← The Autism Little Learners Podcast
The Autism Little Learners Podcast
#185: Why Prompting Backfires: Gestalt Language Processing with Alexandria Zachos - Encore
00:50:31
Loading summary
Transcript37 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hey there, it's Tara here from Autism Little Learners. Before we dive into today's episode, I have a quick but super exciting announcement. The Preschool Autism Summit is happening soon and it's open for registration and you do not want to miss it. This free online event is packed with over 25 incredible speakers, all sharing neurodiversity, affirming practical strategies that you can start using right away. And our keynote speaker is the world renowned Dr. Barry Prizant. I'm so excited to hear him speak. This summit is designed just for those of you working with young autistic children. So whether you're an slp, a special education teacher, a gen ed teacher, a para, a parent, you are going to walk away feeling inspired and empowered. Head over to www.preschoolautismsummit.com to grab your free ticket now. That's preschoolautismsummit.com and I'll see you there. Hi there and welcome back to the Autism Little Learners Podcast. I'm Tara Phillips and today I'm joined by speech language pathologist Alexandria Zakos for an amazing conversation all about Gestalt language processing. We talk about how our understanding of language development has evolved, the real struggles around prompt dependence, and why a child led approach is so important, especially for Gestalt language processors. Alexandria shares so many helpful insights including how we can better support these communicators by building authentic connections and honoring all the ways they express themselves. Whether you're a therapist, teacher or parent, this episode is packed with practical strategies to encourage spontaneous language and support meaningful communication. I'm so excited for you to hear this one. Hi, I'm Tara and this is the Autism Little Learners Podcast. I am a speech language pathologist with a twist. I've run my own communication based classroom for over two decades and I'm so excited to share actionable tips and strategies for supporting young autistic children. My goal is to help you feel more confident and successful when teaching your autistic child or students at the early childhood level. If you are ready to learn some tried and true strategies that really work, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started.
- [02:27]
B
Foreign
- [02:31]
A
welcome back to the Autism Little Learners Podcast, everybody. Today you are in for a real treat. I'm talking to SLP Alex Zakos a little bit about Gestalt language processing and a lot more about prompting. I am so happy to have you here. Alex. Can you tell everyone a little bit about yourself?
- [02:49]
B
Thank you so much for having me. Sure. So I am an SLP. I've been one for 21 years now I live in the Chicagoland area and I've had a brick and mortar private practice here for the past 13 years. And in around 2021, early 2021, in January, I started a social media account on Instagram to start teaching people about Gestalt language development. And from that was born my online company, meaningfulspeech.com where I educate people all over the world, SLPs, related professionals and parents all about child led therapy and Gestalt language development. And as we talk today, probably a little bit more of my story will come up. But I was an SLP who worked in the schools for public schools for nine years in the state of Illinois and also held jobs like in acute care and outpatient and early intervention. And I was an SLP that just never knew about this other way of developing language until 2016. And then everything changed for me and I knew I had to start teaching other people about this. And one of the big reasons why things changed is I read Marge Blanc's book Natural Language Acquisition, and we'll probably link that in the show notes, but I'll probably bring it up a couple more times as well. Talking
- [04:24]
A
awesome. And your work has been, it's reached far and wide and really, really changed and shifted how we look at students who maybe we say they're echolalic or they script and you know, that kind of all can fall under that Gestalt language processing. And I think at first when people started hearing it, it's like, I don't even know how to say that. I don't know how to say gestalt or gestalt or, you know how I think for people it's just kind of sometimes a scary thing in a way to learn something that feels like such a new concept. But really, like you said, with Marge Blanc's work, it's been around for quite a long time.
