-So, I get a really common question as since I'm a speech language pathologist.
People ask me, "How do I help my child with a receptive expressive language
disorder?" -I think you know some things about. -So, we're going to take that one on.
-You know Paul, one of the first things to understand is the difference between
receptive and expressive language. -Because they're different. -Right, right,
right. So, receptive is the way that your
understanding the way you're comprehending, the way you're breaking
down what's being said but not only what's being said. But even what's being
shown in body language. And that starts at birth. -Receptive. I like to think of that your
receiving... -Right. -So, that's the language that's coming in to me whether it's spoken or
non-verbal. -Right. So, that's receptive language. Expressive language is how you
communicate out words to people. Usually it's done verbally. But there's also a
lot of expressive language that we do with our eyes, our gestures, a lot of
different things. So, we've got receptive, how we're understanding. The expressive.
-How to express it. -Mm-hmm, right. Now, remember a disorder means that the
development is not following normal patterns. So, we're talking about kids who
are diagnosed with a receptive or an expressive language disorder, okay? So,
things aren't going quite right. One of the most important things I think...
Obviously if your child has been diagnosed, that means that you've
probably got a speech-language pathologist on your team already. And
you're working with them doing some therapy. So, the thing I want to say first
of all is you as the parent are the best therapists your child could have in
conjunction with that speech therapist. -Right. I learned this early in child psychology. -Yeah. I
had to work with parents because the parents are the ones that are spending
all the time with the child. -Right. -And in 15 minutes or 1/2 hour in my office, I
can't do nearly as much as they can from day to day. -Right. And remember, a child
has an attention span of about 1 minute per age up to about 5 years old.
So, you know if you're working with a 2-year-old they're only going to
really pay attention for 2 minutes. Now that
doesn't mean you can't work with them longer but you have to change the
activity. There has to be some sort of a change in the energy, the activity every
2 minutes if you're working with a two-year-old. And so, that's where the
parent comes in. You're with them all day long. You're a constant in their world.
And you're a part of their everyday routine. And so that is really powerful.
That gives you a chance to take the techniques as you're watching the
therapy with your therapist. Take those techniques and kind of integrate those
into your daily routines. So, you're really paying attention so that you can
then mimic what's being done to help your child in that therapy session? -Yeah.
-Vicki, you've been doing speech and language therapy for a couple of decades.
And it comes very naturally to you. But as parents what are some of the things
that we can do that might mimic that speech therapy so we can help our kids?
-So, some of the things you can do are it's called expanding. So, whatever your
child says... Maybe you're playing you've got some toys and there's keys and they
just say "key", you say you expand it. You say, "Yeah, key. Key goes to a car. It opens it
or turns it on. Broom! Broom!" And you expand it. So you take where they're at
and you're going to expand it. Or if they say bubble, you know you've just blown
bubble and they label it bubble. You might say, "Big bubble. Oh, go in high. And
you're just going to expand it." -Okay. -So, we use expansion a lot within speech
therapy with young children. -It occurred to me because you were sharing that that
language is much more than the words. -Right. -It's how those words are stitched
together to form messages and all of the expressions that go with it. -Right. -Now do
we use this kind of a technique for both receptive and expressive. -Yeah. The
expansion is more with expressive. You're trying to get more words... -To get them to
express it better. -For receptive, you're going to label things a lot more. You're
going to talk about what you're doing. This is so huge. You want to talk about
what you're doing in the activity but you're also going to talk about what
your child is doing. So, you're going to follow child
to activities. And so if your child is playing with a car and they... And you
might say car, "You're making the blue car go fast broom!" And so you're kind of
talking it through the activity. -Commentary. -Commentary. and did you notice
that I added in big blue car. You know, you're going to add just another little
something because you're trying to help them expose to more vocabulary. That's
part of them receptive language. You're also modeling expressive language
because you're talking about what they're doing in their child directed
activity. -Okay. Vicki, as you're sharing these examples, I'm noticing a little
difference in the pattern of speech that you use, the kind of words that you use.
It's not baby talk. -No, we actually call it motherese. -Oh. -That's the word for it. So,
you're talking. You usually slow down. You're going to use more variation
in your prosody and your voice going up and go down. So you slow down. And then you
might make your sentences shorter. Now, that doesn't mean you're going to do baby
talk. Like, one uncle Park or something like that. -Okay. So, like mispronouncing...
