Speech Delays in Toddlers: What Parents Should Know | Jeaneen Tang

What should parents know about speech delays, toddler language development, and late talkers?

In this episode of The Gentle Year, speech-language pathologist Jeanean Tang explains early speech milestones, when to seek early intervention, and how everyday parent-child interaction shapes how children learn to talk.

Drawing on over two decades of experience in speech therapy and early intervention, Jeanean explains how language develops in the earliest years of life and why the interactions parents have with their children matter more than most people realize. 

Together, Nikki and Jeanean explore the subtle but powerful ways parents can support language development through everyday interaction—and why early support can make a profound difference for children with speech delays.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The early signs of speech and language delays in toddlers
• Why babbling and imitation are critical milestones in language development
• When parents should consider early speech therapy or intervention
• How everyday parenting habits can unintentionally slow language growth
• The powerful strategy behind Jeanean’s book “Play Dumb and Sabotage”
• Why quality interaction matters more than the number of words a child hears
• How empathy and lived experience reshape the way professionals support families

Jeanean also shares the remarkable progress of her son today—now a thriving teenager whose resilience highlights the incredible power of neuroplasticity, early intervention, and supportive parenting.

Whether you’re a parent, educator, therapist, or simply curious about how children learn to communicate, this conversation offers practical insight into raising confident communicators in the earliest years of life.

Guest:
Jeanean Tang – Speech-Language Pathologist and Author of Play Dumb and Sabotage

Resources & Links:
Book: Play Dumb and Sabotage
Website: playdumbandsabotage.com

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Transcript

Who is Jeaneen Tang?

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Have you ever wondered how babies actually learn to talk, or how much your everyday interactions shape your child's language development? And what if some of the most common parenting habits, things we do out of love, can actually slow down a child's communication growth? Today, we're talking with speech language pathologist Janine Tang about early speech development, the power of interaction, and simple strategies parents can use to help their children become confident communicators. Welcome to the gentle year. And Janine, I would love to pass the mic to you so that you can introduce yourself and tell our listeners who you are.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Amazing. Thank you so much for having me on, Nikki. So I'm Janine Tang. I've been I've been a speech therapist for over 20 years, almost a quarter of a century, actually. And, you know, I started out doing uh elementary school uh speech therapy, and I did that for between eight years between Hawaii and Los Angeles. And I thought, you know, when I moved to Los Angeles, I actually thought I was gonna be an actor. So I actually took a year off from doing speech therapy. And then I found out waiting tables really does not pay the bills. So I got my license in Los Angeles, have been doing it here since then, but have transitioned over to early intervention, which is zero to three years old mainly. And then I see some private school-age kids and I also work in hospitals, doing two or three days a week at a hospital with four adults. And along the way, I had a child in 2012. And in 2013, unfortunately, he had a brain injury and stroke from falling off of the bed and currently has right hemiplegia. Uh, but you know, they said that he might never have walked or talked after that, but he is a thriving 13-year-old. He still has a lot of deficits. But my purpose in life is to help him and help as many other people as possible.

The Day That Her Son's Life Changed Forever

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for that. It's such a compassionate way to start this episode so that people feel like they're not alone in this. And can you tell us a little bit more about what you went through that day that basically changed your whole life when your child had this accident? What was going through your mind at that time? What did you guys do? And then what was the aftermath of that in the immediate aftermath of that accident?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Yeah, it seemed like a typical day, right? Because you're in a rush, you're it was in the evening. I gave him a bath. I was kind of rushing through the evening of we got to get things done. And I had put him in the middle of our queen size bed, which you know, a queen size bed is pretty big. And it was just the the box spring and the mattress. So it was just on the ground, it wasn't high up, and I was like, I just forgot the lotion. So I turned around a few feet away in the bathroom, went to get the lotion, but he was 13 months old then almost, and so he was toddling and very fast. And I think he just tried to follow me, and so he fell off the bed, and you know, I didn't see any cut or abrasion or anything like that, but he was crying really loudly, and I tried to comfort him. He was crying, crying, crying for about a minute or so, and then he just passed out, he was quiet. And his dad and his younger, his older half-brother were in the living room, and I called them in. I said, you know, something's wrong. You know, they came in. We were trying to assess what was happening with him. He was still breathing, but the breathing was shallow, and his dad was like, let's take him to the emergency room right now. And fortunately, we live very close to children's hospital of Los Angeles, and he probably drove so fast there. We got there probably in under 10 minutes. And when we got to the emergency room, you know, you go to check in, and the emergency rooms are always really busy, right? And they were like, You gotta sit down, we'll you know, we'll get to you. And it, you know, thankfully, one nurse was asking us, oh, wait, he's not waking up. And we're like, no, he's not. And so she's like, we got to get him in now because she was afraid of what was actually happening, which was a large uh brain bleed from the traumatic fall. And although there was no cut or abrasion, no indication of any bruising on the outside, all the bleeding was internal, which made it even worse, right? So it seemed so immediate that they were intubating him, rushing him off for an emergency craniotomy. And I was just kind of in shock because you know, we measured the fall. It was 18 inches, and you know, he's fallen before. And that that small fall should not have created such a large brain bleed, you know. So I was in shock. I just was, you know, working in the hospitals myself. I was just more objectively watching him get intubated, watching him go off to get an emergency surgery. And his dad is breaking out, breaking down, going down to the hallway, just breaking down. You know, and a social worker came over to me and she was like, you know, do you want to sit down and talk about it? And I said, Can you please just give us some time? And in her report, she wrote down that I was a cold-hearted mother because I was not crying and I wasn't losing it, you know, and um, you know, I didn't read that report until much later. But because she thought that I was a cold-hearted mother, she thought I tried to hurt my child. She thought I purposely tried to harm him. And so within the next 12 to 24 hours, we were visited by a doctor, police, detectives, and they determined that we might have tried to harm him on purpose. So it was a whole thing. We had to go through um Department of Child and Family Services, and they removed him from our custody, and it was 20 months of just hell. You know, for 10 months I was not allowed to be alone with him, and for I think a while longer, I was not able to spend overnight with him. So, you know, it's we lived in the hospital for three months after his surgery. Um, a few days later, he had a the swelling in his brain created a stroke. And I think it's because they had taken him out of the the PICU too soon. And when they removed us from custody, they also removed us from the hospital from the ability to be there with him overnight, and no one was with him. And I knew that he needed somebody to be in the room, you know, reading to him or just being there for him. And I feel that he sensed that. And he, you know, he had a stroke during that time when we were not there, and so we went to go visit him the next day, and they were rushing him back to the PICU. They're re-intubating him because he was showing signs of a stroke, and the you know, the CAT scan showed a stroke, and he still has residual effects from that stroke. You know, he had all the brain injury and the stroke on the left side, which is the language side of the brain, and that controls the right side of your body. So he doesn't have functional use of his right arm or hand, and he still has difficulties with kind of knowing where his right leg and foot is in space. He has problems with agility and balance. Um, but he is such a resilient child. Like that language center, when we talk about like neuroplasticity, right? That language center in his brain is somewhere else because the left side of his brain is so damaged. But his language is great, you know. You know, to know that he is able to have a conversation, he's able to uh tell us what he his interests are, what he loves and what he doesn't like. Um, his personality is amazing. And, you know, it was it was a nightmare. 20 20 months of not being able to truly be his mother. You know, I just I would literally, thankfully, his paternal grandmother was able to be his custodian. And uh his dad and I were never married, so we always lived separately. So for a while, he actually lived with me on my at my condo, which he owns, until he was deemed the the non-offending parent because he was not in the room. So he got to live with Che. But I would literally wake up before Che woke up, I would go over to the house, I would feed him breakfast, I would go to work, and I would come back, feed him dinner, put him to bed, and I would do that over and over and over again until I was able to be, you know, with him. Because if I was not able to be with him without being monitored, it would just be hell, like having someone watching over me the whole time I'm with my child. So I had to go back to work. Um it helped to distract me a little bit. But you know, it was, you know, it was seems so long ago that all this happened, but you know, it was not that long ago. But it's nothing nothing I would ever wish upon anyone. And it made me stronger as a person because you know, I'm used to being liked, if that makes sense. I'm used to not being hated. And because of this accusation, you know, you go into uh the courts, right? And I knew our judge was amazing. He actually was one of the uh the brightness, the bright lights of the whole trial, because I feel like he believed that I never tried to hurt my child, but they have to go through this, you know, ambiguous kind of process. Come back in three months, come back in six months, come back, you need to take these parenting classes, you need to go to counseling, you need to do all of these things. And I I just felt like it was this nightmare of uh process and and system, a system that was broken because I didn't try to hurt my child. It was truly an accident. But they were, you know, social workers were trying to tell me, oh, you can confess because we've reunited parents who've confessed for beating their child and they were on drugs and they were doing this and that. And I was like, you should not re-reunite parents who have beaten their child and have done drugs. But I have not beaten my child. I have not, you know, harmed him on purpose. But they were looking to never allow me to reunite with my son. That's what they were hoping for. And thankfully the judge was able to thankfully the judge was able to, you know, see that I was a good parent and that I, you know, did everything in my power to prove that.