- [05:12]
B
So yeah, let's talk about that briefly. So gestalt was coined by Dr. Ann Peters. She published the units of language acquisition in the early 80s, and then Dr. Ver present followed and he published the first four stages of Gestalt language development in the early 80s as well. And then what Marge Blanc did is she took his work and applied it clinically. So her book has about 15 to 20 years of clinical longitudinal research. And she fleshed out the stages and added five and six to expand grammar. So stage four would be beginning grammar, five advanced, and then six complex. And I feel like really a handful of SLPs probably read her book when it came out in 2012. And then a little more and a little more. It started spreading through word of mouth mainly. But I felt very strongly that not enough people knew about it. The in. One of my frustrations as a private practice SLP at the time was I was collaborating a lot with other clinics and school SLPs, and I would always write about gestalt language development in my reports. And then inevitably I would get an email or a call and people would say, well, what is this? What are you writing about? And I kept pointing people toward her book. And what I kept hearing from a lot of speech pathologists was, this is great. I have no time to read this. Like, can you please give me like a 10 minute video or a 5 minute synopsis or like, where can I learn about this in bits? Because we know from working with kids some people are readers and some people are not. And some people can read, you know, a book very quickly in a week and just go apply it. And other people can read the book and go, I still don't know what to do. And so we have all kinds of different learners out there. And now in the age of social media, I thought, okay, let's start teaching people in these little snippets. And obviously it caught on like crazy. And I think mostly because SLPs looked at what I was posting and they were saying, this is the kid I'm working with. Or, you're giving language to something that I have seen for such a long time.
- [07:46]
A
That is the truth. I think that's what's so great about even your course, is that you have video examples. You know, it's like you're saying, whatever kind of learner you are reading videos, I think most of us can really take away a lot from the video examples because you go, oh, that's so and so fill in the blank of one of your students or several of your former students. It's so helpful. And I would say your course has really changed everything for a lot of SLPs.
- [08:25]
B
Thank you. And that was really my goal. Like, another frustration of mine as an SLP is I would constantly attend these continuing education seminars and I mean, at the time, not a lot was online before 2016. So I was attending these things in person and coming away again feeling frustrated. That's like the word I keep using. Because I would say to myself, all right, well, how do I apply this in therapy on Monday? Like, thank you for spending six hours talking to me about theory. I still don't know what to do with this student. So when I created the worse, I had nobody else to video except for myself. There was nobody else around me that knew how to do this. I was slowly training my staff, but I just said, okay, I'm just gonna show myself doing this because that's what I wanted. I wanted to sit there and watch someone show me the how to. And I actually, I'm gonna. I think I'm saying this for the first time on a podcast, but I just re recorded all of my core modules. I've been working on them since January of 25 and now we're recording this in June of 25. I am. It's like a whole new course. But the one thing that I did differently that I'm super happy about is I showed things that I felt I wasn't doing them as I should. So I have a lot of videos and I talk about what could I have done better here? And I kind of people more like a thinking process because that's one thing I thought I was really missing first time. And if nobody has, well, if people have no one else to watch, I want them to at least walk through that thinking process, right? So then if they're watching their own video or out there doing it on their own, they can be thinking, okay, you know what, can I improve next time?
- [10:28]
A
Yeah, that's brilliant, Alex. Walking through. I think a lot of us people get frustrated with social media because people make stuff look perfect like, and then you feel bad or ashamed because you didn't do it right quote unquote, or no one shows you that messy middle that where you're learning. And even when you're kind of the not expert but really knowledgeable on a topic, you still mess up or you miss like little cues that would have maybe led you down a different path with how you reacted with a child. So I think that is actually really like vulnerable for you to put that out there and so, so helpful. And I can't wait. I cannot wait. So we'll definitely have to link information
- [11:21]
B
when you have it and I have it and we can link it below. And if you're already in the course and listening to this, any update I ever put is free because I believe that people should have to pay for me trying to make something a little bit better. But to your point about social media, I think we're in a very crazy day and age where everything is very curated and people are showing their highlight reel. And I think it's tricky as therapists because we don't want to show a child in a hard moment. I would never, ever post a social Media video of a child having a hard time. But I thought to myself, I can show myself in this course having a hard time being a child, but, like, what could I do as a therapist? And then the other thing I also added in is a lot of extra information that I had left out in my original recording because people didn't know anything about this in the beginning. So I just taught things. So basically, and now a lot of people are asking for more nuance. Time to put that in?
