First, Speak Their Language - Ep. 032
Some children’s first spoken language is sound effects, and language therapy with a child like this might go nowhere fast unless the SLP recognizes and begins speaking their language. Tune into this episode and get some tips on how to treat these children.
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Music: Simple Gifts performed by Ted Yoder, used with permission
Transcript
Denise: I'll never forget the way he looked at me over his mother's shoulder as he was leaving that first day I tried this, speaking his language. He looked at me as though he really saw me. And he was really interested in me as a person and not just the keeper of the toys.
Welcome to The Mindful SLP, the show that explores simple but powerful therapy techniques for optimal outcomes. I'm Denise Stratton, a pediatric SLP, and I'm here with my co-host Dan. Today's podcast is called First, Speak Their Language. And we're going to talk about what I mean by that.
Dan: What do you mean?
Denise: Some young children and especially boys speak mostly In sound effects.
Dan: I don't know what you mean by that. (makes funny noises)
Denise: Exactly. That's what they hear. That's what they attend to, and so that's how they communicate. And you might especially find this with clients on the autism spectrum.
Dan: Okay. So I just have to say, since I first read the outline of this, I actually started listening at work and it's true. Even among adult boys, they still speak in sound effects.
Denise: And you do kind of work with engineer data nerds, don't you?
Dan: Yes. Yes I do. What do you mean by first speak their language, what does that mean? You talk in sound effects with your clients?
Denise: Yeah, I do. So I came across this idea purely. It was serendipity.
I was reading Marge Leblanc's book called Natural Language Acquisition, and it came across a chapter of hers on boys' versus girls' brains. And she talks about how the boy brain is really tuned into sound effects. And some of them are so tuned into sound effects that that is like their language. Like that might be almost all of their speaking. And so you have to kind of figure out what's going on. Well, that resonated with me because I suspected I had a client with this major boy brain thing going on.
Dan: What are the advantages of understanding how to deal with a boy brain?
Denise: Well, speech therapy, especially for young clients is play with expectations. That's what we're doing. And some children never realize that there are expectations, they fall right into these subtle cues that the therapist gives them to improve their communication while we play. And they do hard things without thinking about it too much. For other clients, it's not so easy to do hard things.
It's like their antenna are tuned into the smallest hint of an expectation that the therapist has and a wall comes slamming down. Then it's our job to forge the kind of relationship with them that will help them feel secure enough to take down the wall. We can't take that wall down, they have to. So after reading LeBlanc's book, I had an idea of how to take down the wall, because that was what was happening with this client. The least little expectation I had put on him, he would just shut off, have a meltdown, whatever.
Dan: Tell me more about this, this client. What was he like?
Denise: Well, he's three now. He started when he was two, he would have extreme mood swings, go from zero to ten so fast, as being happy and then just being super frustrated.
He's probably somewhere on the more independent end of the autism spectrum, he hasn't been diagnosed, but I suspect that. He went through activities very, very quickly. So if I had four or five activities, they could be gone through just like that. And now what are we going to do? He would lose interest in what we were doing the second any expectation was kind of evident to him. So we struggled on, he's been coming here for a while and he has had some really good sessions where he was willing to try and other really discouraging sessions, whereas meltdown after meltdown.
Dan: What'd you do to try and keep him engaged?
Denise: Well, I tried following his lead. I always want to follow the child's lead, but there comes a point where if they're just going through activities at a dizzying rate, because they're trying to avoid doing just a little bit of work. I mean, you can't follow their lead to that extent. I tried lowering the expectations, maybe I'm expecting too much of him.
I tried raising expectations. Maybe I wasn't expecting enough of him. I tried my most engaging toys, which by the way, you don't necessarily want to do that, um, especially with the boy brain, um, because if they get something like with springs or wheels or cogs or whatever, um, something happens to their mind and they just take that toy and they go in the corner and bend over it and just, you know, they are gone, they are gone. But I tried this when I was willing to try anything. I tried very, very simple toys, so the focus was on our interactions instead, which is what I normally like to do. But what worked one week didn't work the next. I mean, nothing took down the wall until I tried speaking his language.
Dan: Which was sound effects.
Denise: Yeah, exactly.
Dan: How did that work? How did you incorporate his language of sound effects?
Denise: What he responds to is when we're playing with cars, we don't just sedately drive them alone. We crashed them together. Yeah, exactly. We drive them off a cliff with accompanying sound effects. We have, you know, I have a car with sirens, so we did the sirens, um, with the toy animals, we make the animal sounds. Um, Yes. We make the puppets fly and run and stomp and fall down and gobble their food like cookie monster, you know, but eat like that. And we say whee, not oh, and all that kind of stuff. I mean, it's actually pretty simple. Just kind of relax and have fun and put the sound effects in. When expanding his language, I found he's much more likely to say, go beep beep than go car. He just responds to the soundbite and he'll include those with real words.
Oh, so he would substitute words for the sounds or with the sounds?
Well, if I model a phrase with a sound effect, like go beep beep instead of say, go car, I'm going to try it both ways. He will imitate me go beep beep, or put another word of with beep beep, you know, create his own phrase rather than saying car.
It just makes sense to him. This is his language. Yeah. Beep-beep and whee and boom.
Dan: How does that work for improving the therapy then? Besides you're having fun obviously.