What Signs Did the Social Worker Miss?

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Oh my gosh. This is unimaginable. I want to cry for you, literally, right now, because of what you went through. It just hurts and absolutely breaks my heart to know that you went through that and it was just by uh just an accident. It was just an accident. I mean, it's just awful. Now, going back to the social worker, what signs do you think that she missed in this interaction that you guys had because she mislabeled you? So was there something that I know this is asking a lot, but is there something that on her end that you feel that she missed in that moment that caused her to have this reaction towards you? And the reason why I ask is because you're kind of in a similar space. You know, you're working with kids with challenges and things like that. So maybe you might be able to see something from her perspective that other people are not currently aware of. That's the reason why I ask.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Yeah, I don't think she took into account that I have a medical background, like I work in a hospital that you know that I am I come from an Asian culture that you know showing your emotions is not super typical, you know. You don't bawl and cry in public a lot of times, and I think that she you know, she was a Caucasian woman and I am Chinese, and I think in a way the cultural sensitivity wasn't there, and also she didn't ask you know what my background was. She didn't, you know, I'll obviously I asked her to give us some time, so I didn't really allow her to ask too many questions, but you know, she could have followed up with a question about like you know, like what's you know, something about my maybe profession or household or whatever it was. And I think in that moment when I was being so, you know, in a way stoic or just in shock as well, I was also very aware that you know my son's father is breaking down, my child is going to have this life-saving emergency. Because, you know, the neuro the neurosurgeon, you know, sometimes doctors don't have the best bedside manner or sensitivity. And you know, after the surgery, she said, Oh yeah, he was actively dying, which I'm sure is a medical term, right? If he if there was no intervention, he would have died. So you know, to have that kind of understanding that he could have died or he could die, and his dad is breaking down, I felt it was almost my my responsibility to be a rock, like someone to have the you know, the calmness or the stablen, even though it was not truly how I felt. Like I felt like I needed to try and be as stable as possible.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Yeah, I feel like I know how you felt because even though I've never gone through something like that, I know what you mean when you say you feel like you have to be the stable one in the moment when everyone is falling apart. I have I live that life. I live that life every day. Because I'm a teacher, it's a whole thing. There's chaos everywhere, and you have to learn to be that person. But I was that person naturally, and so the the thing that I have learned about being that person is that the breakdown comes later. You don't break down in the moment, but the breakdown comes later. When everybody else is starting to come up, that's when you kind of come back down, at least that's what I have personally lived. And does that resonate with you at all or even make sense?

Being "The Strong One"

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Uh absolutely. You know, you you break down when you're by yourself, you know, you break down when you when you know everything is is in it will be okay in a sense, right? Or you um break down when when others are just not looking because I think like my brother also, he's the eldest uh child um and of our family, and I know that he holds it together, but he's also super stressed.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Like my our mom passed away last month, and it was just it was hard, but you're strong for other people, and you become you know the lighthouse for everybody else, but inside you're really breaking down.

What Professionals Need to Understand Most

SPEAKER_02 17:34

Yeah, I know exactly what you mean about that, and I'm sorry your mom passed away. It's just that's just devastating, and I'm just really sorry. I don't even know what to say in in terms of that. What can you say, you know, just other than I'm sorry, and it's just an awful thing that we all go through at times. So, really just kind of summarizing this moment, it you went through a really, really, really, really difficult time, and that's an understatement. And on top of that, there was an accusation made against you that you feel was rooted in either some level of misunderstanding, bias, um, or just simply maybe on the social workers part, maybe she felt like maybe she felt an intense fear that she was gonna miss a potential abuse case. And she may have been new, I don't know how old she was, or whatever the case was, but I mean there were clearly there was something going on there. And so my follow-up question on that is what do you wish medical professionals understood about you know communicating with parents, especially during an active crisis?

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Yeah, I think that um I think medical professionals, law enforcement, they need to have the ability to have a better perspective, the other person's perspective. You know, I think like before I was a mom, I was a speech therapist without a child, and I had a very strong perspective of how parents should be parenting or how behavior should be handled, right? And then I had my just my son, and then I had a different, an opened perspective, a bigger perspective, the ability to be a parent and a speech therapist. And then my son became disabled, and then I became a mother of a disabled child and a speech therapist, and it kind of gave me the superpower because not only am I seeing the world in kind of like a 360 view, you know, I have the ability to gain rapport because I have I have an understanding of what these parents are going through. And I think that when these social workers, these law enforcement, these doctors are considering what a parent might have done or not done, or judging what a parent how a parent is behaving, or whatever it is, that oftentimes those individuals have not had the experience that the parent might have had. And I believe that judgment often plays a part in their decision making, right? They have an opinion of what they think the parent should have done or should have acted like, but they were never in that situation, and they need to have more empathy empathy and more uh open perspective on what situations might you know present like and what they might what might be behind that, not just view it in their own one-sidedness. Um, I think that would help a lot.

Tang's Interactions with Professionals Now

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Well, thank you so much for that explanation, Janine. I do have another question for you, and I want to know if this experience has impacted the way that you now interact with professionals in your industry.

SPEAKER_01 21:19

Yes, absolutely. You know, after you go through something like that, it's it's like it can't not affect how you interact with the world and also the professionals that you work with, right? These colleagues that I work with in the hospital or uh early intervention or in the schools, I'm like, I see the world in a better perspective. You know, I see things in like a 360 rather than just from a therapist point of view or just a parent point of view. I can see it from a parent who has been involved with the whole system of being judged and have the empathy for other parents that might be going. Through the same thing. So, you know, if I'm working with a colleague at the hospital and I feel like they're being judgmental about a patient or a patient's culture or a patient's background, you know, I am more willing to step in and be like, well, have you thought about either the patient's point of view or the family's point of view? And, you know, someone might might not be the same culture as me or the same background as me, but they're still valid as humans, right? And we need to have that empathy. And I think it's definitely created greater empathy in myself and I hope to create great greater empathy in other people as well.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Yeah, most definitely. I appreciate that. What did this experience change for you in terms of your career or professional background? Were you already doing what you're doing now?

How Tang's Career Trajectory Changed

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Yes, I was already doing speech therapy, right, since 2001. So for for a very long time, I was doing speech therapy. And just before my son's accident, um, actually before my son's birth, I had switched over to early intervention and which is zero to three years old, right? From school age to three years, zero to three years old. And once he had his accident and I, you know, had to return back to work, I actually started working for the company that his speech therapist was from because I wanted the flexibility near home. And it allowed me to, you know, work close to home, be a little bit more selective about the clients and the locations that I was working in. Um so I could be as close to Che as possible. And I still work at the hospital that I love to work at in San Gabriel. And, you know, that that's always going to be my hospital family because they're just amazing people and I have an amazing director. But being able to be as close to Che school, you know, I still work very close to home, close to Che school. So most of the week, if a school calls me and says there's an issue with him or he's having a bad day with his seizures, I can pretty much just drop everything and go to pick him up. So for me, it helped me kind of focus in on what was important for myself and my son and our family. And you know, definitely working with children now that have they might not have similar incidences, like Che, as far as like a traumatic brain injury and a stroke, but they might have very similar, you know, needs. They still need language development, they may need articulation and problem solving. And having a child with special needs definitely gives me more empathy with the kids as well. So, you know, I love working with the kids in that zero to three age age range because that's the also the age range where Che had his accident, right? So it lets me be able to kind of develop them in the same way I helped Che develop at that age as well. And hopefully those kids will also continue to develop well on after I'm done working with them.