- [12:38]
A
Yeah. Yeah, that's really great. I think when you're talking also about the highlight reel, it's one of the other things is kind of talking about things that you maybe didn't get right at first, but you know better now and you want to pass it on. And this isn't related to like gestalt language processing. But I always talk about when we're honoring protests because as an slp, like, this is a big thing. Like a lot of people say, oh, yeah, you know, we gotta acknowledge or honor protests. But then when it comes down to putting that into action and what it looks like, I think people have a hard time because it's not just us as the SLP doing it. We have to teach everybody about it. And so, like, if I have a three year old, I always worked in like a self contained classroom setting. And so, so many of my students, like, I might have something that I think, oh, this is gonna be fun. We'll do this activity. And they come over to me and literally like 0.2 seconds, they're out of there or they're pushing something away. And I've been trying to demonstrate, of course, you know, I'm not gonna do that with a student who's. Or a child who's upset, but acting it out myself, you know, like, okay, what exactly do we do if they push something away? Okay, we're gonna model it on aac. We're going to then maybe give them a choice, like, we don't have to get in this power struggle and that piece is on us. And so this is kind of where it relates to what you're talking about, like reevaluating. Not just, oh, they had a meltdown, they had a stress response and are upset. But like, this comes back to me and kind of what I'm putting out there for activities and how I'm responding when it doesn't work. Like, that's on me. That's not on that.
- [14:33]
B
What we say a lot is my whole team and I, we say it's. The change starts with you. And not with them. So really what I'm trying to teach people is exactly what you're saying. We have to look at what we're doing. It's not about fixing the child. What are we modeling and what are we doing? And I think a lot of parents and professionals are finding this switch difficult. It's a big mindset shift and a lot of thinking on your feet. And to be honest, our grad programs are not really training us to think on our feet. They are requiring us to submit lesson plans and really plan things out and soap notes and et cetera. And they're not really teaching us that thinking process or that observation process to really act in the moment and switch gears and go with the way the child is leading us.
- [15:32]
A
Yeah, 100 agree. And it's been that way since I was in grad school and undergrad. You know, you, you don't learn about the pivots and that kind of thing. And so you have to learn it intuitively and you wish. You always look back and wish you knew it earlier.
- [15:48]
B
I'm so sorry to cut you off. That doesn't come naturally to a lot of people. And I think some SLPs I feel this way. I've talked to quite a few that feel like schooling or jobs made us squash our intuition. So we don't listen to that inner voice a lot of times that tell us like, well, this doesn't feel right or this isn't right. I know for many years I overrode how I was working with kids who were echolalic because so many people told me ignore it or redirect it or tell them no movie talk. And it's like I knew, I knew that wasn't going to work and it wasn't right, but I had no other tools. So every time my inner voice would be like, this is not working. Like, you're getting paid to tell this kid no movie talk right now. This isn't helping them. I would just squash that voice down and I would say, well, so and so told me I need to do this and I don't know what else to do. So this is what I'm going to keep doing. And round and round I went until I had my big epiphany in Marge's book.
- [16:58]
A
Oh yeah, I've been there on so many things over the years where now being older, this the special ed teacher that I co taught with and I, I my listeners have probably heard me say this a million times, but it comes down to this one phrase that she and I would Say to each other and to our team of paraprofessionals, we say, if it feels yucky, don't do it. Like, that's the first test of decision making. If it feels yucky, like if you're, you know, there's the whole rethinking hand over hand in that piece. So if someone is doing hand over hand with a child and they're pulling away and upset, that feels yucky. Don't do it with that child, you know, so it's just things like that can really give you permission to change it up a little bit. So can we go into just a brief overview? If someone's listening and saying, wait, what is this gestalt language processing that they're talking about? Can you give us a little in a nutshell?
