Why Speech Therapy isn't Working For You | www.agentsofspeech.com

Hey. Hey, guys. So I haven't been online and doing lives since. For some time now. And I wanted to talk about why speech therapy doesn't work and why we're doing this is because I've been looking at the Facebook group, which I'm live in as well. So if you haven't joined the Facebook group, I'll just share the link to you right now. But the problem is, most of the time, Facebook doesn't push this live to any of the people inside the group. So anyways, I'm talking about why speech therapy doesn't work for you right now. I mean, that there's a lot of people inside the group who say, oh, I've been into speech therapy. I've done this, I've done that. We haven't seen anything, any type of results. So it's. Sorry. Sorry about that. So it's kind of difficult to continue. Right. And it's not. It's going to cost you an arm and a leg. Right. In. In a. Not even talking about. In a western country. Right. Or in a. What we call developed country, so to speak. Right. Even where I am. Yeah. Hong Kong, Singapore, even, you know, Indonesia or Malaysia. It can cost a lot of money, you know. So why does it not work? There's a few things I want to talk about first. Right. So I see some questions. I'll talk about that. I'll answer some questions later on. Okay? So the reason why speech therapy doesn't work most of the time is because there isn't enough time. Okay. And you're going to tell me, yo, what do you mean? I put a lot of time? It's like once per week, Right. And if it were cheaper, I would actually go more often. And you're right, it is expensive. So what do I mean by time? So time means. So, for instance, for a child to start being accustomed to a therapist, it takes some time. All right? The first three or four sessions is basically just building rapport. So anyone who tells you that you will see results right away, I'm pretty sure they're lying or, you know, like that. That particular therapist is like godlike, you know? And most of us people, we aren't. Right. I'm just a human being. Right. Even if you come see me, I'm not going to be able to make your child talk the first session. Well, I. I've tried that before. I've tried it many times. In fact, most of the time they do. But the. The thing I want to tell you is to manage your expectations. Right. And then I see in the group now, the reason why I was. I've been a little more active in the group is because I saw some negative comments inside our Facebook group. Right? So you see our Facebook group, although Facebook isn't very good at allowing, allowing people to like, you know, for me, if I make a post, they're not going to see a lot. But then for other parents, when they make it, other parents will see that post, right? But when I, when I go in, I, um, what pro. The problem with groups is that they project these negative comments because there's a lot of engagement and there's a lot of argument. So it becomes very toxic inside of that thing. And you, you know, we decline all the people who join. And now we have like 9,000 people inside that group, which is a great asset, right. For parents who are just starting this, this thing, it's nice, right? But at the same time, it's. It's becoming very hard to manage, right? And I say, and this is a good way in, in a good sense, you know, it really is very difficult to moderate the discussion inside. And sometimes inside people say things that aren't 100 correct either. Okay. So I'm trying to set things straight here. And Facebook isn't being very. How to say, is it? They're not being very forgiving about me trying to tell you guys what my opinions are because there's just too many of you guys, right? Right. So three to four months goes by, right? And then a lot of parents will give up. And I've seen it many times myself as well. The cutoff time for parents who don't see anything coming in and they leave is around three to four months, right. They've invested a bunch of time, a bunch of money, and now it seems like nothing's going to work. Nothing's working. So what do we do now? Right? Either you change the therapist, you change the approach, or there's something going on that's wrong. Okay, so usually it's like a blaming game, right? The therapist tells me, ah, the mother isn't like, isn't doing the home practice. And then the mom says, oh, the therapist is very engaging with the child. And then the child blames no one because he can't talk, right. He cannot really, like, speak for himself yet. So you see, it's always a game of like, just shifting liabilities when, when you're going to like, therapy or whatever that you're trying to do, right? Because this is a professional service, right? If something doesn't work, then it must be Someone, it might be a service provider or the client. There's no other person to blame. Right. If you cannot blame the child, because if you blame the child, then, you know, like, then what's the point of doing therapy? Yeah. So let's talk about, like, there's some things that you have to change. The only things you can change are, number one, the therapist, number two, the method, and number three, your involvement. Right. So let's talk about the first one. Your. The therapist. Right. So does a lot of people ask me, oh, how do I know if the child. If the therapist is good or not? The first thing is always about if the, if the therapist can. Can create rapport with. With the kid. All right, so if he can, then good, great, excellent. Right? That's the first step. The second step is, do you see that the therapist is trying to get him to communicate more? Doesn't mean it's always words. It can sometimes means that it's like a gesture or, or any other way. Right? So is there more communication? Is there more eye contact? Is there much more of this, like, communication in, like when your child is at