The Origin of Speech Disorders

SPEAKER_02 25:21

Yeah, no doubt about it. I could not do the zero to three. That that could never happen. No way. But I just commend you for what you do. So you did allude to this. Uh I I think I know the answer already because you said it, but not all speech disorders stem from accidents like this, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:41

No, no, not at all. Um, most of them don't, right? Because you don't expect a child to have an accident um or a stroke at an early age. Oftentimes they're either developmental, right? So they might be, they might have um a language delay, they might have articulation difficulties, they might be born with cerebral palsy or um uh you know intellectual disability or down syndrome, or they might be diagnosed later on with autism, but they might have all of these things that are with them from you know, from a child, baby to toddler, and so on and so forth, but it might not be caused by something traumatic, right? Because Che's language and problem solving, cognition, intelligence, all those things were, you know, because he had his fall, because he had his stroke. And you know, he was only 13 months when he had that accident, but before that, we feel that he was developing normally. So we don't think that the difficulties he has now are because of anything else besides that traumatic event.

When is a Speech Issue Developmental vs. Developed?

SPEAKER_02 26:56

Yeah. For a parent, when how do they know when a speech issue is something that's truly developmental versus you know, just something that versus something that absolutely needs intervention? Like if you I remember I used to, well, babysit is uh I shouldn't say babysit because I didn't really babysit and my grandma did, but there was this little boy that used to come to my grandma's house, and he was so little, he was just a little baby, and so any word that my grandma would say that he mimicked, he would mimic the last syllable of the word, and and he would oftentimes cut off the beginning letter of the word. So I remember one time he he pooped his diaper and my grandma was holding him and she said stink and he took off the S T and he said ink like that. That was his first like word, and um, and then my name is Nikki, and so my grandma sometimes calls me Nick, and his name was Nick too, and so when he was at my grandma's house, and he said she said, Who is that? And she goes, Is that Nick? And he goes, ick like that. And so it is was it how does somebody know when something is just like developmental? And he obviously speaks perfectly fine now. He did have to go to speech therapy, or I don't want to say he had to go, but he did go, and he's able to speak perfectly fine now. So I'm kind of wondering where that line is between what's developmental and what needs intervention.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

Yeah, I know that's really difficult, right? So you hear all these kids and they're, you know, talking or not talking, or they're saying things, and you're like, I don't know what they're saying sometimes, you know. So when you're looking at a child, developmentally, you know, a child learns how to babble first. And then they start imitating intonations of adult speech, and then they start to actually develop words, right? And by around one year old, so anytime between 10 months to maybe 13 or 14 months, they're gonna say their first like real word, right? Something meaningful. Like a lot of times people will say, Oh, their first word is mama, but they're actually just babbling, mama, mama, or da-da-da-da. You know, so they you they hear these babbles, these repetitive sounds, and they think that's an actual word, but it's not their first word until it's meaningful. So if they say mama and they're like reaching up towards their mom, or ball and they're holding the ball or playing with the ball or car, whatever it is, that's their first meaningful word. And you want to see that an average about 12 months, but anywhere between, you know, 10 months to 13, 14 months. If they don't have their first word by 14, 15 months, that's a really big red flag. If they're not babbling by, you know, seven, eight, nine months, you want them to also be assessed as well. Cause maybe it could be a hearing thing, right? Maybe they're not hearing things as well as they should be, which would impact how they're able to imitate things, right? And so the little boy that you're talking about, it sounds like he had a phonological disorder where they leave off.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

No, you're totally fine. They leave off part of the word the mute button.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Go ahead. Where they the little boy that you're talking about, where he left off the beginning parts of words, right? Some people leave off the ends of words, and some people will leave off the consonant. So they're just saying the vowels. It's and those are really difficult to work with because you're like, how do we get this child to actually say the words that we want? So I think for kids who have these phonological disorders where they're leaving off parts of words altogether, I think that's also, you know, we don't want to call it a red flag, but that's an indication where a specialist needs to kind of step in and provide strategies for the parents and teachers on how to practice those sounds and words and you know, have that being carried through at home or in the school. Um, you know, a lot of parents, they're just hopeful they're that their child's gonna start talking just naturally, right? And a lot of times parents are in a phase of denial. They're like, oh, my child's fine. And all of their friends are like, oh no, no, I'm sure they're fine. I'm sure they're fine. And sometimes doctors will be like, oh yeah, they're just, you know, they're just gonna talk late. And then it becomes, you know, the child's 18 months and still not talking, and then almost two years, and finally they reach out for help, right? Then they will, well, you know, how do I get my child to start talking? But they're now two years old, and by two years old, you want them to start combining two words. So sometimes I'll get a child who's about two years old and they have basically no words, they might babble a little bit, they might seem to understand a lot, but they're just not verbally expressing. And and those are the kinds of parents I would love to help out early, early on, you know, before they have to question is this the right, you know, right development stage for my child or not, you know, because they I think there's lots of um there's there's lots of education on how to birth a child, right? And how to take care of a baby, wrap it, swaddle it, feed it, and all this stuff. But there's not a lot of like pre-education on how to develop language with your child, how to play with your child and what to look for as your baby develops into you know, that 12-month-old who should be saying their first word, and then toddlers who should be saying two words and then three words. Like there's not a lot of education and what I call like preventative speech therapy out there for parents.

SPEAKER_02 32:48

That's that's fascinating. So basically what you're saying is that if a parent notices or feels that something may be off doesn't necessarily indicate that panic mode, nobody needs to hit the panic button. But the earlier the intervention or the assessment, the better, just in case, just to rule things out. And then if something is amiss, then having that early intervention can really help prevent a lot of long-term problems. Is that what you're essentially saying?

SPEAKER_01 33:20

Absolutely. Absolutely. There are a lot of like just really, you know, like I s like I've alluded in my book, is like there's kids who are just late talkers, right? But they seem to understand everything and physically they're able to run, jump, climb, and do all these things. They're just not expressing, right? And a lot of times I tell parents, well, if they're getting whatever they want without asking for things or indicating that they need or want something, then they're actually, you know, they're learning that I don't need to talk because I get everything done for me. So that's like one category of late talkers, right? And then there's other categories that, you know, whether they fall under autism spectrum disorder or something else, Down syndrome, where they just need extra uh, you know, strategies put in place on how to introduce language because receptively they might not understand things, and expressively they're delayed as well. So there's that receptive and expressive delay, right? So there's all these different kinds of categories of late talkers or speech delay children. And I would love to be able to help out all of the different kinds of parents that are out there, um, but really target the ones that, you know, are late talkers but understand and physically they're physically sound because those are the kids, you know, I'll get them at I'll get them for speech therapy at age two, and they're not really talking. But once we start speech therapy, they start talking a lot or talking at a really great pace, and their parents are just like astonished. They're like, what's happening? I'm like, well, I'm just using strategies to let them practice and interact rather than oh, they made a a grunt or they made a gesture and I'm jumping to give them whatever I think they want. So that's a parenting training kind of thing, which you know, if you're a first-time parent, especially, it's you know, you're not you're not expected to know speech therapy. You're not expected to know what the stages of language development are, you know. So you have no, you you should have no worries or feelings of ego about how someone will judge you for not knowing it, because you don't know what you don't know, and it's it's okay because there are specialists like myself who are more than happy to educate people.