- [18:01]
B
So gestalt language development is the quote unquote, other way of developing language. It is a normal, natural way of developing language. It's unfortunately not really taught or talked too much about. However, I think there are a lot of gestalt language processors running around out there. We just haven't identified them because let's say by the ages of three to five, those preschool years, they are conversing with their peers. So they never needed support. They went through all of the stages on their own. The kids I mainly talk about and teach about are the ones that need support. So kids that are communicating with delayed, mainly with delayed echolalia past the age of three, likely need some support because they're not moving through this natural, normal process on their own. So we all know the kind of language development we're taught about. Analytic language development starts with babbles and then words and then two word combinations, phrases. Oh, we've got mini conversations going by preschool. And so people and SLPs have been taught that if that is not the process that a child is going through, then they must be disorder. Well, that is not the case. They could be gestalt language processors. So they are going through a different process. And it doesn't mean they're disordered. It can either mean they're, they have a different process or they are delayed in that other process. So the first stage in gestalt language development is delayed echolalia. So this is when a person or child is focused on the sound stream of language, the intonation of language, and they take in language as a unit of like intonation or sound, and they're not focused on words quite yet. So words and word boundaries are not a thing for them yet in stage one. So that's why a Lot of stage one kids can sound unintelligible. They're trying to say like a 14 word long utterance or gestalt because they've taken it in by the intonation. Or, you know, we do have some kids that are just saying like a long media line or utterance and that it does sound clearer, but truly we can hear that intonation. For them, it's not really about the words. So Ann, Dr. Ann Peters, like I said, coined that term gestalt, which comes from the German. It means whole. And because they're looking at everything like a whole unit. And it can be long or short. So I think one misconception on social media now that everybody's posting about this is that it's a chunk of language, okay? So it doesn't always have to be long. It can be as long as a book or a movie, but it can be as short as one word. But to them it's like an immovable unit. Like it just stays glued together. In stage one, an example I use constantly is I had a client who was really into Dora the Experience Floor and her stage one delayed echolalia. Most common thing she said to me was, don't worry, I'll help you find your mama. It was from an episode where Dora was helping these little creatures. And for Hirsch, it started meaning like five or six different things all the way from like, I can't find the game I'm looking for or what are we going to play today? Or truly like, can you help me find something? And it would always stay as this one chunk. Don't worry, I'll help you find your mama. I've also heard kids have much smaller gestalt plate. I had a kid that would say 299. And the 299 came from the dollar tree shopping trip with his mom. And he wanted to buy something and his mom said, oh, that's not a dollar, it's 2.99. And he took the 299 to mean like, I can't do this or it's forbidden or I can't have this. And he would say it exactly with that intonation, like 299. And so the other piece I didn't mention, there's a big focus on intonation in stage one, but also it has to be tied to a memorable, meaningful, emotional or dramatic experience. And that is how the child takes in the language. So I talk to people a lot about doing detective work or investigative work. And what that means is we can't take the gestalt literally. So let's investigate where it came from and how did I know what 299 meant or how did I know? Don't worry, I'll help you find your mama. I investigated like I talked to the parents, I was talking to the school staff and it came together for me. Oh, this is what they actually mean by that. And I think the thing I still get very frustrated about is when I talk to people that are trying to extinguish delayed echolalia or they're trying to say that it's not meaningful. Now, there are a lot of our gestalt language processors will use delayed echolalia to communicate other things. So it's not always communicative to the part, the, you know, communication partner. Sometimes it's for vocal play or stimming, sometimes it's because they're dysregulated. But I always say delayed echolalia communicates it's communicating something. And stage two in the process would be mitigated echolalia. What that means is they have realized that they can break apart part of that unit, that bigger gestalt, and they can mix and match or they can just trim it down. So in the don't worry, I'll help you find your mama. My client trimmed it down to don't worry. And then she also started mixing and matching. I have a great video I show of her in my course saying, don't worry, you'll find the ball. And I heard her say, don't worry. Or actually