Hi I’m Dr. Mary Barbera autism mom and board certified behavior analyst.
My weekly video blogs are usually for autism professionals and parents but I have a little
secret.
All the techniques I talk about, in all my video blogs, work great for any child even a child without disabilities.
You see all of the strategies I recommend are based on the proven science of applied
behavior analysis.
I discuss the technique I’m talking about today in almost every lecture I present.
I’ve given this advice to lots of parents and grandparents of typically developing
toddlers as well as parents and professionals in the autism world.
So my number one technique to get any child talking more is this: We want to focus on
words that are important to the child such as mama, juice, apple, and bed and even actions
like go and up.
We also want to slow things down and talk with one word at a time.
And the shorter the word the better!
Let’s pretend you’re going to a foreign country tomorrow and you don’t know any
language spoken there.
Think about what words you might need to know to get your needs met.
For instance you might need to know how to say the words eat, bathroom, and water.
Now if you got to this foreign country and still didn’t know the word water and I said
"oohie owie ubee," meaning "do you want some water?" you would not know what part of that
sentence meant water.
However if I slow things down and use one word at a time hold up water and say ubee,
ubee, ubee as I hand you water you will quickly learn that ubee means water.
Recently I presented a full day preconference workshop at the Applied Behavior Analysis
conference in Denver.
One of the professionals in the audience was, Dr. Binyamin Birkan, who is professor who
translated my book into Turkish a few months before I met him in person in Denver.
Since he was sitting in the front row of my workshop, I called him up to demonstrate this
principle with him trying to teach me a few Turkish words for bubble and up.
And let's watch that video now.
Basically that’s what we have to do.
We have to slow it down.
Can you say, “Johnny, let’s go up the steps.”
Now say, “up, up, up”
This is why Skinner’s Verbal Behavior book talks a lot about learning foreign languages
and why my procedures are all about breaking things down into one word utterances.
So I remember the words for bubbles and up.
There’s no way I would have remembered anything from “oohie owie ubee” versus “ubee,
ubbe, ubee” it’s a lot clearer.
This is extremely important for kids like Jack, Faith, and all the kids we’re going
to talk about today but this is especially important for an early learner with delayed
language.
Slow things down and say one word, slightly more exaggerated.
You can use the same technique in lots of different areas including within my shoebox
program that I developed for a few years ago.
To learn more about the shoebox program click the link right below and more instructions
so you can get started using this method today.
I hope that you found this information useful and that you’ll slow things down for your
child or client starting today.
Don’t forget click the link right below this video to get started with the shoebox program and I’ll see you next week.