the clinic as opposed to at home, they have no one to talk to and no one to communicate with. Right? That's something I want you to be. To think about. All right? The, the second thing you can change is the approach. Right? So at the, at the clinic, is the approach appropriate? Right. So is the approach something that you can replicate? That it's not something too difficult? Right. So a lot of parents will say, my, my therapist is just playing with the kid, with my. With my child. So I don't see any type of professional service going on. It's just play. Right? So play is a big part of training. Right. But at the same time, it's very hard to replicate because the big one of the things that I hear a lot of times is that, oh, tell me what, what toys to buy, Right. That's why we have the checklist, right. If you go to agentsofspeech.com checklist, you get a free tool list of tools and toys that I recommend. Right. It's not all, like, end all, be all. It's just a starting point, right? But what happens is that they ask me, oh, after they have the Watts, they will ask me, oh, how do I do it? Right? How do I, how do I make use of this? Right? So this is going to be like a huge topic that I'm trying to, like, unravel for you. And the approach is something you have to be careful about. Because, like, maybe no one told you, right? But playing and being naturalistic is actually harder than being structured. Right. And having a balance between the two is actually super hard. Okay. And this is where, you know, like, the theory comes into practice, that kind. And it's super hard to teach a parent without prior knowledge or prior, like, expertise to go into a play session with a kid with like, learning objectives in your mind. It's very difficult. Right. Most parents will, will not fare well. All right? And that's why at Agents of Speech, we talk about a lot of the structure tasks. Because that's like a, like a quick win for you. Right? And, and something that it's. The structure is for you, not for the kid. It's actually for both. Right. But what I mean is, look at the therapy right now. Is, is the, is the approach something that you can replicate at home? Is it something you're comfortable with? If you're not, then change it. Right. The third thing is your involvement, which is like the whole, the whole YouTube channel that everything that I'm doing is to promote your involvement in your child's language therapy. Right. So it's not something I'm telling you, you should try your best to replicate what they're doing in speech therapy at home so that you get your value, your money's worth. All right? Or else there's no done for you solution in the speech therapy world or in the therapy world. There's not no such thing. Right. You think you can just bring your child to a place and they magically can talk? Well, you could. And that would cost you like more than an arm and a leg. We're Talking about like 100% just full time at the therapy center. But at the same time, when they come home, who are they going to interact with? Right? It's you. So you want to hear those words, you want to see the results, but you also be. Need to be part of the process. It's like, it's called therapy for a reason. You know, it's a human to, in human like, interaction thing. Okay. It doesn't work if you go into couples therapy as like you just throw your husband there or you throw your wife there and you hope that, you know that's going to solve a marriage problem. That's not going to solve it. Right. You're hoping to seek therapy, seek counsel, and, you know, just, just bring yourself there. But the, the thing is, it's about after the, the therapy, can you generalize those skills? Right. Let's say I'm going to therapy to talk about my. I don't have much to talk about, but you know, like maybe some traumas or whatever. But the problem is after the therapy, can I bring those skills outside of the, of the clinic room so that I can live a better life? And it's the same as speech therapy and like ABA therapy, like occupational therapy. I think a lot of parents do not see this. This point is that the work only begins outside of the clinic room. All right, if you say that it's not working after, after like a certain. If, if you say that after three or four months, but then the thing is you didn't learn the techniques and strategies to use outside of the therapy room, then that's the big problem, right? And you says do I have a. I don't have a child, Andrew. I don't have one yet. Maybe when I'm blessed with this, this opportunity, I will let you guys know. All right? But you know, the, the children who I teach from 2 to like 18, sometimes even all the way up to adults. Right? So let's answer some questions. Let's see. Say Z. Sorry Zainab, I might be saying your name wrong. Anyways. Is it normal for a four year old to talk and send. To not talk on sentences? If you say normal as in like are they hitting their milestones then no, that's not, that's something that you have to work on because four year olds, they're supposed to be speaking in like full on sentences long and be able to answer some why questions. So if Your child is 4 and not able to talk in sentences, then yeah, your child is like delayed. Right. At the very least I can tell you that for, for certain. Okay, A bit says thank you. Oh, no worries. Thanks for the lovely comment. Yeah. So at the end of the day you have to remember, all right, therapy, whatever therapy, the work only begins after you get out, right? It doesn't start, it doesn't stop the instant you come out. Right? Say that you're doing like you know, ABA therapy. There's, there's a lot of use. Use cases. It's not only for like autism, which is I, I find pretty absurd that people say ABA therapy is like is is bad, it's bad for you. It's, it's, it's, it's making people having ptsd. But a ABA isn't