her mom did, don't worry, I'll help you find grandma. When her grandma was in town visiting and she was in the basement. So it was really cool to start seeing her trim it down and mix and match it. Now if you've got something like 299, it's not going to trim down or mix and match in stage two. Right. So a lot of what I teach and talk about is meeting the child where they're at in stage, if they're living in stage one and giving them more potential gestalts, modeling more potential language to increase their variety in the amount of gestalts they have so that in stage two, they can mix and match and trim down. If you're a kid that has hundreds of single words, you're going to stay quote, unquote stuck. Because there isn't much to mix and match or trim down in stage two. And this is where well meaning professionals get it wrong. Because if they are looking at things through the analytic lens, then they are trying to increase vocabulary and they're focused on labeling. And then we've got kids running around with all these single words and we're wondering why they're not combining them. Well, that combination happens when you're following a traditional analytic approach or analytic development. It doesn't happen when you're a gestalt language processor. Your stage two looks different. And then in stage three, I call this the magic stage, because this is where the child starts to recognize words and word boundaries and they free the words from the mitigated echolalia or the gestalt. They actually visualize it being pulled down and freedom. So my client with don't worry, I'll help you find your mama. We heard mama in stage three and she had never isolated that by itself. And then help, you know, things like that just got isolated and freed. And then from there we get to the two word combinations. And so we might hear like mama ball or ball blue. And there's no regard for word order or adjective comes before noun, nothing like that. We're not worried about any of that. In stage three, it's all about we need to free these words and we need to play around with making different combinations with nouns and adjectives. And then in stage four, that's when we start to hear novel utterances and beginning grammar. So, you know, I've often called it in quotes, bad grammar. Because we might hear things like I fall down. And then I know that that's original language. Right. No one said that that child pieced that together on their own because they went through the first three stages. They know how to free the words and now they can put it together. So in stage four, sometimes we hear disfluency, not a new problem. It's because the wheels are turning and that child is actually trying to put together those words to create the novel utterance. And then stages five and six, I mentioned earlier, are really just an extension of grammar, going into more complex and advanced grammar. And I won't get into this because we don't have time, but we use the DSS and the DST from Laura Lee to sort of guide us in choosing grammar targets. But the entire time with all these stages, we are using child led therapy and natural language modeling and keeping in mind that the stages are not linear. So, you know, we might hear a child that has language in multiple stages, but we're trying to figure out where they're living and that's where we meet them and that's where we start supporting them. So I know you wanted me to be brief, but that's as short as I can go when I explain the stages.
- [28:17]
A
That totally makes sense. There is no, like, quick way to put gestalt language development or processing in a nutshell. So sorry I even asked that.
- [28:31]
B
Listening to this. Needed to hear that if you didn't. You know, the cool thing is we have fast forward. Right,
- [28:40]
A
right, right. Oh my gosh. So one thing that we really wanted to talk about today too, in addition to that is bump dependence. So it's something a lot of us see in therapy or in the classroom. Can you describe what it looks like and why it's so common, especially in autistic kids?
- [28:59]
B
Absolutely. So the number one reason that it is so common is it's because of us and our teaching strategies, not because of the child. And it's about the way that we're looking at their language and what we feel we have to do. And we don't realize a lot of times what we're doing until the child gets older. So it's mainly older elementary, middle and high school SLPs that are telling me, I don't know what to do. This child is completely prompt dependent. And that's from years of using traditional analytic or compliance based strategies where we are prompting the child or we're doing fill in the blank close phrase, or we're always initiating and they're waiting for us to initiate before they answer or say something. So all of those things are leading to this prompt dependence.
- [30:06]
A
I think when you talk about that, that's something we all can look back and say, oh, yeah, I've had several students who have trouble initiating and then some that you always have to start the sentence for them and then they fill in the blank and all of that. So what can you do instead of. Instead, how can we have like that supportive connection based approach, especially for gestalt language processors. But thinking about that prompting piece.
