Teaching Speech delayed and Autistic Children to use Facemasks (What Worked for Me)
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Fear of facemasks is usually related to “tactile defensiveness”. It isn’t really the facemask that’s causing the tantrum. Yes, facemasks are uncomfortable for everyone, even for adults. However, children who are on the spectrum become defensive after a bad experience or two.
Children who are not willing to try new things have a fear that history might repeat itself. Therefore throwing a tantrum might actually be a suitable response to protect him/herself. It doesn’t matter if it’s a facemask, a hair clipper, nail clipper, scissors or the toilet, a bad experience can teach children who cannot communicate effectively to run away as fast as they can when these things come into their sight.
It happens with us too. You must have a friend who nearly drowned before and that’s why they still...
4 Lessons from “The reason I jump” I learned as a Speech Therapist
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1. People with ASD don’t want to be a burden
In the book, Naoki Higashida wrote that sometimes he wishes that he wasn’t born. This doesn’t- mean that he’s suicidal, just living life is difficult and sometimes there isn’t a way to express themselves properly. And I’ve heard a mature student of mine said the same thing. They do not want to be our burden, they don’t want it as much as we don’t. They are human beings with emotions and a wish to be independent, have a life and be a contribution.
2. Sensory overload is worse than we can imagine
It’s not like the neural endings are different in ASD people. I’d like to believe most of the hardware is similar. However, the software is a little different, especially in sensory processing. This sensory also triggers emotions because they do not know how to...
How Much Therapy Time do You Need at Home?
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Home training is far more important than going to therapy
It doesn’t matter if your child tells a story inside the speech therapy clinic. What matters is what he can do at home, at school and out and about. That’s why they need for continuing therapy techniques is one of the most important factors for therapy success.
10-15 mins of direct training
Yes, staying natural and using play techniques are very important for any child’s language development. However, parents have to be able to keep speech delayed children under instructional command. It’s important to get your child to sit with you so that you can teach whatever you need to. This includes language, behaviour or even self-care skills.
Always be facilitating without demanding
Other times, you should continue to facilitate language. Model the language that you want your child to say....
Is Your Child Speech Delayed? | Risk Factors for Speech and Language Delay
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Expressive
Notably small vocabulary, especially lacking in verb use. Verbs are more abstract than nouns just because it’s not a solid object. Even if the child does uses verbs, s/he generalizes and uses a lot of transitive verbs (make, go, get, do) for nearly everything. For nouns, there is a marked use of “this/that one” when s/he cannot find the word.
Comprehension
It is important for parents to bring a child to see a speech therapist to assess the comprehension abilities of a child. Sometimes, we use more gesture cues than we know. This “masks” the child’s true ability. Most of the time, children who are speech and language delayed using external cues to help with their comprehension. Such as visual, context, timing and tone to help them make an educated guess about how to respond.
Phonology - the child’s ability to...
Why Speech Delayed Children Throw Tantrums for No Reason
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There are many reasons why a child might get into a tantrum. For speech delayed or autistic children, it usually is about something they want. They bite, scream, hit and roll on the floor just to get 1 more cookie or play for 3 more minutes on the toy car.
In this video, we’ll talk about the reasons through an experiment in the 1950s by behavioural psychologist BF Skinner. Details here: https://eightytwentyinvestor.com/2016...
By putting a pigeon in a cage and offering a treat whenever it pecked on a button, it quickly learned the relationship between pecking and the reward. It was easy for the pigeon, 1 peck on the button equated to 1 treat.
Then Skinner mixed it up and started to reward randomly. Maybe 2 pecks he’d give 10 treats, sometimes 100 pecks, he’d give 1 treat. The pigeon started to peck furiously, trying to get a treat. It went on...
Speech therapy for autism
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Focusing on communication intent
Communication intent means whether someone wants to communicate or not. By tempting children on the spectrum, we can teach them to start using a different way to communicate with us. The misconception is that teaching speech is the best practice. However, most of the time, we need to teach a child to have the initiation to communicate first. If we teach a child to use a form that they haven’t acquired yet, for example, speaking. Then are we teaching initiation or actually teaching speech? Teach 1 new thing at a time and focus on getting children on the autism spectrum to want to talk to us!
Prelinguistic skills & pragmatics
Children who are yet to use speech to express their thoughts and needs are sometimes labelled as prelingual or non-verbal. There are certain skills a child, and even those who are on the spectrum...
Getting Your Delayed Child Interested in New Toys
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Prevention is number 1
Are there any toys, snacks or items that will trigger your child’s bad behaviour? Maybe when he wants chocolate, he’d run and open the cabinet for it. Remember preventing this type of behaviour is the key to success. Lock up that item, make it inaccessible and let him know it’s impossible for him to get it himself.
Put the best things away, access only through you!
If you take the approach of getting rid of your child’s favourite snack, that’s totally fine. However, why not make an opportunity out of it. Make sure that you teach your child a way of accessing that item, and that’s by talking to you, after you teach him something or if he does something great. He needs to understand the only way of getting it is through you!
Leave “meh” toys for free access
It’s ok to leave toys that the...
Why You Should Teach Speech Delayed to Play First Instead of Talking
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There must be a context for language
Everyone needs a context to use language. It’s virtually impossible for a human to learn something without having a context or a reason. Sometimes we ask speech delayed children to repeat a word and when they don’t reply we often feel like they are being lazy. That’s not true at all. In fact, it’s most probably because they don’t understand why you’re teaching that word. Not to mention that they are still trying to grasp the context of the situation. Children must have a clear understanding of the context to start using language to describe and contribute.
Build play skills, routines and knowledge about toys/objects
Many parents ask “why isn’t my child speaking when I instruct him to”. Most of the time, it’s a lack of explaining the task. What I mean is, the child...
What to Do When Your Speech Delayed Child Doesn't Play with Toys
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Making a routine out of preferred activity
It’s tiring, but it’s worth it. Create a routine where you will do the preferred activity together. Hold his hands and jump together, rip up scrap paper together… Create a routine, maybe it’s crunching the paper up first, tearing it second, then throwing it in the bin together.
Start with sound and light toys (be careful of sensitivity)
USUALLY, children like to play with what we call means-end or cause-effect toys. These are baby toys that something happens after you press a button. Sometimes, that’s lights, sounds or something that pops up. You can try these with your child first, see if she’s interested in these first. Bubbles nearly work all the time.
Play it yourself in a few ways to sell the toy
Think of a few ways to play a toy. I know it’s hard, but for example a car you...
How to Stop Speech Delayed Children Hitting You
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Why is he hitting?
Find out exactly what the reason is. Usually is because he doesn’t get what he wants, in other words, you’re limiting access to something. Other times its protest, frustration release and the need to escape. Is it that he hates that you’re trying to teach him all the time?
Prevention
Remove the thing or person that is causing that problem. Create an environment where this sort of violence is not needed. Also, stop your behaviour that triggers violence. When you do that, the chance of hitting goes way lower and you’ll see more good behaviour. Some parents say children will always treat parents as parents and not teachers. Whilst that is true, you can try your best not to associate hitting as a norm in your interaction.
Replacement
Teach a gesture, sound or word for your child to express what he wants instead of hitting...