something that is only used treat asd. In fact a ABA is something to true that people use to treat ptsd. Right. For veterans, for war veterans in the United States, there's loads of research about that. Why don't people talk about that and talk about how it's creating a generation of suppressed autistic children or whatever, which I do not want to engage in this topic, actually, because. Cancel culture. I don't like it. Right. Dr. Fatima says hi. I say hi too. My son is three, says mama. Baba. No meaningful words. Okay. How do I encourage eye contact? See, like, see people. You guys. You guys have to watch the videos within the YouTube. Within the YouTube channel, right? All these questions. Get a lot of these questions. Don't. Don't mind me. Like, I. I love answering your questions. It's just that if you ask these questions, it's better if you search within the YouTube channel and you get your answer in a very long form. And I've organized it in a way that I'm actually talking about that topic only. And you'll learn exactly what my opinion is about that. All right, so first of all, it says mama and Baba, but no meaningful words. Go to work on that. Right? Don't work on words. Work on the gestures, as we always say. I'm sure you must have heard me say that before if you're a subscriber anyways, how do I encourage eye contact? You don't. You really don't. This eye contact is not something that you should be working on, period. Right? Unless. Unless you. You need the kid to look at you in order for you to do other things, right? Let's say their speech impediment is very severe and you want them to start looking at you, to look at the mouth, you know, look at your face so they, like, they can imitate the fine motors around the. Or like the mouth so that they. They can at least get the sounds closer to what they are, right? But at the same time, they were only talking about, like, children who are having problems with speech, right? I don't know about what. What your. Right. So, you know, like, this is exactly why it's very, very dangerous for me to come online and talk and give advice without much context, right? So Fatima says speech therapists suspected asd. Okay? You're not supposed to. You're not supposed to. Speech therapists are not supposed to suspect anything other than language delays. And. And like, communication disorders only. No asd, no adhd, no whatever. We can't suspect it. Psychologist said it's not a speech delay due to screen time. There's no due. Like, you cannot say it's due to screen time. All right? You cannot really say that. I've been through this quite a few times. You Cannot say a speech delay because of screen time. Screen time is a factor, right? Because you can see a lot of children who have loads of screen time who speak perfectly well. Right? So that means your child is predisposed to have a speech and language delay. I'm not saying that, you know, like they're destined to be that. Don't take my words out of context. What I mean is they have a higher chance, a risk factor. And because of the screen time, I'm saying because of the screen time, it makes the risk higher. Right? So whether it is ASD or what, what, what other factors, like this is the wrong questions you're asking, Fatima. Whether you know the factors or not, it will not change how you treat yourself, your child's situation. You see what I'm talking about? This is not a medical condition. You know, you cannot know the factors and then like change the factors and boom, gone. Right? It's not like that. It really isn't. If it were, then, you know, I'd be more than happy, extremely happy to tell you, so I don't have to work. Right. But it doesn't work like that. Okay, so what other factors are there? Like, this is not the right, like, question. So biologically speaking, we don't know There's. We don't know the, the type of. We really don't know the type of factors that are going on. If we knew, then we would have like done something. It's not like the morning after pill that created deficit, like defects in. In newborn babies, right? It's not like that. Okay, it might. We still don't know yet. Maybe it's like the air. Is it the water? Right. We don't know. But genetically speaking, everyone's sound like, biologically speaking, everyone's okay. And then speech and language is delayed. So you ask what treatments do I do. I suggest. What I suggest is always very clear on the YouTube channel and Facebook page. Right. Start teaching your kid to use, to be more communicative. Right? Yeah. Take something like be. Be active about it. Teach them a routine and go at it. Right. I don't want to repeat myself over here on the live. Okay? So Fatima, your homework, very important is to watch more videos on our YouTube channel. Right? So the treatment is of course that, you know, like, you need speech therapy, you need. I don't know if your child needs aba. I think probably not. I presume not. Look, Fatima, this is not. This is not cool. If you like, you know, like if, if everyone did that, I. First of all, it's unethical Right? Because if you give me a complete medical history, that's not nice. I am not someone within your, your healthcare system. You know, I think it's highly inappropriate to do so. And second of all, you know, like, how can I discuss your case? Right? We, I do do online consultations, but very limited, you know. You know, I don't have enough time. I cannot do this for everyone. So it's not about the, the case or whatever. Like, if you talk to me, right? If your child is doing Mama baba, right, and then he's not speaking yet, the first thing I'm going to ask you is how does he get his message across? Does he pull your hand? Does he hand guide you? Whatever the term is, right? What does he do? Does he point? Does he go vocalize? Does he, like, does he get mad if you're slow, right? What, what