-You're not going to or leave out really
important words. -You're speaking directly but you're slowing it down. Slowing down
the pace. Adding some inflection and emphasizing some variety and how your
voice sounds. -And you can use that emphasis too if there's a new word
you're trying to teach them. Maybe the word is banana. It's their favorite food
in the whole world. And so, that's the other thing about being a therapist. You
know what you makes your child tik, right? You know the things
that they're most excited for. So, you might say, "You're eating a banana. YUM!"
But the banana gets more than the rest the eating because we want to get those
first words in there, right? -So, the simplified speech but not turning it
into baby talk. That's a real key. -And remember you're always going to want to
model for them the correct speech. Because part of expression is the way
that we say it. Now, realize that little children, there's a natural progression
of their speech so they they say things in what we call baby talk and that's
appropriate. But you have grown out of that hopefully.
-You're not a baby. -Go ahead and use your adult speech
with them because you're modeling what you want them to get to. One more thing
that I would recommend that you do is to ask fewer questions and comment a little
bit more. So, you're going to comment about what you're doing.
Comment about what they're doing. But instead of say, "Billy what are you doing?
Billy what's this? Billy what is this? Billy what color is this?" Those questions
are actually really stressful. -It makes you anxious just to hear that. -You
take a child with a delay and those bombardment of questions is really
overwhelming. And the other thing too is our pace. You really have to slow
down your pace because usually when you have a disorder, you're processing time
with languages is a little bit slower. So, if you do ask a question like, "Where's
mommy?" And you wait. I know it seems so crazy. But you it feels awkward to us but
we need to pause. And give them a chance to form there's so much happening by the
time we speak. You know so give them a chance to form what they're going to say
to you. Or not then you can provide them the answer. That's the other thing is if
you hit them 2 times, 3 times my general rule with a preschooler I'll ask
them or I might try to elicit something two times. Possibly 3 and then I give
them the answer and I go on to something else. -Okay. And you mentioned commentary.
We covered that briefly earlier. -Right. -What we do bombarding them with the
questions. Just add some commentary to what's going on so that they can hear
that encoded in the language. And they'll connect that to what they're
experiencing. So that helps them to develop that feel. -That brings me to
another technique which is called communication temptations. Which sounds
so strange. -Where you're kind of encouraging them. You're tempting them to communicate.
So, you might have a home that you always do. Okay? They put on their socks and then
they put on their shoes. And so you might violate that routine. So, you go up to
them instead and you put their shoe on first. And you kind of wait a minute.
-Didn't expect that. -And so you kind of like just wait and see if they kind of
say, "No, no! Not that mom," You know you're trying to get them to comment to that.
Another thing might be to start a routine. Maybe you start by you have a
little toy and you wind it up and it goes and you hand it to them. And they
can't do it yet. And so you're trying to elicit them to ask you for help. The
other thing is you really want to watch for their nonverbal communication. If
they just walk away they're not communicating with you but if they look
at you go... They're actually also gassification. Say,
"You want help?" "Help please." And then you do it. And you model what they could have
said. And so these are kind of communication temptations. and so there's
a whole bunch of those. Your therapists can kind of give you an idea but you're
going to use those communication temptations throughout the day. -And that
still ties the language and the spoken word to what they're already
trying to do. -Right. Just right in... So they ask for juice. You go and
you get it out of the fridge and you look at it and you put it back in. Maybe
you didn't give it to him. So, they have to ask again. Like maybe they didn't ask
but you knew that that's what they wanted. So, you're trying to elicit any
speaking... -This comes naturally for me because I love to tease kids. -Well, yeah.
-But that's kind of what you're talking about. It's a little bit... -Yeah, it's a
temptation. -Temptation to draw that out of them. -Yeah. And probably my last point
is just read. Even 15 minutes with them. -Yes. -Read with your child starting
at birth. Go ahead and read with them. This increases their vocabulary,
it increases something we call joint attention so that they learn how to look
at the same thing. That's a big skill that's needed in communication. It also
provides a special time that they can think back on. It's a wonderful activity
to do with your child so start reading just 15 minutes a day. -Make it part of
your culture, part of your routine. Thank You, Vicki. She is the expert when it
comes to language development. And hopefully you got something really
helpful out of this. Would you please consider sharing. And if you haven't
subscribed yet to the channel, do that right now before the video ends. Also
Vicki and I have put together some resources for conscious positive parents
like you. It's called the Parenting Power-Up. You're going to get some great
resources to help you feel more confident
as a parent. ParentingPowerUp.com.