You’re Confusing Speech Delayed Children

You're probably confusing speech delay children. And the reason I'm saying this is because people, or children in general, they don't do something because of two major reasons. Number one, they don't know how to, or number two, they don't want to. Right. It's either ability problem or a motivation problem. And usually speaking, it's a mixture of both for children. Okay. And usually what happens is that when I say usually is like when I see parents, I'm working with parents, and when I'm working at the clinic and I work with therapists and so on, I see that children are confused. They don't know what they're going to get out of this interaction and therefore they don't want to and. Or that they don't know what you're doing and therefore they don't know how to respond. So it's kind of both things at the same time. And both of these reasons are up to us. That's our fault. Not being able to communicate. Exactly. And clearly what we want, what structure that is, like what's in it for the kid, how fun it is, why is it rewarding, so on, so forth. These are things that we can manipulate and control, right? Not saying that we're trying to make the child to talk or force them or whatever. That never works. Okay? You cannot force someone to communicate. You can only create an environment that is obligatory. Like, meaning that it's more benefit for the child or the person to communicate with you so that they get what they want or like, so that they get more of what you're offering. Right? And usually what that means is not always rewards, right. It's not always like hard toys or like a food or whatever. It could be your presence, your social interaction, your company, so on, so forth. Right? So I don't want anyone in this video, like in the comment section to start talking about, oh, you're always like, so aba and talking about this. No, we need to get to the reason why children don't interact with you most of the time. It's because they are confused. Okay? So the number one reason for confusion is tantrums, actually. So tantrums. Tantrums, as a matter of fact, comes from a state of confusion. Right? And there are loads of different types of tantrums. We'll talk about this in a later video, probably next month. And there are a few, just to name a few for you. There's like sensory overload, which is kind of a confusion. Right. There's too much information. I have it myself. Okay, you must have something like that. There's a sensory overload. Different people are sensitive to different types of sensory, right? Anyways, so. So other than that, there are a few, like is that children don't get what they want, goes into a tantrum, they try to escape because they can't see an end to what you're trying to offer to them, right? So they try to run away. They protest as well, because at the same time it's a confusion because they also, they cannot see when it's going to end, why is it beneficial to them. And therefore they're protesting to get out of a situation or get what they want, right? It's pretty much the same thing. So having said that, the best thing is not to repeat what is already not working, right? If you keep on trying the same thing over and over again, you get the same results, okay? And what you're banking on is that the child would change, but you would like for speech delay. Children, you want to be the person who's changing because they are developing at a slower rate, especially for language, right? Or they're developing a different route. And if you keep on doing the same thing over and over and you, you're nurturing something that is not the best, okay? So therefore you have to change. So when you change, you know, like you have to get rid of the bad habits. I talk a lot about this. You shouldn't repeat your questions over and over again because you're getting ignored and child isn't really understanding that question. And I give an example of this inside of the online course sometimes and over on this YouTube channel is that I say, yo, listen. So if you're in a foreign country, someone talks to you, asks you a question, and full on, like, like a really long form question, right? And you don't understand. They keep on repeating the question without simplifying it, adding gestures, using Google Translate, whatever, no types of prompts or whatever. How would you feel? Obviously frustrated and confused. What do you want me to say? Like, I told you, I'm a foreigner, I don't understand this. You don't even try to use some sort of broken English, right? Because English is more of an international language nowadays. So like, there's no compromise. And the same as is with your child, if you don't compromise and teach them how to use like, like, you got to come lower, right? Lower your standards a little bit so that they know what you want, okay? And if you keep on repeating, it's like, oh, you want cookie, you want cookie, you want cookie? What will you get, like, tantrums, right? You asking for it. So how you do this instead is explain by showing a lot and doing a lot and instead of trying to tell, because the word tell means you're using your, like, verbal instructions. And I see this a lot in parents especially, and how we tackle this as we tell parents to stop talking and just use their hands. All right, and why does it work within our, like, the parents who are working with us? The biggest thing is that as you are not talking, you are leaving a lot more bandwidth for yourself to use your eyes to observe your child. So once, like, parents start sending videos to us, they watch it one more time, they're like, wow, I'm talking so much. There's so many things I'm saying. There's so many questions I'm asking him to do. What is that? Wow, thank you. You know, like, oh, what do you say? Sit down first. All right. You didn't say it like, you know, like, say it first, Say it first. Didn't say it. You know, all these words are meaningless because how does the child get to what they want is by doing some sort of gesture to tell you what they want. Right? So if you give so many verbal instructions, it adds the complexity to the whole thing. So you don't want to add complexity. You want to remove things. So wouldn't it be easier if you just told your child by showing and holding his hand, to do something? So, I mean, you must have seen or you must have shown. Try to learn something on the Internet, right? That's why you're here. And you Google