh, let me follow you. And the kid, like, just straight up ignores you and you talk and it's not rewarding for you and therefore you don't want to do it anymore. Right? So I'm going to talk about how you get. You can do it later on, but don't worry, Let me keep on talking. All right? The second thing is, like, I want to talk about is that there's no meaningful play to follow up on. So if your child is, let's say, not even on the Spectrum. Just any old child who is delayed most of the time their play isn't meaningful at all and therefore there isn't much to follow up on. And that makes it super difficult for parents to follow up. Because what are you going to do if all they do is line up cars? Or what are you going to do if they. All they do is just to like, throw or like pour toys on the floor. Right? I've had that many, many times. A kid came to me long ago, maybe like three years ago, three or four, and then all he knew how to do was pour toys on the floor and he didn't care to pick it up or whatever. He just kept on pouring stuff, destroying stuff, laughing. And then he also had this like mini laptop thingy that he had with him. Like, like a, like a workman, he is. And then he. What he does is like, he opens it, press the same buttons over and over again, and then until he gets bored, right? And then when you try to press it, he. He beats you up, he slaps you, slaps his mother. And then when you try to take it away from him, he cries. So what are you going to do? What are you going to do? You're going to follow the kid and pouring stuff on the floor? Well, yeah, sometimes you could, but you can't. It's not sustainable. Right? So the reason why it doesn't work, following a child's lead is because most of the. The play isn't meaningful at all, right? So the third point is that there are rigidities that you cannot break through. So let's say that your child is already having some rigidity like I was talking about. If you take away something, he will cry, right? If I do something out of the routine, he will cry. When he does something this or that, he will be unhappy. Right? So to follow the child's lead, meaning you cannot touch anything at all. That's just impossible. That's just impossible because there are some rules that you cannot cross with a kid and you're trying to follow their lead. All you're going to do is just going to sit there and watch them do their thing. And that's not really therapy. Right? Okay, so let's get on to the last thing and that following a child's lead during, like, therapy is the hardest thing to do in therapy. All right? Many parents, many therapists, in fact, junior therapists, don't know how to do it because it's so. It takes so much time, it takes so much skill to embed the skills you want to teach Inside of a naturalistic setting, it's just nearly impossible. And most of the time, why I don't do it in, in the beginning or even now is because I cannot show the parent the results I want. And the parents will say, therapy doesn't work. This whole Hannam program thing, what. What am I supposed to do? Right? At least for Eastern parents, Chinese, Asian parents that see me work, they're like, what's going on? Main like, you're just playing. I pay money, pay high money for this, and you're just rolling balls. Whereas the Western world, there are people who are similar to the Chinese parents, but at the same time, they are more mild. They're like, oh, I can wade it through. I can sit through it. So that's why it's more, much more popular in the Western world, you know, and therefore, there's a lot more research going on to it, and therefore a lot more senior therapists are willing to put in the time to do these things that can create very good results. But the most important thing is you need to know what you're doing. If you don't know what you're doing and trying to do naturalistic approaches, like following child's lead, it's going to lead to a whole load of frustration because you don't know what to do. So therefore, I do not. In fact, I don't. I don't recommend you, the parent, doing follow child's lead for a prolonged period of time. And the only way that you do it, you can have it inside of your arsenal of therapy, but you cannot be the only thing. You must have some structured stuff that you can lean on. The structure is for you, not for the kid. Right? Because during the naturalistic thing, the therapist head is thinking about, what's the next response? I've done this so many times, it becomes nature to me. I can roll the ball this way. I can do that. I can create a situation that makes the child want to communicate with me. I can make it fun. But a lot of parents don't have that luxury, that don't have that training, don't have those hours under the belt. So therefore, I do not recommend you doing this alone. You need someone to teach you. Okay? So that's all. If you want to learn more, go to agentsofspeech.com checklist to grab a free list of tools and toys that will help you along the way when you're starting home therapy. All right, so that's it for today. I'll see you in the next video. Bye.