- [30:37]
B
So the first thing is I really think we need to shift our mindset. And I always like to tell people, let's think about our final goal. Like, I have two daughters and I think my final goal is that I raise them to be kind, happy, healthy, human. Like that is my final goal. Right. And so everything I'm doing should sort of be leading to that. And so when I think about the kids that I support, a lot of times my final goal for them is that they are happy, spontaneous communicators. Okay. Because you can be a spontaneous communicator and have had some miserable support unsupportive therapy. So I want therapy to be joy filled and child led. But our ultimate goal as communicators is that it is spontaneous, it's flexible, it's novel, it's whatever we want to say that we're not stuck with being only able to say certain things. And I should add that's with multimodal communication as well. So if you are an AAC user, I would, you know, ultimately love the person to be able to type or have other ways to say what they want to say that they're not just stuck with whatever we have decided to put in their device. And same thing with spoken language. And so if that is my ultimate goal, then I kind of need to work backwards. How do I get there? And I think the misconception is that prompting is somehow going to lead us to spontaneous language. And I would. If you're listening to this and you have used prompting and you have a spontaneous communicator, please reach out to me because I have not once heard of anyone that has become a flexible spontaneous communicator with years of prompt dependent or years of prompt dependence or traditional compliance based therapies. They don't get there. And so we need to rethink our strategies. And so I think I've been criticized that what I'm teaching is not new. It's not. I'm trying to bring back what we knew in the 70s and 80s and somehow we have brushed it under the rug or forgotten about it. But natural language modeling is where it's at. We need to stop, we need to stop intervening so much. We need to stop prompting, we need to stop questioning, we need to look at things more naturally. And so as a parent, a lot of times I'm like, well, you know, what would we be doing if we were parenting this kid? Like, take off your SLP hat. And it's like, well, I would probably just be like, let's get our shoes, we're going to grandma's. I would use very natural language. But I think sometimes we feel this pressure as SLPs that we like to get them to talk and we have to get them to say certain things and in come those ineffective strategies.
- [33:52]
A
Well, I think we've all been there. With sign of progress would be he can say four single words and at the end of the year now he can label pictures and say 50 single words. Right. That traditionally shows progress. But when you think about it, are they using any of those words to effectively communicate with other people whether they're single or put together? Combined together. And if the answer is no, then that's the issue. That you're talking about. They're not spontaneously, effectively communicating with those words that you're quote, unquote, giving them or teaching them.
- [34:35]
B
So two points on that. First, I love that you say, we've all been there. So I am the first to say I have been there. And that's why I'm so passionate about this, because I have probably made more mistakes than many people combined because all I did was, like, listen to bad advice. And so I have a story I posted about how I used to give a child M and Ms. For moving a piece in Candyland because I thought it was my job to teach him to play this game. He did not want to play. And I had to give him food rewards, which is maybe a topic for another podcast. I will not food rewards. So that was the first point I wanted to make. The second is that I know someone is listening to this right now and they're going, but I do blame natural language modeling. And it doesn't work. Like, I talk to kids all day long and it doesn't work. So this is where our clinical, you know, judgment has to come in and our clinical expertise and we need to go, okay, but am I doing targeted natural language modeling? And I talk a lot about communicative functions like shared joy transitions, help sensory motor experiences reoccurrence. And we want to look at all of those and go, all right, does the child have language here? What's missing? And I am kind of thinking on my feet all the time about what I am modeling. I'm doing it naturally, but I have a plan and I'm thinking about what I'm doing. I'm not just, oh, I'm just going to go in this session and talk, just talk, talk the whole time, and hopefully something will stick. I've got a plan. And I'm like, you know what? This is what the child is missing. Okay, I'm going to offer up this language in different ways. I'm going to look at their special interests. I'm going to bring in things that they are motivated and interested by or maybe they've never seen before that might pique them their interest. So I am doing all of those things. When I go in there, I think, again, just the misconception is like, oh, all I'm trying to tell people to do is go in there and talk. And that hasn't worked. So we have a plan and it's as long as my course, so I can't talk about it podcast in depth. But we are really, like, focused and thinking on our feet in there. And that's how we're going to move the needle forward for these kids. Not with those old traditional techniques which are going to lead to prompt dependence. And the last thing that I'll say is if you have an older kid that is prompt dependent, it is never too late. What we want to do is spend a lot of time getting them used to more of a child led therapy or if you're doing this at home with your kid, just more of a child led way, because they have not had that. And so it might take a long time to get there. I'm not going to give you a timeline, but it might take a lot longer than it's going to take for a three or four year old. And you might have to have more silent sessions where they just see you as a trusted communication partner and you're not in there questioning them or prompting them or the thing that they're used to. It's just a lot of like, hey, I'm here and we're going to engage in what you want to engage in.
