Why Speech Delayed Children Throw Tantrums for No Reason

Hey guys, this is ming here from agentsofspeech.com today we want to talk about why children who are nonverbal, pre linguistic or children who don't speak as well as their peers get into a lot of problematic behavior. You know, like biting, hitting, you know, scratching, tantrums that you cannot calm them down. Okay? And I want to use an analogy of a case study done in the 50s by scientists called Skinner, you might have heard of him, and behavioralism. And I don't mean to be like inhumane and say that, oh, humans are the same as animals. I'm just saying that some behaviors can be studied and understood universally throughout, like human and animals, okay? And this type of study actually highlights how similar behaviors can be. And this stuff actually works on us as well. Like neurotypical people and neurodivergent people as well, who are on the spectrum or any other type of disorder or any type of condition that they, that your child or any, anyone might have. Disclaimer aside, let's just keep on going, right? So in this study, basically, Dr. Skinner rewards a pigeon. Whenever they peck on a button, they will get a reward, which is like a snack, basically. Very quickly the pigeon learns that whenever they peck, they get a reward. And it's very, very consistent. They know that and then something comes out, right? So later on Skinner decided to think, okay, I know that they can learn. Obviously there's a learning mechanism in animals, human beings or, you know, just living creatures, right? So later on he decided to reward pigeons randomly, okay? Rather than the quant, like giving them a very systematic approach where one pack equals one grain of, I don't know, raisin or something. He starts to rewarding. Whenever they peck five times, they give one. Or like they peck one and they give five raisins or something. And basically what happens is like, it becomes so random that the pigeon starts to do random stuff, okay? And they went berserk, basically. What what berserk means basically they went nuts. They went like, ah, they went around flying around, pecking everything, trying to get more rewards, okay? So they start to continuously peck on the button, like going crazy on it. And one of the pigeons actually hit it like 2.5 times per second for 16 hours. So if you think about that, that's a lot of times, right? And another one, like tap for like 87,000 times. Okay, I'll. I'll put the link of the article. I read this in the description box below and you can read it for yourself. So this was all this behavior was just rewarded less than 1% of the time. So whilst the pigeons are, like, going crazy and pecking everything and pecking the button, like, until it's broken, they've only been rewarded 1% of the time, just 1%. What that means is whenever someone or something or some animal wants something from you, a reward from you, they would literally do anything to get it, okay? And if they are rewarded one time, they would keep on doing it. Okay? And this really reminds me of a Chinese proverb. And, you know, there's a lot of fake Chinese proverbs out there. And basically what it means is just waiting for a rabbit because a rabbit ran fast and hit onto a wall and died, right? So this man kept on waiting and waiting for another rabbit to hit on a wall and die, and he just starved to death, right? So it's the same thing. The same thing. Humans and animals alike, we do things, we keep on doing it because we get rewarded once in the blue moon, and we just keep on doing it. And it's the same as how we're addicted to, like, our mobile phones, basically. We just continuous scroll with only rewarded 1% of the time, and we keep on doing it. So what does this mean to you and your child? Okay, What I mean is all the tantrums, all the bad behavior has been rewarded some way somehow inside the household or inside the therapy room or inside the school, okay? And just because they've been rewarded 1% of the time, they would take that chance and keep on doing the behavior over and over and keep on pulling your hand, keep on, like, biting on you just so they get what they want. They keep on screaming and shouting. And you can see this especially true when it's a different person, right? If the grandparents are more lenient towards the kid, the kids will actually berserk. Like, they would go mad, they would cry, you know, even more just to see if there's a chance. You will see a differential treatment. Children are bullying people. A certain person more, respecting someone more because they know the rules and just because the chance is different, right? Maybe dad never. Zero percent. Right? And sometimes dad is the lenient one. Who knows, right? But if some. If there's a. There's a hole and they. And the child sees it and they're smart, they will try to do whatever they. They can. What? Do whatever they know and try to get it. I remember a story when I just came to Indonesia and I was working in a school, and basically there was a child who was on the spectrum. I cannot tell you her name, obviously, but basically what happened was that when she wanted something from me, she tried everything. She knew she would copy my mouth even if I was saying no. She was like, like she's trying her best to imitate me whatever I was doing, even if I had no intention of giving it to her and no intention for her to imitate me, okay? And she was going for that 1%. And after a, a certain prolonged period of time of she trying everything, she got mad, okay? And she started to do even more things that she learned before, which was maybe like using text that she would like go up and take something and give it to me. And I'm like, I don't want that. You don't get it. I'm not going to give it to you. Right? And this particular child was very obsessed with hand sanitizers, right? She liked the smell of it, she liked the feel of it, and she would do anything for it. She tried to go out the room, come back again, restart the session. She just tried everything. She's basically that pigeon. So what you need to remember, what you need to take away from this video is that if you want your child to have the tantrums and bad behaviors in check, you have to have behavioral systems that you can lean on so that your child knows how to get something when they won't get something and when they will. Okay? And a very easy way to do this is basically using a timer, right? And these are all very behavioral approach. You will see more of this in ABA Applied Behavioral Analysis Therapy sessions. But it's also important that you can utilize it at home, right? I was saying using a timer, using some tokens which can, we can talk about this and then whole nother video which lasts a very long time, right? I bet a lot more, you know, therapists can do a better job than I do talking about it. But at the same time, timers, tokens using countdown methods to tell them when it's going to finish, and also showing them a schedule, all these things can help them to understand when they're going to get it. And they don't need to be frantic and go berserk like those pigeons pick, pecking on everything, trying everything that they know to get what they want. Okay, so that's the end of this video. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you have any questions about, you know, tantrums or whatever, you can put them in the comment section below. And if you haven't, you should get our checklist, It's Agents of Speech.com checklist is a whole list of tools and toys that we recommend parents to get when they are teaching at home. And that's it. I'll see you in the next video real soon. Bye.