Ming at Agents of Speech argues that teaching delayed children only to say 'I want' narrows their language to requesting alone. It ignores commenting, greeting, correcting, commanding, and asking. Focusing on one phrase without building other language functions at the base level misses what kids actually need.
What other language functions are that? There's like commenting. It's like, oh, that's a bird, right? That's like saying hello, like greeting, saying bye, correcting, manipulating your actions. Like mom, that's wrong. Mom, pick up that thing. Those are commands, instructions, asking questions, right? Oh, mom, what is that? Or answering questions. All those are different language functions. And if your child is stuck at I want phrases, it means that they only care to request things from you. So therefore the next thing to tell you is that now we're talking about the symptom is that they have too much I want so therefore a lot of parents and therapists will think, okay, symptomatic approach, right? I'm going to think about how to, how to cure the symptom. I will teach them different sentences through the means of imitation. So what are you doing here? You're not addressing the base level is that they don't have other language functions.