Play Dumb & Sabotage

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Yeah, I really appreciate that a lot. And we're gonna get into your book and you're gonna talk about we're gonna talk about some parenting strategies and the strategies that you have in your book. I think that's it, it was so enlightening when I first met you to hear about that because the title of her book, guys, when you're um if you're if you're listening to this or you want to go to Amazon and check out her book, it's called Play Dumb and Sabotage. And so immediately when I heard the title, I was like, okay, I get the play dumb part. I think I do, but the sabotage, I was like, what now? So she's definitely going to help us understand what she means by that and get into some of the strategies in the book. But I did have a question for you, real quick, before we dive into that. So yesterday I was speaking to a lady for this podcast who talks about dyslexia. And through her research, she she's not a dyslexia expert, she doesn't claim to be one. She just happened to write a novel for uh based on a character who had dyslexia, and she had to obviously do a ton of research to be able to depict the character accurately. And through her research, she learned that 20% of the global population, which is billions of people, have dyslexia. And that's across cultures, it's across race, it's across language, it's across countries, doesn't matter what it is, one in five have dyslexia. And I was like, wow. So I'm wondering for you, through your research and and and your work, is there a percentage of people that have these delays, these speech delays?

The Prevalence of Speech Disorders (NIH Link Provided)

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Oh, you know, I have not done that much research on it, but if I had to have a guesstimation, I know. I would say, you know, based on like the kids at a pre a certain preschool that I see kids at, um, I would say there's probably like one in ten, two in ten that have like this this speech delay that could be you know avoided if we could definitely focus on teaching parents and caregivers and and other educators on how to introduce and practice language. I think what is the what is the percentage for like autism? There's like is it one in ten or one in seven? I do not know. It's um yeah. I think let me see.

SPEAKER_02 38:15

You keep going. I'm gonna look it up.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

Yeah, I I think that the percentage of children with autism has increased quite a bit over the last you know, 15, 20 years. I think it used to be one in twelve, one in ten, and I think white right now it's one in seven. So yeah, I think the um number of children that are late talkers but could be avoided from having speech therapy is close to there, I would say. There's I would hope that it's not higher.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

Yeah, me neither. So I'm looking here, and I don't put a ton of stock in statistics, but according to autismspeaks.org, it says about four in one hundred boys and one in one hundred girls have autism. It does also say that boys are nearly four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls. And then hold on, a little ad just popped up, of course. And as I was on the websites, always got to have the pop-ups. Anyway, it also says in the U.S., autism prevalence is lower among white children than other racial and ethnic groups. White 2.7%, Hispanic 3.3%, black 3.7%, Asian or Pacific Islander 3.8%, and American Indian or Alaskan Native, 3.8%. And then globally it says around the world, one in 100 children are diagnosed with autism. And over to the right, there's a little graphic, and it says autism affects an estimated one in 31 children in the US. So there's some statistics.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

Maybe I got my my tent my tens and hundreds mixed up. Yeah. So like one in a hundred or maybe three in a hundred, then we're mixed one in one thirty one.

SPEAKER_02 40:13

You probably didn't because there's been a lot of talk um, you know, with RFK and different people in the media talking about autism and vaccines and food supply and chemicals and additives and those kinds of things. And so there probably is a a significant portion of the population that believes that these numbers are much higher than what this website is purporting. But I do not know. I I don't know the statistics on that, but you're I think you're I think you're right on the money as far as people not um people seeing an increase in these things in these types of things. I know it's a big thing in schools now. You know, there's special needs programs, there's programs popping up all over the place because parents need them, and there's no doubt in my mind that there is a um a surge in these types of cases, for sure, whatever those numbers may be. But it's uh anecdotally in a anyway, there's there seems to be a lot more because like even if you talk to baby boomers, and we we had talked about this with the lady who came on my show last night. She she talked about how you know some of these part of it is the fact that some of these disorders didn't have a name, they didn't have the vocabulary to describe it. So that's probably part of it. But then we can't just say that that's the only reason why people quote unquote didn't have these types of disorders back then. It's not just because of the vocabulary, there's other factors at play here, and we need to discuss those things too, so that we can have a broader understanding or a deeper understanding of what's actually going on. So, yes, any last thoughts about the statistical part of this before we go into your book?

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Yeah, I would say that, you know, the the awareness of autism has definitely increased over the last, you know, five, 10 years, especially, right? So when I was growing up, I didn't know anybody, I didn't even hear the word autism, like you said, right? It's a new, it's kind of a new thing. But looking back when I was going to high school, you know, I graduated in '94. It's a long time ago. But um, you know, a a gentleman who was one year older than me, like looking back, I'm like, he definitely would fall under the autism spectrum disorder under Asperger's. Like he was super, super smart. He got one wrong on the SAT. He got into MIT, but he wanted to quadruple quadruple major. And so he stayed, I'm from Hawaii. So he stayed at the University of Hawaii and quadruple majored. And, you know, seeing like those looking back, I'm like, well, in hindsight, he is definitely somebody that would fall under the autism spectrum disorder. And now I feel that currently this the spectrum is so vast. It's so wide. It goes from children who are very severe, nonverbal, with all these behaviors, to people who seem really, really normal. They just have little characteristics, right? So I think the diagnoses of diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder has become so vast and and it covers so many different characteristics and people and types of people and that I feel like there are so many more people with that diagnosis. Um and so much we still don't understand about it.

Why 'Playing Dumb' Works

SPEAKER_02 43:39

Yeah, that's so true. And that's a really great point that the spectrum is so much wider now. The definition encompasses so many different things now that yeah, it makes sense that the numbers of cases would go up because of that. So yeah, it's an interesting point as well. So let's get into the practical aspects of your book, Play Dumb and Sabotage. Can you Talk to us a little bit more about the play dumb part in your book. I know you've alluded to it already, where you mentioned when a kid is growing up, parents, probably moms more so than dads, but I don't want to stereotype, so I won't say that. Anybody who's listening, just forget I said that. It's fine. But anyway, I'm assuming that in a family, if a child is, you know, is grunting or babbling or things like that, that there may be a parent, because you had mentioned this before, that kind of just jumps, you know, jumps to give their child what they want without having their child fully express what they want in a child appropriate or age-appropriate way. So can you talk to us a little bit more about that?

