Ming explains why speech-delayed kids often resist toy play with adults. Using sound effects and building fun routines around toys they already like works better than forcing new games on them.
Hey, this is Ming here, back with another video about how to teach your child at home for speech and language delay. Children, in this video, I want to talk about how to get your child interested in what you're doing. Okay? I've been getting questions about, hey, my child, he doesn't like toys. He'll lose interest real quick. Once I give it to them, he's on to the next thing. Okay, so this video is for you. Before I go in a little bit further, we had a video about play skills and why it's important. I'll link it somewhere above. And the reason why we want to foster play skills is because I feel like whenever parents come to my clinic, the most repeated thing that I see when I look at them interact with the children is that when they play with the children, they just give the child a toy and that's it. And say that, oh, they don't know how to play, that they're not interested. Well, the thing is, there's a reason why when your child is at therapy, he or she is more likely to play with a therapist than you. All right? And the reason is because they've actually taken the time to foster that connection between the clinician, the toy, and the child. Whereas the parent really sometimes just throw the toy at the kid. And please don't get this wrong way. I'm not blaming you by any means. All right? At the same time, you have to learn how to use fun routines to get your child engaged. And this one is by far one of the hardest skills a parent needs to learn. Right? Because it's different from playing with other children, from typically developing children. Typically developing children will actually tell you what to do or engage with you instead of you having to engage them. Right? So now you have to learn how to engage your child if they are delayed or disordered in any type of form. First of all, fun routines. Remember, we have a whole video on this about play skills and what kind of routines you can use without. Even without toys. So go check it out. And the second thing is, you have to use your voice and be fun, right? And you might say, I'm not children's person. I'm not child friendly. I'm not whatever. But it's okay. I started off even worse than you did. I believe you need to understand that whatever something someone does which works for them doesn't mean you should copy or whatever. So what I do is actually I add a lot of sound effects. Obviously, I use a lot of suspense. I do not. I actually do not go like really high pitch. I go like, oh my God. Like I don't do that kind of stuff. I think it hurts my voice. Okay. I don't do that. So what I do instead is I use. Sometimes go really soft, sometimes I go louder, sometimes I create suspense by not talking and sometimes I make a lot of sound effects. And what I mean by sound effects, it will be different for different people. I've seen parents who are very successful with doing like choo choo train sounds or like whoosh or something. I don't know. But for me, for me, I like explosion sounds like boom. Like that. Make certain sounds that your child cannot make and they will actually want to interact with you because you're so funny, right? So you don't need to be go all hyper and bubbly and like child super friendly or lovey dovey or speaking in a really high pitched voice. Right? You can just be yourself but be fun along the. It's too bad that I cannot tell you exactly what to do because it really depends on you being yourself, but at the same time being fun. And number three, I find that this is the easiest way that parents will actually help their children to learn how to play. And how we do it is basically we use the good stuff that they like already and we pair it with the play. Okay, so I've done this a few times already where I taught the parent to. To use the play as the task itself whilst not teaching language or speech or whatever. I just want the child to engage with the toy meaningfully and then reward them with the stuff that they like, such as like chips or edibles or drinks or like TV time or whatever. This pairing of good stuff with play, slowly you can decrease the desired like the food, the drinks or whatever and make it more about the play. Okay. Once they understand the routines and they actually can explore the toy themselves, you've given them enough content and context to understand the toy. You can just leave them. Leave your child with the toys because they know how to play it now, right? And it's happened many times already. I've already taught a few of my clients this works. Okay, so try it, try it. It's gonna be difficult in the beginning if you actually get into any trouble. You can just comment here on these YouTube videos. And don't forget to like and consider to subscribe if this kind of video helps you out. Okay? So if you haven't, you should go to agentsofspeech.com checklist to download a bunch of home therapy tools, toys that I like to recommend my clients and remember to, like, comment and share this kind of videos out there so that more parents like yourself can get the information that they need. All right? So with that said, thank you so much, and I'll see you in the next video real soon.
