Start teaching your child at home. Download my FREE home therapy checklist→ https://www.agentsofspeech.com/checklist

Table and chair

Nothing beats doing work at the table. Use a kids table and chair to create a study environment. It’s a place where once you and your child sit down, there’s a consensus to what is about to happen… Which is to play and also work on speech and language (or other things for that matter).

Yourself

You are the best toy. Do not let others make you think that a magical toy or teaching material will make your child talk. It might in the short run, but you need to equip yourself with the ability to teach your child on demand.

Laminator

This is the single more important thing to have at home if you need to teach a delayed child. You can use it to print out free teaching materials, create flashcards and more… It is a teacher’s best friend, and it will be yours as well.

Online course for parents with speech delayed children:...

Start teaching your child at home. Download my FREE home therapy checklist→ https://www.agentsofspeech.com/checklist

Language is all about exposure

Learning a language takes repetition, yes, but also it takes loads of exposure. We won’t learn anything if all we do is repeat the words and not listen to others speak the language. If you’re learning Japanese and all you do is learn from a textbook and practice on your own, then yes you’re going to have some success. However, you will never get to the level of fluency if everyone around you spoke the language.

Therapy is a high-stress activity

Children will speak inside the speech therapy clinic. However, many parents report that once they get home it’s all the same again and it feels defeating because it’s as if the parents are the problem! That’s not the case, it’s because therapy is high stress and high demand for the child. Children get exhausted after a 45-minute session of talking...

The best time is after 2 years old
Assessing children under 2 years old isn’t the easiest thing to do. This is because their attention span is low and it wouldn’t be the best use of everyone’s time. You’d expect a child below 2 years old to roll around, unable to sit for a long time and have limited play skills. In our experience, therapists can give a lot more to the parents when the child is at least over 2 years of age. It’s easier to demonstrate and assessment results can be a lot more conclusive.

By 2, he should be using 2-word phrases
It’s true, children who are 2 years old should be able to use at least some 2-word phrases such as “mama eat”, “drink milk”, “turn on TV’ and so on… Children should also start to know how to answer simple “what”, “yes/no” and choice questions. If your child isn’t able to do these things, it’s best you seek a speech and language...

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Start teaching your child at home. Download my FREE home therapy checklist→ https://www.agentsofspeech.com/checklist

Need more help at home? Join our micro-course for parents - short and to the point video lessons: https://www.agentsofspeech.com/micro

Oral motor as a stepping stone

Oral motor exercises should be a middle step towards speech production. We use it because it’s difficult for a child to produce certain sounds, and therefore teaching the skills leading up to those sounds is the best thing we can do. By breaking down the motion of our oral muscles when we speak, we can find some easier motions that we can target.

Motor to speech transition

For every oro-motor task, you must have a speech goal in mind. Or else, you are really just teaching oral motor muscles (more on that below). If you try to really feel how the mouth moves when we talk, you will realize that it doesn’t really move that much. Especially vowels, our lips have minimal movement and...

Start teaching your child at home. Download my FREE home therapy checklist→ https://www.agentsofspeech.com/checklist

Need more help at home? Join our micro-course for parents - short and to the point video lessons: https://www.agentsofspeech.com/micro

Speak without any expectation

When we want to teach a child to talk, we often try to bother him until he’d actually talk. That’s why some parents say that a child is “too lazy” to talk because it requires so much effort to get a sound out of the child! Stop doing that and speak with no expectation for him to repeat what you say. A child will speak when it makes sense, and also ready to do so. In most cases, the child won’t say the words because he’s not entirely sure how to go about it. If we push them to talk, it does get pretty stressful. Imagine being forced to do something you’re not very good at every day, you’d probably not enjoy interacting with the person who does that to...

Start teaching your child at home. Download my FREE home therapy checklist→ https://www.agentsofspeech.com/checklist

Need more help at home? Join our micro-course for parents - short and to the point video lessons: https://www.agentsofspeech.com/micro

Finding the reason

Always start off with what triggered the sudden change in mood and ultimately the meltdown. Yes, sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint, but with some practice, you can and will be able to understand what triggers your child. Stay away from those things, stop doing the things that are setting her off and remove it if it’s physical. If it’s because of the child trying to get something they want from you, provide an alternate method for them to have it. However, all of these need to wait until the child is calm. Because no one listens when their angry and throwing a tantrum.

Less physical contact and talking

It’s our natural instincts to attend to a child when she’s in a bad mood. We try...

Start teaching your child at home. Download my FREE home therapy checklist→ https://www.agentsofspeech.com/checklist

Need more help at home? Join our micro-course for parents - short and to the point video lessons: https://www.agentsofspeech.com/micro

Why children ignore you

Many parents report that their child used to respond to their name and somehow they have unlearned to do so. We have to think about why you’re calling for your child’s name. Sometimes, parents are calling for their child’s attention for self-serving reasons (don’t worry, we all do this). Once we get their attention, we look at how cute they are and that’s it. Slowly, delayed children who derive no social reward from this interaction will learn that there isn’t really anything in for them and not react to you. I can bet that most children do react to their names when you’re holding their lunch (especially when they’re hungry).

Other than that, parents are...

5 Minute Activity to teach Communication instead of Hand Pulling→ https://www.agentsofspeech.com/handpulling

Need more help at home? Join our micro-course for parents - short and to the point video lessons: https://www.agentsofspeech.com/micro

Hand pulling is a form of communication!

Hand pulling or guiding is a way that she needs help and wants you to grab that thing for her. There’s a reason why hand pulling is a common trait in delayed children. That’s because it’s actually useful! Many of our students get by in real life by using this method. Sadly, social rules are written by those neurotypical, so in order for a child (especially one on the spectrum), we must teach them the appropriate way to communicate so that they can cope with everyday life.

Be careful that you’re making hand pulling into a routine. Many parents will proceed to ask questions like “what do you want?” or command the child to speak first before allowing the child to...

Start teaching your child at home. Download my FREE home therapy checklist→ https://www.agentsofspeech.com/checklist

Every therapist advises parents to ignore the child whenever bad behaviour happens. This might not always be the best advice, it really depends on the situation. Whilst I do not wish to take your therapist’s advice out of context. I’d like to supplement the information so you know exactly why they ask you to ignore it.

Ignoring works when your child’s reason for disruptive behaviour to get your attention. And to know whether that is true or not, first of all, you have to remove your attention (ignore) to see if the behaviour continues or not.

What if your child keeps up with the bad behaviour? Well, there are 2 possibilities, either he’s trying even harder to get your attention or the reason for his tantrum wasn’t even for your attention in the first place.

If it’s the former, then keep on ignoring...

Start teaching your child at home. Download my FREE home therapy checklist→ https://www.agentsofspeech.com/checklist

The reality is that we all self stimulate. Some people shake their legs, pick their noses, bite their nails, pull their hair and the list goes on. Even singing in the shower should be considered stimming. Why? Because it serves the purpose to provide some sort of stimulation to ourselves right? We’re not doing this to entertain or socialize with anyone.

The main difference for children, especially those on the Autistic spectrum is that they don’t know when it’s appropriate or not. Stimming can come in a lot of forms, inappropriate stimming can make it hard for children to socialize and in some cases even hurt themselves (like tiptoeing).

Our job is to allow them to get their stimulation but in an appropriate way. An autistic adult had told me before that stimming is like a rabbit hole, it’s ok to stim for a short while but anything...