SPEAKER_01 44:45

Yeah, absolutely. So the title is play dumb and sabotage, and the subtitle is mindfully underanticipating a child's needs and creating opportunities to practice language. So it kind of breaks it up into two parts, right? So mindfully underanticipating. So when you think about like, especially a first-time parent or somebody who is not really used to like caregiving. So when I was an auntie, or when my brother and my sister-in-law were both first parents, we would try to anticipate what what they're, you know, what my niece wanted, right? They would anticipate what my niece wanted. Every little grunt, every little reach, they'd they'd be like jumping to, oh, that she wants that toy, or, oh, she wants this food. She wants to, you know, let's let's put her in this clothes or whatever it is. And so everything was kind of done for her. And she was, you know, a little bit of a late talker. And by that time, I was already doing speech therapy. So when she was not really developing, I told them, you know, you might want to get her checked out for speech therapy. And she actually did get speech therapy for a little while. And she, you know, she progressed very quickly. And now she's, you know, she now she's 22. It's crazy. But as parents, you know, we tend to want to also perform as parents, right? So when I was a first-time mom, uh, because I'm a speech therapist, I didn't really fall into it too much. But as a first-time parent, you want to show that other people, especially, that, oh, I can meet my child's needs, right? So if a child has a favorite toy, you want to have that ready for them. Or you know, like, oh, it's time for them to eat. I'm gonna give them their bottle on time, or whatever snack it is. Um, we're gonna go and we're gonna play with a certain toy. So I'm gonna bring everything that they might want. So we overanticipate what the child needs, and we don't have them, you know, explore the world themselves. And, you know, another example is my godson who is now 16 and six foot tall. When he was nine months, he was still wasn't really crawling or getting across the floor. You know, he was really cute, he was a really big baby, and people would carry him a lot, and he would kind of just be tended to rather than having to explore the world. And so I noticed he wasn't really crawling or moving across the floor, and I had the slinky, this colorful slinky, and I would tease him with it, because I know he wanted it. He would kind of like reach for it when I was right in front of him, and I would kind of pull it away, and he would, you know, he would just kind of lay there, and I would go back and I would tease him with it, he would kind of reach for it and I would pull it away. And after doing that for a while, because it takes patience, right? Because a lot of times you want things done for your child right away, you want to meet their needs right away. And this takes a lot of patience on the parent or the caregiver's part because you know, the child is learning, they're exploring. And so after a while, he started turning over, crawling, wiggling, wriggling himself across the floor to get after this slinky, you know, and after that he started, you know, crawling and eventually developed into walking and running and all that kind of stuff. But it was like that moment of plain dumb where you know what they want, but you pretend like you don't know, right? And then that sabotage part is creating opportunities to practice. So as I'm teasing him with it and pulling it away, that's one opportunity for sabotage. Like I'm giving it to him, but I'm taking it away. Giving it to him or taking it away, right? And eventually he over time was able to show that he could learn a new skill or a task. And and even though he wasn't talking at that time, because he was still only nine months, he was learning physically how to develop, right? And a lot of times for parents, you know, when we give our child a snack, we might give them a whole bowl of goldfish or a whole bowl of blueberries. Where, you know, we might be um it would be it would be better if we just gave them a couple goldfish but have the rest of the bowl inside but out of reach. So they can have their goldfish and see that there's more, right? So the sabotage is that there's more there, but we need to either reach for it, you know, indicate through signing, indicate through more talking, or eventually more goldfish, more goldfish, please. I want more goldfish. And then you can work up to like how many goldfish do you want? Do you want two goldfish or three goldfish? You know, so you're offering these choices where the child gets to interact and practice, right? So I kind of say, you know, if you were playing basketball and you were shooting free throws, you wouldn't just shoot free throws every now and then, you'd shoot them all the time because you want to get good at it and practice it. So the sabotage is just about practicing, it's just about creating opportunities to get those repetitions in. And the play dumb could also be, you know, as children get older, you know, playing like literally playing dumb. I had a little girl who went to a field trip at the farm, and I said, and her mom was like, Oh, do you want to tell Miss Janine about what you did at the farm? She goes, No, she just didn't want to do it. And I go, Oh, you went to the farm? Did you see a giraffe there? She goes, No. Chicken. Oh, you saw a chicken there. Oh, amazing. What else did you see? She goes, No. And I go, Oh, there must have been an elephant there. She was like, Oh, there was a sheep. So children love being smarter than us, right? So by playing dumb in a more advanced way, then they open up and it helps to build rapport with them as well.

SPEAKER_02 51:07

Yeah, that's fascinating. So it it sounds like what you're doing is not direct instruction. It's not like I'm the teacher, I'm teaching you how to speak. It's not direct instruction, but this is sort of a resistance that you're just building into your natural daily speech with the child so that it makes them, you know, have to come a little bit further and kind of excel and push and stretch themselves a little bit further. Is that accurate?

SPEAKER_01 51:34

Absolutely, right? You kind of want to meet the child where they're at. So I would never expect a child who's nonverbal to say a full sentence, right? And I would never expect someone who's saying one word to say five words. But I might expect a child who's babbling to start imitating maybe the first sound of a word, um, a child who's nonverbal, maybe to imitate a sign for more or please. Um, a child who is saying one word to imitate two words, or maybe two to three words, right? Because you're you're meeting them where they're at and then stretching that ability because then you're going to be able to gain their trust and have that play and interaction with them. And then hopefully they're able to carry over what you're working with them on into their school day, into their home day, into the community at the park and everything like that.

Do Speech Challenges Lead to Reading Challenges?

SPEAKER_02 52:26

Yeah, that makes sense. So it's really about combining that level of resistance, but making sure that it's appropriate for where the child is at at this particular moment in time. Okay. All right. That makes sense. Now, does having a speech therapy issue or a speech issue necessarily mean that the the child is also going to have a reading disability?

SPEAKER_01 52:50

No. No. I don't think that they go, I don't not, not typically that I that I've come across. Um they if it if there's a phonological issue where they're not able to understand different sounds, that could translate into like the reading. But um like I have one child who has a speech, he had a speech delay, an articulation delay, but he's a really good reader and he's only four. It's crazy. And then I have you know, a child who's on the autism spectrum disorder, who, you know, he was very ecolic. So anything you told him, he would say that right back to you. So if you said, How are you? he would say, How are you? It's like, oh, it's like, you know, you say, Oh, the sun's yellow, he would say the sun's yellow. So he would just imitate all these things. But now we're he's he's starting to decrease that the more we practice our speech. And then we're working on transitioning him to be a better reader. He's able to identify words, and we're gonna use that towards, you know, following different um social language scripting and things like that, because I think that's where he's gonna be able to develop his social interaction better. Um, you know, because I work with kids that are very young, sometimes they're not reading by the time, or a lot of times they're not reading by the time I'm done with them at age three. Um, but I don't think that because they have a speech delay that it affects their reading. Like it's it's not a typical thing that goes hand in hand. I'm sure that there are some people that intersect, right? You have those circles that intersect, but it's not something that, like, okay, if you have a speech delay, you're gonna have a reading delay as well.

SPEAKER_02 54:38

Okay, that's good to know. Because I'm I was automatically thinking, okay, a language processing issue, then that must translate into reading and writing and all these other areas as well, if it's not addressed. Now, actually, that that does make me question that. So if if it's not addressed, then does it connect to the reading and the writing, or is that still not a thing?

SPEAKER_01 55:02

Um, I don't have particular research in that specifically, but you're working with zero to three-year-olds so that's I'm working with zero to three-year-olds. I did work with school age, but um before. But I would say that language, verbal language is probably a good foundation, right, for everything you're gonna be doing in school. So I would assume that if you don't address the language issue, you're gonna have difficulties with following directions, with comprehension, with expressing things in math or reading or science or social studies, whatever it might be. Um, so I think without that language foundation, it'll be more difficult for a child to develop other other um subjects or um areas of interest. But if a child is able to address those language needs, I think the rest of the areas of learning, I think, should fall into place.

Is Correcting a Child's Language Appropriate?

SPEAKER_02 56:08

Yeah, definitely. I could I can definitely see that. So what role does correction play in all of this? So I know your book has your does your book have a like a lot of techniques and practice, best practices that parents can use while their child is still, you know, at that age, they're still developing. Is that like the majority of what the book is about? And then can you also walk us through what appropriate can or correction looks like, or if that is even a thing when a child is just learning to develop their own language?

SPEAKER_01 56:40

Yeah, exactly. So the the book is meant to be a conversational handbook, right? So each chapter has a topic or strategy and an idea that you can practice at the end of each chapter. So there's an interactive um cat uh interactive portion at the end of every chapter. So there's one that's called don't ask a yes-no question unless you're ready to honor the no. And people do this all the time. They're asking kids, can you pick that up? Can you can you uh, you know, can you uh put away your dishes? Can you clean up your room? Can you say this? Can you, you know, can you do your homework? Or would you like to do your homework? You know, if a kid says no, you know, we and we say we're you're gonna do it anyway, then we're really not honoring their word, right? So you're kind of losing trust and you're kind of indicating to that child that even though you say no, you're still gonna have to do it. So it doesn't really matter what you say, you know. So taking that idea of honoring the child's word and finding ways to kind of get around that, whether it be, hey, we have to um do your homework and we have to take a bath. Which one do you want to do first? Or we have a book and a puzzle. Which one do you want to do first? Or which one do you want to do last? Right? Or, you know, sometimes parents get into the rabbit hole of what do you want to have for a snack? Do you want an apple? Their child says, No. Do you want a banana? No. Goldfish? No. Pizza? No. You know, all these things. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. So that's that's another way of understanding, like, okay, well, we have apples and crackers. What do you want to have for a snack? You know, or how many do you want? Um, or like when my child was even very young, when Che was very young and he could not talk yet, right? I would say, okay, let's get dressed. You want to wear the blue shirt or the green shirt? And I would hold things about shoulder width apart because if you hold them too close together, you don't know where they're looking. But if you hold them about shoulder width apart, even if they're not talking, you'll see where their eyes are gazing, and then you provide the words for them, like, oh yeah, let's wear that blue shirt. I love blue. Blue is the color of the sky, you know. So as far as like correction goes, um, I tend to have people model the correction rather than say, oh, that's not the right way to do something. Right. So if like, you know, even though Che's 13 now, something sometimes every so often he'll say the wrong verb or he'll say the wrong thing. So he'd be like, he's like, oh um, oh, the the boy fell down. Uh he fall down, he falled down. I was like, oh, the boy fell down. Oh, I was like, oh no, was he okay? Like, so I'll correct the verb without being like, oh, it's not falled. Like you don't say falled, you say fell, you know. So I'll correct him by modeling it back to him and just kind of overemphasizing like what that correction was. And you know, then it tells the child, oh, or it indicates to the child that there was a different word or correction, but it's not blaring. It's not like, oh, you said it wrong, right? But you're you they're gonna hear the model and hopefully absorb it. Because then sometimes parents will be like, oh, they didn't say this correctly, and I had to tell them to stop and repeat it a different way. And I go, Well, you know, now now you're telling the child they're doing something wrong. Like it's like, you know, you're telling a child you're wrong, you're not doing it right, and that's gonna tell the child that's you know, I'm making errors rather than having the model for them and then be able for them to be able to practice it on their own. Does that make sense a little bit? It does, it really does.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:42