toys does he play? How does he play? Does he throw things? Does he know how to play correctly? Right? What sounds does he have? You know, it's not about, like, discussing. I'm just asking questions, right? And then you, you tell me what, what they are, and then you go do exactly, you do exactly to help those, like, those symptoms get, get better. So, for instance, if your child is pulling your hand, that's inappropriate. That is inappropriate or inappropriate way to get his message across, you know, so. Yeah, okay. Yeah. You get what I mean, right? I don't mean to shoot you down, Fatima. It's just, just that it's not. I can't do this for everyone, you know, and, and I, I do get a lot of these, like, reports out of nowhere inside of my Facebook DMS, you know, in my email, just scanned PDFs. I know you guys trust me. You guys, like, want to give me something, but, you know, let me just reply something. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, I, I, I really appreciate all the, all the love that I get, you know, like, all the trust I get over the Internet. But don't be sending your child's medical history over the Internet, because it's not safe, right? Don't do it unless we're really going to sit down and have an online consultation, right? And just, just so you know, I can't do it for free. I cannot do it for free, because if I did it for free, then there's a whole load of different questions, like who gets to talk to me? You know, how many should I do, Right? Is it fair for the people who are paying me right now? Yeah, there's just a whole load of questions that, you know, I Need, I need to go through when this happens, right? Okay, so let's talk about like, let's talk about something else, right? So at the end of the day, I just want to recap about what I said. Speech therapy doesn't work. It only comes down to like a few things. Number one, is it not, not a good match between you and your child and the therapist? Right. And how do you know? Is, are they having a good time? And do you see that your therapist is actively trying to teach something? Right. And then the second thing is, is approach appropriate? Appropriate? Meaning is there something you can replicate at home? Is there something you feel comfortable with? Do you think from your eyes when you sit into the therapy room, does it look like it's working? Right? So the third thing is your involvement. Obviously your involvement is at the top, utmost importance. So there's a study. I don't know where it is. I'll try my best to find it. Is that the parent guided coaching, that actually that's what I do, right? I do online courses, I do coaching over the Internet, teaching like parents like you who are watching and those. I've never done a study, right. When I'm coding someone that I, I don't have the source yet. I'll try to find it for next time. But anyways, so those people and just speech therapy, the, you know, the difference wasn't very significant between the language gains, right? So what does that mean? That you are as important at like, at least as important as the speech therapy sessions that you're paying for or driving to or commuting to, which is taking up a lot of your time, energy and resources, right? So think about that, Think about that. It's very important that you do this correctly and involve as much as you can. And the next question would be, how do I, how do, how do I even do this? Right? What kind of treatment are you talking about? So like Fatima just now, she was saying, I'll tell you to watch as many videos as you can inside of the YouTube channel. It doesn't need to be meet mine, right? It could be a lot of therapists online right now. Their content is great, but just remember is that it doesn't matter how much content you listen to or whatever, you know, you need to do the work. All right? I'm telling you, no one's going to care about your child more than you do. And I talk about this a lot, right? But rarely do I, you know, like a lot of parents will join our courses, but you know, the, the finish percentage very is not as high as I would want it to be, right? And also, like the parents who are super committed, they get the results. And when they show it to other parents, although it's encouraging, but it's very not. It's not very long lasting. You need to plant yourself on the chair at the table and schedule out 10 minutes to really work on your child. Because if you don't, your child's not gonna. Your child's not gonna come over by him or herself and say, I wanna learn how to speak. No, it doesn't work like that. It's not like they're. They have a piece of homework, they don't know what, how to do it, and they come up to you, hey, can you teach me? That's not like that. They don't even know. They don't know. That's the biggest problem. So therefore, the. The responsibility is on you. All right? As much as I can, like, I can. I can say this as. As nicely as I can, right? There isn't anyone who would care enough than you do. And that's why you're watching this video, you know? So think about that, all right? Schedule time, all right? It doesn't matter. It doesn't need to be perfect, you know, it really doesn't need to be. Parents who send me videos. We have a membership, right? We have a membership of paying parents who send me videos of their children for me to give feedback. And yeah, it's very, very, very, very high intensity and high commitment. And by the way, the membership is closed. Please don't ask me about it yet. Usually we open and close it. And it's because I just want to take care of the parents inside properly. And then when they ask me, oh, what kind of videos can I send you? I'm like, okay, just send me something that you're like, you're just playing with a kid. I want to see how they call you certain, like, something like that, right? I just want to see how you