something, for instance, it might be like, oh, iPhone, how to change your display settings or whatever, right? So you go on Google, you look it up, but it's all in text, and you're like, wow, what's going on? So better version is just to look at a video or pictures of exact screenshots of how to do it. So that's exactly what I mean. You want exact screenshots, exact blueprints, meaning the hands telling them how to play something, how to get something, how to do something, how to do a gesture to get what they want. Okay, so showing by actually showing them, like, physically prompting them instead of talking and telling. All right, That's a big thing that is even true for verbal children. Because a lot of times if you speak in long sentences and hoping that they understand it is futile. Right? Because you're asking for complexion, you're asking for difficulty. I know that's how you and I communicate right now, very effectively. That's why I'm talking in long form right here. But if I had to teach a child, you would see that there's a lot more of hands on. And you see a lot of parents, not a lot of parents. Some parents do comment and say, you cannot hold onto a child's hand like that. You know, like, you know, hand by hand like that. It's a lot of sensory information. So yes, it is, right? It is. But what else can we do, right? What else can we do to help them? Okay, if you present the solution as a problem, then give another solution, right? If there's no solution, then use the original solution that has been working. Right? So anyways, so for consistency, you need quality repetition. What does that mean? So when you are giving a lot of repetition for the child in terms of like, telling them what to do, oh, take that toy first. Okay, Cut it now, whatever. How many times does your child actually do what you say? One to one, immediately. Now, that's not quality repetition because it's, you know, when you sit your child down to work with you. Especially for the parents who are working with us right now, we're doing a lot more coaching with parents now. And what I see a lot is that a simple shift will make sense. For instance, if you want more of what you see, you need to do it more consistently with a high quality. Let me break that down in simple English. So if you want your child to do, for instance, a simple gesture, a gesture that we talk a lot inside of, the agents of speech coaching programs and online courses is that we do a lot of like, open, Right, Open. I learned this my first job as a speech therapist. And I'm just passing it on. Right. Anyways, so this one just talked to a. To a parent this morning, and he was trying to, like, because the kid was kind of verbal, so he kind of saying open and hoping the child would say open. And he was just doing this open. And then like 30% of the time the child would talk. Right. But that's not quality repetition because you only get 30%. What I want is like 90 to 100%, preferably 100. So instead of that, we go down one level lower and we just want the child to do like the open gesture. That's all. How do we do that? We take the child's hand and we go open like that. We literally take the child's hand and we do it right. We do that for the whole week, right? Until the child just does it on their own. So the reason why is because if you want Consistency. You need this quality repetition. You need to be able for the child to do it successfully. Many, many, many, many, many, many times. All right, and the last point is, saying word once doesn't mean it's consistent. Right. The same as what I just said just now. If you can get a child to say a word 30% of the time, it doesn't mean your child can do it all the time. Right. It means that they will only do it when they want to. And this is where parents will say, oh, it's up to their mood. They will only talk when they want to. The problem is you don't have effective prompting and queuing, all right. Which we've talked about in speech therapy or therapy as a whole, is the crux and the most important part of therapy. You need to create an environment that is so easy for the child to do what you want them to do. The goal is set a good level and where you can actually prompt that. A lot of times parents will want, oh, I hear that word. I heard it once. And therefore I would give the whole thing or let them off. Right. What I mean is, let's say, I mean, I hear this a lot. So I'm just going to generalize here, is that you hold onto something the child wants. And this is what a lot of therapists would teach either way, what we call manding requesting. Whatever. You're holding onto it. And what you do is like, oh, you say whatever first, right. And when the child does say it after, like three or four times or maybe five or six times that you ask, say whatever, say whatever. Say first you can't do it. And then they're like crying and then say cookie. And then you give it. Right? And then what happens is that you are teaching that you're rewarding all the crying, all the, like, ignored words, all the whatever. And then when they say cookie, they get to walk off and what are you doing? You're rewarding and telling them that it's an ordeal. It's hard, it's a very unpleasant experience to talk to you. And when they finally can say the word once, you let them go. Right. So that's why they say it's up to their mood. If they want to go through all that trauma, they will talk and they will walk off immediately. And what does the parent do? I see a lot in the videos, like, that's right. It's like happy with one word. I. I'd rather not hear words. If the child only says it once and walks off after that interaction, what I want is a very quality repetition of the interaction, right? So what I'm trying to say here is not what you should do is what we see is working and this is a huge disclaimer, right? A lot of times you see online the advice is like, oh, you should do this. You should be using whatever offer gestalt or your stal language processing disorder, you should do this. Right? You should use packs. You should what? Use whatever. What I'm telling you is what's been working for us and whether you try or not, that doesn't matter. Right? So that's all for today. If and if you haven't, you should go to agents of Speech.com checklist to grab a list of tools and toys we tell parents to get when they start home therapy. All right. So that's all for today. I'll see you in the next week and stay tuned. Bye. Bye.