It plays a lot into what I do as a Spanish teacher because in in our language classes, the amount of repetition that the students need to hear of the language, of you know, just whether it's a verb or a noun, doesn't matter what the word is, but I mean they have to hear these words a lot, a lot, way more than what I originally thought, in order for them to acquire it, which is probably why I had asked about the the reading and writing piece of it, because in high school, so I am very far away in terms of the age range of the kids that you are working with, and my brain is trying to make connections to what you are saying because I'm trying to figure out what's going on with the students that I teach in terms of language processing that necessitates what I feel is an extreme amount of repetition in order to get kids to to know or to understand, or even just simply repeat what I am saying in the class. And it's it's a lot. I've tried a lot of methodologies, I've tried, you know, the direct approach where it's like repeat after me, okay, and then I'll say the words and they'll repeat. I've tried uh CI, which is called comprehensive, which stands for comprehensible input, which is where you speak the language, but there's all sorts of ways that you're getting the kids to understand what you're saying, which may be translation, you may have a word or a picture, or maybe it's a gesture. You're you're doing something that helps the kids hear the language but understand what's being said at the same time. Um, I've also tried high interest activities. So if a kid tells me that they're really interested in K-pop, for example, I will try to teach as much as I can teach about that subject area in Spanish because it's high interest, and so my intent or goal is that the students will acquire more of the language because they are learning about something that's of high interest to them. So I've tried all different kinds of methodologies and I've tried direct translation. I mean, I could go on for days, but the the point is that there are some students, and it's the overwhelming majority of them that I teach, and it could be different for different areas geographically speaking, but the overwhelming majority of students that I teach do not remember the information that has been taught to them from sometimes one day to the next, definitely not one week to the next, and surely not one month to the next, and absolutely never from one year to the next. And every year the students are progressing from one level to another level to the next, but they are not retaining the information from the previous years. There are some that do, but the majority do not, and so that's the reason why I asked about the the correction piece, because I'm trying to figure out what is going on speech-wise that and it may not be a speech pathology issue, but what is going on in the brain that is causing them to not retain said information even though they've heard it in a hundred different ways a thousand different times. It's it's something that is um that has eluded me for a long time now as a teacher. Any thoughts on that? And I don't expect you to because I know I work with the older kids, but I'm just I'm grasping, I'm grasping at straws here, trying to figure out this enigma.

The Connection Between Memory and Speech Patterns

SPEAKER_01 1:04:26

Yeah, I would say, you know, I tried, um, I did learn German as an adult. And I remember going into my first German class, and it was, I think the class was like an hour and a half. And for the first 45 minutes, my teacher only spoke German, and I thought I was gonna die. I didn't know, I'm like, I don't think I can do this. But by the end of those 45 minutes, she was able to get us to say in German, you know, hi, my name is Janine. I'm from Hawaii. What is your name and where are you from? And I, you know, it was overwhelming for me. Um for the first probably 20 minutes. I was just like, I'm gonna die. I'm actually gonna die. Because she wouldn't like write it down. And I was like, oh my gosh. But after that, I understood that okay, I might be able to get some of this. And it was very much the repetition because like for those those first 45 minutes, it was a lot of repetition. She was saying things um and uh and gesturing and doing all this stuff, and and you know, I continued to learn German for another semester after that. And what she did was, you know, we did a field trip. We had a very small class. So we had a field trip and we went to a restaurant. And before we went to the restaurant, we role played like how to order, or what do you recommend? Oh, I recommend you get this. Okay, I'm gonna get that. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we did like a lot of role playing. Um, so it's For for myself, I learned that way, but I also I needed to be motivated to practice every day as well. So I think for high school students, you know, I took Japanese in high school and I wasn't super motivated and and it was fine. I s I still got an A in the class, but you know, I don't think that I remembered a whole lot from high school. Um I would say uh for you know for little little kids and like people who have language delays like my son, the modeling correction is very adequate for them because you know that's how they're gonna be learning naturally. We don't have a natural thing. But if a child is in high school or a student is in high school, um, you know, approaching it probably from multimodal, you know, I know you're doing everything you can think of, but like tapping out syllables. Um for me, I'm a whole word reader. If I come across a word, I have no idea what it is. I look at it, then I'm like, oh, I'm not sure what that is. And then I have to break it up and then for different sounds, and then it might just be completely wrong. So I know for like myself, I have never taken like a formal Spanish class. I've been doing Duolingo. Um, it's okay. But when I come across words, I'm like, I don't know what that is. And so for me, I need to see it, I need to kind of feel it, know what those syllables are, and then also kind of picture what those intonations are going to be. So yeah, um, whether you have them have full body experiences of the word, um, acting it out, role-playing. I think role-playing really helped me for the German because up to this day I can be like, oh, Bus mokenzi essen, you know, like, and have the role of the waiter and the the customer in my mind, and like what those words are, and and you know, it was quite a long time ago with the 98. So I agree.

Role Playing

SPEAKER_02 1:08:14

I I agree with you 110%, because I think what I need to do is I need to take a class from you, first of all, on some on some of these like teaching methodologies, because you're right, the moti, the multimodal approach where students can feel and embody the word in a variety of different ways, whether it's through sound or smell or touch or movement, whatever that is, I definitely think that will help them so much. And it it just it's powerful. That's a very powerful technique that's I would say underutilized and undervalued, especially in the education system. It's it's underrated that that type of teaching because most of the time when you're in the school, you know, the expectation is that students are sitting in their desk and teachers teaching up at the board. Occasionally, they administrators may support movement-based activities like stations or gallery walks or things like that. But I think that what we need to do is go a lot deeper in that in that teaching type methodology, more along the lines of what you're espousing, because it that's really going to help a lot. And then the role play, the role play is so invaluable as well, totally underrated. I remember when I became a teacher, there was a program in Massachusetts that I had applied for. And this was before I was a teacher. So I had been in school my whole life, done college, decided to become a teacher, and I applied for this program. And one of the things that they did during the interview process, I actually had to fly up to Boston to do it. The interview was an all-day thing. This was not just, you know, hey, I'm gonna interview you and ask you a few questions. This was intense. And so what they did was they had you teach a lesson and you could pick any topic. It didn't have to be Spanish, it didn't have to be something geared towards high schoolers, it could have just been basic math, like, you know, addition with one plus one, and showing someone how to add two numbers together. The goal or the purpose of the interview or the role-playing session was for them to see how you taught. How did you get someone to understand something, even if it was simple or basic? And that role-playing session where the evaluators were the students and I was the teacher, was crazy and valuable. It was so good for me to have that experience because of the feedback that I got afterwards. They would say, Here are three things that I think you did well, and here are three things that I'd like to see you improve on. And these people were were good at what they did. They they knew how to teach, they knew what for their school, they knew what good teaching looked like. So they were very specific in that feedback because they knew what they were looking for and what they weren't looking for. And so they were very good at that. And I had to go through that process. Um, one, I had to teach a lesson, and then I also had to deal with classroom management issues. So the kids, they not they weren't real kids, they were just adults, but the adults weren't just there to learn what I was teaching and be there to observe me. They were also role-playing themselves. They were the kids in the classrooms, and they would exhibit common misbehaviors that teachers see in the classroom, like perhaps a kid is on their phone, or you know, maybe a kid pokes another student in the arm because sometimes that happens, you know, and they wanted to see how you responded to these common occurrences in the classroom because that was ultimately from their perspective, what was going to make or break you as a teacher, your classroom management. So that's what they wanted to see. Anyway, short story long is that short story long here is that they utilized role playing all the time. This was not just for the interview. This was an ongoing thing that as you evolved as a teacher and saw new situations and had new encounters, different encounters in the classroom, they would role play sessions, conversations with parents on the phone, conversations with um a parent who spoke another language. They would role-play sessions with students who maybe got in trouble or, you know, whatever, all different kinds of things. And so you were so prepared for anything that was going to pop up in the classroom because you had already seen it in these role-playing sessions. So I agree with you that these two modalities are totally underutilized and completely underrated in education. Do you want to comment on that real quick before we move into a different question?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:51