interact. Any video will do. All right? But then they're like, they will start saying, oh, this video isn't perfect. This angle is bad. You're not performing on the phone. When the phone is pointed at them, I'm like, I don't. I don't care. Show me something. I'll give you feedback about how to be more natural so that your child doesn't feel like you're paparazzi or whatever. This. It needs to start from you, right? Or else it doesn't. It won't go anywhere if you keep on Being perfectionist, you won't get anywhere. Show me something, right? I've been doing this for more than four years now. You know, just the online coaching part, right? It's. It's harder than doing it myself. If I. If I could, you know, I could, like, you know, in the Matrix, like, download this right into your mind and do it now, right? Maybe later on we could do it with, like, augmented reality, right? Or a VR or whatever. But at this point in time, you know, I wish. I wish someone would teach me that way as well. You know, like the senior therapist I worked with. They were awesome. But at this point in time, the only way of transferring knowledge is by you doing it. Because no matter how much I talk about it, it won't work. All right. Yep. All right. That's all. Oh, look, it's Khalifa. What's up? Yeah, I'm so. I'm so. I'm so. I'm so glad about Mika, you know, I'm so glad about it. I love seeing him. He's very. He's. He's a cool guy to work with, I'm sure. All right, so that's all for tonight, and I will see you guys next week, right? And I know I haven't been doing a lot of lives lately. You know, things has just been quite crazy for myself, and I just couldn't plant myself down to actually do something, which is a huge problem. Anyways, so that's all for tonight. And you will see, you'll be seeing a lot more of me, all right? A lot more me. A lot of. A lot more agents of speech coming forward. And that's because we've just. I've decided that I'll make this the best resource for parents on the Internet right now. And I think the problem with all the information online is just. It's paralyzing. It's paralyzing. It's not something like, boom, do something. Right? So, okay, so for instance, like this, right? And Breen says, my son is 21 months. Can you suggest where I can start? Right. So obviously the starting part is always very difficult. So my question. Question to you is 21 months is not really that, like, that old. You know, he's. He's not even two years old yet. Yeah. So let me tell you the milestones real quick. Maybe this is something that I should make into a questionnaire, right? Would that sound better? Like, if you. I bought a domain name called speechdelayornot.com. maybe that would help. But, you know, like, 21 months isn't that old, right? 21 months. You would. You're supposed to expect at the very worst case scenario to have single words and some and like a few two word phrases. I'm talking about speaking. So that's the worst case scenario for your child. Does your child have any single words? If so, he is still okay, so to speak, right? So it's like nine months to one and a half years old is the period, the window that we say typically developing children should acquire a single word, like have. Start to use single words consistently for different things, right? Not say mama. For every thing on the table, right, There must be a single word that connects to a real thing in the real world, right? Two years old is where children start to put combined words together, right? So I don't know. I'm Brie. It's very hard for me to tell you where you should start. I guess it should start from. My question again is, does he pull your hand to get what he wants? Then you should start off with just going to let me give you a go@agentsofspeech.com hand pulling. Maybe that would, that would work for all you guys out there who are having problems with your child, just pulling a hand for stuff. Here's like a recipe for that you can do in five minutes every day. All right? Just do it. And then if you want to, you can take a video. Right? Let's see what, what we have here lacks. Lax clippers, man. Is that like lacrosse or something? Anyways, that might be your name. Sorry about that. My son is five and a half. He always repeats things over and over. It's very hard to tell him to follow us. He wants us to do what he wants us to do and. Okay, how can we improve him? Well, the thing is, like, if he, if he acts like a boss over and over again, is there something that. Can you bargain with him? Right? Can you bargain? Meaning can you take something that he wants and then that thing that he wants? Right, the thing that he wants right now, can you use it and say, look, I'll give you this one if you give it. It's always about bargaining. So think about what, what rewards you can use that you can start. I'm not saying every time you're going to have to bribe him. I'm saying that this is good starting point in order to have him listen to you, provide some value to him, right? So think about that. Yeah, no worries, Lex. Thank you. Just random words. Go. Whoa. That's funny. All right, so I think you can start off with the hand pulling guide I just showed you. Right? And then let's see what happens. Right? Namaste, Mary. Three year old and hyperactive, only speaks a few words. Okay, cool. I don't think that's a question, but, yeah, I. I don't know how to answer that. Mary, seriously. Maybe you could rephrase that into a question. I don't have any, like, I don't have any. How to say, I don't have any suggestions for that. It's just too little information for me. Right. So that's the problem here. All right, so I guess that's all for tonight. Unless, you know, there are more questions, but, you know, it's refreshing to do another live since a very long time. And I'll talk to you guys next week. All right, See? Yeah. Bye. Bye.