Denise: Oh, immediate improvements in mood swings. I mean, those mood swings just went away. Um, he's had a significant increase in his symbolic play. Um, he's talking for characters while moving them, meow for a cat and oink for the pig. Now talk about doing a hard thing. Um, this child has also got some articulation issues. A pig sound, by the way. It's not easy to make.
Dan: Uh, yeah, I guess it wouldn't be, there's lots of sounds in a row.
Denise: Um, and I could just see the wheels turning and he was thinking about it, he was thinking about it, and he brought out that (snort) kind of sound. There you go, now I snorted like a pig on a podcast. But it wasn't easy, and he worked through it and he did it. So that impulsiveness that he has kind of had, of not wanting to do hard things went away when he could do a sound effect. Um, now he'll do whole symbolic play routines, like with putting animals to bed, turning off the light.
Um, more than just one step and waking them up, turn on the light. He can spend 20 minutes on a single play routine now, instead of before he was going through activities, like three minutes and three minutes, three minutes, and then I'm done and he'll accept more kinds of symbolic play. I mean, he used to refuse things like puppets.
He just didn't know what to do with them.
Dan: Uh huh. But now he likes to play with the puppets and they can do things.
Denise: Yeah, well, let me gradually introduce, I take out some familiar symbolic play toys and I'll gradually introduce some more and it used to be, he would just shove them away and say no, and now he'll accept them. He'll start to incorporate them into his play.
How's his frustration levels?
It is much less like I have this toy food set, um, with a toy knife. Um, and he's always been such a, 'I have to do it myself' while he was holding the knife wrong and he couldn't cut the fruit. You know, I tried to help him, like, no, no, push me away. I have to do this myself and then he'd get so frustrated. He just didn't want it even do play with it anymore. Well, now he doesn't care. He lets me help him. He'll hold stuff out to me to ask me to help him. Yeah. He really hasn't had a meltdown, come close a couple of times, but hasn't really had a meltdown. Um, he laughs constantly throughout the session. I mean, this is a huge change.
He just giggles. I mean, he just loves the sound effect, plays like I know what we're doing. I mean, he's just delightful now. Um, his language is improving. It's at his own speed, I have to say. I mean, language isn't coming bursting out. Well, the sound effects are, but not a whole lot of new words yet, but they are coming and he is making some unique word combinations, but he's doing this and it's not under duress where before it seemed like I was just trying to pull the language from him.
Now it's just emerging on its own. It's like a flower growing. You just have to give it time. And, you know, he used to melt down when the session was over. As much as he protested during the session, he didn't want it to end ever. The first day I started speaking his language and he began to protest when the session was over and I thought, Hmm, what can I do to turn this around?
What do I know about him now? So I said, let's be dinosaurs, and let's stomp. Let's stomp out of the room. And we did. He loved it. We stomped out into the waiting room. Um, he completely forgot that he was going to make a fuss and this works every time. He's a little bit disappointed every time we're done, but we fly out like planes, or we stomp out or, or whatever, you know, we drive out out of the therapy room and he's good.
Dan: That's my way, I want my doctor to do that. What does his mom think?
Denise: Oh, well, when I first explained to her about the boy brain and him speaking in sound effects, she was totally on board. She was nodding, oh, yes, yes. That is him. That is him.
Dan: So she's incorporated this at home as well, you think?
Denise: Well, I've, I've encouraged it. Um, we haven't really checked up on him, it's been very recent, but, um, but she says, yes, he's talking a lot at home. So they're seeing improvement at home.
Dan: But just the sheer fact that he's now enjoying therapy, he's not having any meltdowns. He's laughing. He's having a good time.
Denise: So what fires together, wires together, right? Those sun neurons are firing and it's going to wire with the language.
Dan: And he sees you seeing him. I mean, you're relating to him on his level and he sees you, that you treat him as a person.
Denise: And I'll never forget the way he looked at me over his mother's shoulder as he was leaving that first day I tried the speaking his language. He looked at me as though he really saw me, and he was really interested in me as a person and not just the keeper of the toys. And I guess that's because I really saw him first.
Dan: That's cool, simple.
Denise: Very simple. I mean, SLPs, you can do this.
Dan: Oh yeah. I can teach you all sorts of sounds if you can't think of any.
Denise: So I just have to get a little creative with how do boys really play? And, you know, they like to be many of them, don't want to do stereotypes here, many of them like to be a little bit more aggressive than perhaps you're used to being. They'll want to smash those cars. They want to make things happen. They want to create noise.
Dan: Yes, we do like our noise.
Denise: So we've got to support that, you know, honor that. So remember, when you master the simple, the complex takes care of itself.
Dan: This was a short one today, but I think you can have a lot of fun with this. So take a look at the clients that you have. How do they communicate? Are they subject to boy brain? Try some sound effects. Let us know how it goes. Before you go, we would love it if you would show some love for your favorite podcast by leaving us a review on apple podcasts, then stay tuned for next week. And we'll talk about one of Denise's favorite tools for early intervention. Thanks for listening.
Thank you for listening to The Mindful SLP. We hope you found some simple tools that will have optimal outcomes in your practice. This podcast is sponsored by SLP pro-advisor. Visit SLP pro-advisor dot com for more tools, including Impossible R Made Possible, Denise's highly effective course for treating those troublesome Rs. A link is in the show notes. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give us a five-star rating and tell your fellow SLPs. And please let us know what you think. Join the conversation at SLP pro-advisor.com.