No, I love, I love that. I love that how they use role-playing because I think it's so um important to have that perspective, right? As well, because you get to role-play both sides sometimes, right? And like coming from in education, and also when I used to work in restaurants, we had something called train the trainer. And it also applies to schools, right? So a school or studying when you're like be the teacher. So a couple more strategies you could add to your classroom is have the student uh, you know, take the role of the teacher and teach other people. Because when you learn something and you then uh take what you learn and teach it to somebody else, that uh reinforces what you learned by doing that, right? So you that's one strategy for studying, right? You you study and then you teach. And then another one is also carrier phrases, which I do a lot with kids, is like, oh, I like to eat broccoli. What do you like to eat? Oh, I like to eat pizza. What do you like to eat? I like to have cookies, what do you like to eat? And then, like, oh, what don't you like to eat? Oh, I don't like to eat asparagus, or I don't like to eat Brussels sprouts or whatever it is. So if the kids go around the room and they have that carrier phrase of I like to eat, they're having that repetition and they're just changing one aspect of that sentence or question or whatever it is. They're just changing one aspect. They're able to practice that that phrase or that question or whatever it is over and over and over again. They're hearing it multiple times, and then they're also being able to add something novel to that.

How is Tang's son, Che, doing?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:35

Yeah, exactly. I agree with you 100%. So I'm definitely gonna go into my classroom with a new of renewed sense of excitement, and I'm gonna bring in some new activities into the classroom to help, you know, spark that motivation and everything. I appreciate I appreciate what you said there. Even though you don't work as um a high school teacher, you're working with uh zero to three year olds, but I think it's still invaluable at any age, even for adults, you know, this type of this type of learning. So I want to know how is Che doing? Can you talk to us a little bit about he's doing how how he's doing and you know some of his um his struggles and also his triumphs in communication?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:14

Yeah, absolutely. You know, my son is an amazing teenager now, he's 13. And this past year he passed me in height. He is now five foot seven, and I'm five foot four, so he's much taller than me. Uh he goes to uh a charter school here in Los Angeles, a charter charter middle school, he's in seventh grade, and he has a one-on-one with him all day, an adult support person, because he has seizures and he also needs someone to kind of modify um his academic work as well. Um, but he's able to be in these regular education classrooms. He's learning to do everything his peers, his age, are learning. And he just recently had a science project night where he was able to present his poster about natural disasters and what kind of things you need to pack for a natural disaster. He had to pick an area um of Los Angeles where a natural disaster might happen. And like what what would what would you have to do if an if an earthquake or something happened there? So, you know, I was actually um traveling that day when he was doing the presentation, but his dad went and I said, Well, you know, how was your science night? And he goes, Oh, I showed my project to dad and he loved it. And he looked so proud when he said that his dad loved it. I was so happy for him because um, you know, for him to have interest in school is really important for us, and for him to find joy in learning is even more important because you know, for part of school, like he didn't want to go, you know, he's like, Well, things are too hard, you know, or things he wasn't exactly sure how to learn because it wasn't fun, it wasn't it was too difficult, you know. So meeting him kind of where he's at and kind of stretching his abilities is also something he needs to have in his life all the time. And his one-on-ones are amazing to do that. But um, you know, extracurricularly, he used to do taekwondo for you know from five age five to eleven, and then um then he did basketball from you know age uh nine to twelve, and now he's taking a break. And now he just started picking up boxing, and people are like, Well, are you aren't you scared of him boxing? And I go, Well, he's not boxing against other people, he's learning the skills in order to box, and which helps his agility, it helps his cognition and intellect, it helps his speed, and you know, he's five seven. He needs to gain this muscle in order to hold himself up, in order, you know, his his legs are super long, and if you don't have muscles, you will fall eventually. And and although he still has seizures, he has these very um rare seizures are called reflexive focal tonic seizures or also like startle response seizures. So if there's a loud sound that comes out of nowhere, um, he might have a seizure, or if someone bumps into him that he doesn't know is gonna bump into them, into him, he might have a seizure, or if he steps on something that he doesn't, you know, he doesn't know that's there, like a cord or something, he might have a seizure. So it's like, you know, although he has all of these things stacked up against him, he's an amazing kid. And, you know, we're trying to find ways to you look forward towards his future and get him into like vocational programs eventually, because before we know it, he's gonna be 18 and it's uh it's a big world out there.

The Impact of Being Proud of Your Child

SPEAKER_02 1:19:02

Yeah, sure is. I think you said something really important for everyone to know, and is that it's that, you know, no matter what the issue is or the challenge that a kid is facing, whether it be cognitive or physical, just letting them know that you are proud of them is the foundation. It is the most important part of all of this work because at the end of the day, if the kid is doing all this work and they're progressing, but they don't know that they're or it it might not necessarily be that they don't know it, but maybe they don't feel it or it's just not expressed that a parent, a mother, a father is a proud of them, there's there's something missing. And when that child does feel that their parent is proud of them, whether it's through a hug or it's directly saying, I'm so proud of you, something like that, you know, you see them light up, they change, they they feel so loved, they feel secure. And it's like no matter where the child is, no matter who they grow up to be, no matter what challenges they have, letting them know and communicating with them that you are proud of them each, you know, each day, or however, you know, maybe when the kid does a project like Jay did, you know, just letting your letting them know that you're proud of them is so important. And I would I would argue that it's one of the most important things that a kid can feel because it helps them develop trust, trust in you, trust in the process, trust in themselves, because they have to, you know, speaking of like, you know, fighting, boxing, and all that stuff, I had read an article one time about I think it was Jackie Chan, and he had said that one of the most important skills that he had learned through Taekwondo or whatever type of um karate or whatever it was that he was learning, one of the most important things that he learned was how to trust himself. He had to, because no matter how many punches you threw, no matter how many kicks you could, no matter how high your kick was or whatever the case was, if you didn't trust your own self, if you didn't trust your own body and your and your your body's innate reactions to things, you it's very hard to progress and move forward if you don't have that trust. So that sense of pride, I feel like that comes from that sense of trust comes from the pride that we instill in our in our kids and in our families. Do you want to um elaborate on that or express any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01 1:21:35

