The article below is a transcript of a talk given at a Parent Workshop by Ms. Magan Chen.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Magan Chen and I am conducting this mini-workshop.
Speech and language therapists/pathologists are the ones who work with children who may need a little more help, the ones who have communication difficulties: children who are slow in talking, who cannot follow what’s going on in their classes, children whose speech is not clear etc.
(By the way, speech and language therapists/pathologist do work with adults as well but we will be focusing on working with children today.)
Rather than you just sitting down for a talk, I’ll like you to actually practise some skills that I feel are important if you would like to see improvements in your child’s communication skills.
Let’s get started and we’ll discuss what the game illustrates later.
Please get into groups of three. Get together with people whose names you do not know. Three people: ABC. A will ask, B will answer, C will observe. You’ll all take turns.
It’s similar to making conversations with a stranger, you ask a question, the person answers. In this game, we’ll have rules about the questions that you ask.
1. Use only multiple choice type questions, with 2 choices. So, you won’t ask, “Did you come with your husband?” Instead, you might ask, “Did you come together with your husband or did you come alone?”
2. Your choices have to be like a complete sentence. E.g. instead of saying, “Did you come by car or train?” you will ask, “Did you come by car or did you come by train?”
3. If your answer is not one of the choices, don’t say anything. The person doing the asking will phrase the question differently or ask about something else. So if you are asked, “Did you come by car or did you come by train?” and you came by bus, you will keep quiet. Also, if you don’t understand the question, keep quiet.
4. The observer observes. When there has been one turn i.e. one question asked and answered, you indicate it to both of them by saying, “Good!” You also remind the other two if they are not following the rules of this particular game. You just say “Wait.” If you are reminded in this way, you can try to correct yourself or if you don’t know how, just move on.
I will tell you when to switch roles. You may start now.
Please take a minute to think about the game. Anything you have discovered or learnt.
Here are some points that I hope the game helps to illustrate.
1. Teach, not test.
Let’s say you ask your child a question, “What did you do in school?” “Why did Winnie the Pooh climb up the tree?” If you don’t get an answer, you want your child to learn and have an answer.
Sometimes I see the parent just repeating the question again (and probably not so nicely this time) or just waiting and then give up.
You have spent some extra time and in that time your child hasn’t learnt anything and I don’t think he would feel very good about himself either.
It was just like a test. If instead of testing, you’d like to teach him, you may want to consider using the multiple choice type of question that you practised. I want the stress that the important thing is that you think about how you can teach your child rather than just testing him and this is one method you can consider using, it’s not the only method.
In this method, you demonstrate the answer you expect. “Did you paint or did you sing songs?” “Did Winnie the Pooh climb the tree because he is sleepy or did he climb the tree because he was trying to reach the honey?”
You would have acted as a good role model, your child would have learnt something, learnt the vocabulary or how to phrase the sentence and he would have maintained his confidence because he feels like he came up with the answer, he didn’t fail.
This idea of ‘Teach, not Test’ also applies to younger children, if you just want them to do something, not necessarily saying something. For example, sometimes I see parents calling the child or telling the child to do something, and the child doesn’t respond. “Oscar? Oscar. Oscar” “Put the toy in the cupboard. Put the toy in the cupboard.” And in the mean time, the child has walked away to the door. Again, within that time, the child hasn’t learnt anything. Actually, he might have learnt something – learnt to ignore you.
I would suggest that once you know he is not going to respond (usually you know very soon), go and help physically do with him what he is supposed to do, hold his hands if you have to and say the words again so that he learns the meaning. “Let’s put the toy in the cupboard.” I am not saying to do everything for the child, this is only when you have said something and he doesn’t seem to understand. Don’t start doing everything for the child. Children need to explore and do things.
This idea of ‘Teach, not Test’ also means that you have to give lots of examples. When I teach a sound e.g. ‘s’, I give the child a chance to hear first of all, lots of ‘s’ words. If I am teaching the conjunction ‘because’, the child gets a chance to hear lots of ‘because’ sentences. We can achieve this through different activities or ‘games’ but the purpose is the same, giving the child lots of examples.
2. Lots of practice
When you first started the game, it was probably a little awkward learning to ask questions a particular way. After actually doing it, for some time, it gets easier. The tricky thing about parents trying to teach speech and language is that we may assume it’s easy for the child.
For the child, it’s not. We need to make allowance for the child to be free to practise and free to fail while they’re practising. The same way children learn to walk, the same way we learn how to drive. The children that come and see me usually come once a week. When I see them the following week, I don’t need to ask if they have been practising. I can see for myself or hear for myself.
In the game you played, I said you have to ask in complete sentences. I didn’t say that you have to answer in complete sentences too. However, you will probably find that if you keep repeating the pattern of asking, and if you are asking slowly and deliberately, that the person would be answering in complete sentences too. It’s contagious. “For things to change, I have to change.”
This applies to lots of things that you might like your child to do, from using complete grammatical sentences, to slowing down, to paying attention to sounds at the end of words to speaking up loudly. In fact, I would strongly suggest that you make a point of putting in an effort to make a similar kind of change you would ask your child to do. It should be an effort if you’re doing it correctly.
You should find that it is an effort to change, to be aware of what you’re doing, to consciously change a habit and to keep maintaining a new behaviour. That would help you to be more understanding of what it takes for your child to learn something new, and you would be in a better position to help. I may learn say, cooking, better from someone who still remembers what it is like to be lost in the kitchen, not knowing the basics – this person might be a better teacher to me than someone who is 3 star hotel chef, who can cook very well, but doesn’t know what it’s like to be in my position.
Continue – How to Help Your Child Improve Communication Skills – Part II
Our Contributor
The author, Ms Magan Chen brings with her more than 24 years of speech and language therapy experience in both private hospital and enrichment centre settings. This gives us exceptional understanding of our clients’ medical and/or school needs.
She has helped more than 1500 individuals to overcome their communication or learning difficulties.
Ms. Magan Chen trained in London, U.K. (M.Sc. Human Communication) and Sydney, Australia (B. App. Sc. in Speech Pathology).
Magan is a registered Certified Practising Speech Language Pathologist (CPSP) with the Speech Pathology Australia.
She is also the founding President and a registered member of Speech-Language and Hearing Association Singapore (SHAS, the professional body representing Speech Language Therapists in Singapore.
Magan has been interviewed and featured in various newspapers and magazines such as Young Parents Magazine, The Straits Times & The New Paper.
Together with Magan, our team of competent and caring speech language therapists and teachers help hundreds of individuals improve their ability to communicate and have more say in life.
If you would like to see a highly experienced speech language therapist / pathologist for an initial consultation, please call us at (65) 6223-7876.
Please feel free to browse around our website to check out our programs or other Speech therapy related information.