- [38:13]
A
Yeah, I think that is key right there. Like Alex talking about the special interests and what you're talking about too is just really an authentic relationship and connection and that and then pulling in strategic communication language models around that. That's how we're going to get engagement from kids. But at first you might have to slow down before you speed up because they're used to us. Question, question, question. Now imagine if you the pressure you would feel if something's hard for you and then someone's asking you to do it over and over. What color is this? What is this? What does this say? And laying off of that pressure and being quiet and just immersing yourself in what they're doing and maybe making a comment about stuff like narrating what's going on a bit, but not inserting yourself in it yet till they, they really trust you and are comfortable with you. Like you said as a trusted communication
- [39:15]
B
partner, the way you said that. I said this to you before we started recording. But silence for me is a technique or strategy and I use it all the time. And everyone should. I think as SLPs, we need to unlearn the constant talking because silence is where spontaneous language will emerge. Tara and I were talking before we started recording about kids and parenting and how our kids will tell us things when we're riding in the car and there is no pressure and we're just driving. Same thing in therapy. Okay. When there is no pressure and you've Got the silence. And you're just doing what they love or just hanging out by them while they do what they love. A lot of that spontaneous language, if they are able and have it will emerge. And some of that I feel like has been squashed down for some of these older kids. So it will take a while and that trust in order for it to come out.
- [40:21]
A
Yeah, that's. That's totally it. And as you were talking, it made me think of this acronym from the Hanon center in. In Canada, and they call it the owl. So it's observe, watch, listen. And so if we can do the OWL technique, Observe, watch, listen, keep our mouth shut. Sometimes you also notice things that you never would have noticed if you were in your head, like coming up with the next thing you were going to say, your prompt. You might notice like a little glance where they reference you. And it was like this tiny little thing. And you would have missed it if you were just trying to think of your own agenda too.
- [41:00]
B
Yes. I have so many moments where I have missed it because I'm so hyper focused on, you know, what am I doing next? And I showcase a little bit about that in my new RE recordings. Because the old way of thinking, the way as SLPs we need to unlearn, is that this is my plan and I'm going in there with my plan. And I used to think, oh, the kid is not going along with this plan. Okay. So I need to get them to finish this so I can get to task two. And now that that is kind of like I'm not thinking that way anymore. It's like, you know what? I'm going to be relaxed and enjoying what I'm doing with them as well. And it allows me to be more quiet and let that language come out because I've. I've shifted my mindset and taking that pressure off myself.
- [41:57]
A
Yeah. And it not only takes the pressure off the child, but off of you. Because I think we put so much. Educators and SLPs put so much pressure on ourselves to try to force progress in a way. So we give you permission to step back and be in that quiet so that you can. All the reasons we just talked about. For all of those reasons, Alex, if you're. If a listener is maybe an SLP or special educator and they are starting to question some of those traditional methods, what's one shift they can make right away that will help their students? Obviously, the one we just talked about is a big one.
- [42:43]
B
Really. The thing that I always say is acknowledge. So acknowledge all communication you're not going to do anything else. Repeat what they said, smile, nod, say okay. Because that is going to start to build the relationship and the trust. I think too many of these kids have been ignored or redirected or told not to say certain things. And so when they see you acknowledging them, that starts to, to build that connection.
- [43:20]
A
Yeah. I can picture so many times where, you know, you might feel silly, like, imitating what they're saying if it sounds like Jardin, but if you do it in that same intonation, a lot of kids stop in their tracks and reference you, even if they're not. There's no eye contact. They look like, whoa, you're speaking my language. Like, you get me. And they're used to us trying to get them to imitate us, but we imitate them. And all of a sudden I have this great video of this little guy, CJ. He was a 3 year old and his parents are like, yes, you could share the video and talk about him with this. But I was trying to get him to do thumbs up and he, you could see the motor planning he was trying and he, like, couldn't figure it out. And he went from like this joyful kid to kind of like, you know, it was just, you could tell his facial expression. And then he went. And I looked at him and I went. And he stopped and he lit back up and then he's like. And he started doing all these different, like, mouth sounds actions. And he'd look at me and then one of my paras was standing right nearby and he looked at her and did it and she did it. And he was like looking back and forth between us like, oh my gosh, he didn't say a word. But his face, like it was the joy and it was us pivoting that allowed that to happen.
- [44:53]
B
And I always get smiles and even laughter and what I call bingo, natural eye contact. When I use a child's gestalt. They love for us to use their language. So a quick thing I'll add in. I know this is not an AAC podcast, but if you have an AAC user, put in anything that they might be saying in the aac, because that's automatic buy in. They're going to look at that and listen to that and go, oh, my language is on here. And it's just like you using their gestalt. So just a quick AAC tip.
- [45:35]
A
Yeah, I love that. And actually that reminded me of something I saw this morning on Facebook. A former student of mine who is a gestalt Language processor has AAC now. But his mom posted a video and said, oh my gosh. On the iPad. It wasn't programmed into aac. It was just a video. But she said he keeps going to this and watching it over and over and over with a big smile on his face. It was her and his face like selfie videoing themselves. And one of his favorite, like movie lines was on in the background and they both like mouthed it. And so it was like them saying it, but it was not their words. It was the. The gestalt from the movie. And he was so happy. And it's so cute because his mom's mouthing along too. And you can kind of hear his intonation. Like he's trying to say it, but she's just mouthing it. And she said today he just keeps watching that over and over and brought him so much joy to share that. Really cute. Okay, so Alex, let everyone know where they can find you, where they can find your co course and all the things.
- [46:54]
B
Everything is under Meaningful Speech. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Meaningful Speech. The website is meaningful speech.com course. If you want to go straight to the course, we have a parent course and a SLP professional course. We have two tracks also for our AAC course which would be how to do all the AAC things with Gestalt language processors. So we sell two paid courses. But if you are new to this, I want you to go straight to my free masterclass. It's 54 minutes and it is all about echolalia and child led therapy. You also get to watch a GLP's journey from stage one through stage six, which is very cool. And I talk a lot more in depth about why the traditional techniques are not working. So if you go to meaningful speech.com you can click right on that free masterclass. And we have blogs we post every single week which are not opinion like blogs or stories about me. It's all teaching. They're all teaching blogs every week on different GLP and child led related things. I do a lot of podcasts like this one with Tara, so they're all linked on our page. And we post. My whole team post to social media quite frequently. So go check us out there as well.
- [48:23]
A
Yeah, people definitely get so much value. Your masterclass. I've posted that inside of my membership for my members like you guys. You want to learn more, start here and follow Alex because like you said, it's practical ideas and that you can put into place right away. And you slps yes, of course. But I think special educators alike would benefit from all of those ideas because they're the ones carrying things out during the day.
- [48:56]
B
Because we actually had a bus driver watch the master class. So it doesn't matter how you are supporting or working with the child, daycare, babysitter, family members, the masterclass is for anyone. And I think it's really important for everybody to get on the same page. And we also have one for aac. It's called the Beginner's Guide. So two free masterclass type things that are under an hour.
- [49:26]
A
Awesome. We'll link everything. Thank you so much for being here, Alex. It was awesome talking to you. I'm sending a big virtual hug your way because you just finished another episode of the Autism Little Learners podcast. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. If you have had success with any of the strategies that you learned about in this podcast, I would love to hear from you. Send me a DM on Instagram or Facebook. Autismlittlelearners don't forget to grab your free visual support starter set by going to autismlittlelearners.com visuals and always remember to find the good in every day. It.