Absolutely. I think that I completely agree with you that you need to instill the confidence in your child, right? There are some people who grow up in households where their parents are not instilling that confidence. And then they have to go through their own development where they need to learn how to do it themselves as adults, right? As teenagers, adults, whatever it is. And they might have these issues as adults reflecting their upbringing. And so for myself, you know, I, you know, I grew up without my dad. He was a deadbeat father, and I grew up with a mom who was working all the time. Um, and so even though I knew she loved me, I knew she was proud of me, and she, you know, worked really hard for me, she never was never at my my games, my basketball games, volleyball games, and things like that, cheering me on. And so for me, I made sure that um I was a I was a better cheerleader for my son. I was at all of his, I'm always at all of his events. Um, you know, I ended up coaching his basketball team for a couple of years because I was so like I was so involved with his um progress and his play. And I wanted to be as hands-on as possible. And, you know, hopefully, you know, he has that self-confidence to carry him through as a young adult because hopefully I'll I'm around for a long time, but you know, I'm never gonna be here forever, you know. And I want him to feel that he is able to do whatever he is dreaming of.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:16

Yeah, that's hopefully every parent's goal that they have for their child. So a couple questions about just early language development. I know you probably talk about this in your book. What are some of the earliest signs that a baby is beginning to actually understand language?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:34

Yeah, so the joint attention, right? So joint attention is when you guys are playing with an item or you guys are looking at the same thing at the same time. So having that ability to understand that there's more in the to the world than just themselves, right? Because so babies think that the world revolves around them, right? When they're born. And then they learn, like, oh, there's more to this world than just myself. There's also this these other people and these other things, and that mommy and I are looking at the same toy, or daddy and I are eating the same food or interacting at the same activity, whatever it is. So understanding that there is this joint attention and then imitation as well, right? They start imitating things you do, whether it's like they see daddy shaving, and then they start, you know, make pretending that they're shaving, or they you pet a dog and they pet a dog, or you give someone a high five and they give you a high five, whatever it is. They're imitating. So they're learning to understand because they're they're seeing, they're taking in what they see and they're comprehending, and then they're also expressing. So I think those are great indications.

The Stages of Speech Develop from 0-3

SPEAKER_02 1:24:55

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Thank you. Now, zero to three years old as a you know, with you as a mom, that must have gone by really fast. Zero to three, how fast did those years go? And so not only how fast were those years for you, but what were the the stages in his speech development or in anyone's speech development that occur from birth to age three?

SPEAKER_01 1:25:18

Yeah, so you know, from zero to zero months to twelve, thirteen months when Che was uh still normal developing, right? We were thinking that he's a normal developing child. He did have the babbling, a lot of babbling, laughing, imitating of that intonation when he was um, you know, between, I think he his first laugh was around five months, four or five months. And then he was babbling, imitating, babbling. He was very close to saying his first word when he had his accident. So he was between 12 to 13 months at the time. And then with his therapy, you know, we he was able to say, I believe, I believe his first word was ball at about 15 months. And then he also, you know, I worked with people say, you know, have you ever worked with your son on speech therapy? And I go, all the time, whether he realizes it or not, right? I cannot not be a speech therapist as well as his mom. So he got speech therapy all the time. And when I went back to work, um it was very important for him to get a speech therapist as a part of his early intervention because I needed to have somebody with the expertise working with him while I was not there. And I believe uh for him because he had so much speech therapy from myself, that his as far as like acquiring words and stringing those together as sentences, he he was not too far behind. Um and you know, going back to I think I talked about neuroplasticity before, that his brain injury and stroke was on the left side of his brain, right? And that's our language center. And because his language is so good now, um that that language center is somewhere else, completely somewhere else in his brain, because that left side is so damaged that you have to accept and understand that your brain can change and with repetition and practice, you know, he is not at the same level as other seventh graders, right? Because he has a cognitive delay. But you know, he doesn't get the nuances of social interaction sometimes, but he is able to interact really, really well, have conversations, uh, understand jokes, tell jokes sometimes, and interact with the world in a very special way. Um You know, he might never be on track with his chronological age peers, but he is uh uh very verbal and he is um able to articulate his feelings. He's very empathetic and um I think for him, like uh language is one of his strengths.

How Important is Babbling in Language Development?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:18

Oh, that must make you so proud that you did all that. That's amazing. And that he's he's grown into the young man that he is, that's amazing. So, a quick question. In the early ages of children, you mentioned babbling a lot, and that's a good thing, but how important is babbling in language development? Because some people might just say, oh, it's just you know, gibberish, it's not anything, but how important is it really?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:44

Oh, it is it's so important because that's vocal play, it's it's experimenting, it's it's um, it's finding out what you can do, right? Because you can you have to be able to make different sounds in order to form these words. And so babbling really helps to work out all your articulators, your jaw, your tongue, your teeth, everything, your lips. And it has the ability to I would equate it with, you know, toddling and crawling and and squirming on the floor, that's kind of thing where you play with your muscles and your limbs. Uh is the same thing with babbling. So it's it's the workout for your mouth and play and you're hearing yourself and and seeing what the person that you're talking with is happening, right? So if you're babbling to your mom and your mom babbles back to you or talks back with you, there's like, oh, I I interacted with her and she's interacting with me, and it's their way to um play with their environment and communicate at a very young age.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:55

Yeah, that's so cute. I'm just imagining these little kids that they're just they're talking to you, and you're like, okay, tell me about your day, and they're like, blah, blah, blah. You know, they're so cute. It is really cute. So if a child is not babbling as much as what we want them to, maybe they're lim very limited in that way. What might that indicate?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:16

Yeah, it could definitely indicate either a hearing difficulty, right? All the all the babies get screened for hearing when they're when they're born. But some child might have a uh a hearing difficulty that they might have missed or developed, right? Um, but it could also mean that they have some kind of um disorder, whether it be autism or whatever, or whatever it could be, a development of delay in things. Um, and then that would reflect a greater indication of a speech delay, right? So if they're not babbling, then they're not expressing. And so that delay in babble is gonna ultimately affect their verbal expression if it's not treated early. So if a child's not babbling, you know, six, seven, eight months, nine months, then I would definitely reach out and just see if, you know, either your doctor can refer you or you can reach out to a speech therapist. And they might not need intensive speech therapy, but you could maybe learn strategies on how to encourage babbling, right? So there's this interactiveness that you need to have with your child, right? I had a family who I got their daughter um for speech therapy at age two, and she was not really babbling too much, and but she understood everything. She was a very well-behaved child. Physically, she seemed fine. And once we started speech therapy, she started speaking and um I taught the parent strategies on what to do. And the mom said, Oh, I didn't know I had to interact with her that much as a baby because she was so well behaved. They thought if the baby's not crying, the baby's fine. So if the baby is quiet, they thought the baby was fine. Where it's like you want to interact, you want them to play, you want them to laugh, you want them to have this communication, whether it's like with just gestures or words or babbling or whatever, you want to have that interaction and play. It's really, really important.

The Types of Conversations that Stimulate Language Growth

SPEAKER_02 1:32:33

Yeah. So in that regard, what kinds of conversations are going to help stimulate language growth the most for this age group?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:41

Uh, I would say talking about their environment, right? Or like, oh, this is your nose, and you might touch their nose, or you know, pointing out a color on your shirt or a toy and having things in their visual field, right? So a lot of times when when once babies are able to kind of see, right? Because first they see black and white, and then they see shapes, and then they see actual faces and things. Um, you want to have it close to their environment so they can see it and you can talk about it, you can point things out. And then when you guys are like in a car ride, you might point out, oh, I see uh I see the sky is blue today, or it's raining, or oh, there's a big tree, or there's a bird. Um, so talk about things in their environment. And so you're learning to, or they're learning vocabulary, right? So you don't know you don't know vocabulary until you're introduced to it, right? And if you hear a word but you don't experience the word, it's gonna be more difficult for you to understand it. Right. So if you see if you hear the word ball, but you've never seen a ball, it's not gonna make sense. But once you are playing with a ball, you can talk about the ball. And what we call language bombardment, we will talk about a certain thing and expand upon what that item might be. So I'll be like, oh, like ball, blue ball. The blue ball is round. I can bounce the blue ball, I can roll the blue ball. I might be talking about this one ball, but I'm uh verbally, I'm expanding what I'm talking about. I'm giving them all these sentences to absorb about this one thing, about this one ball, right? So language bombardment is really important by giving them all of the words, descriptions, and actions about items and things, it's gonna help them understand it better and then uh hopefully be able to express it as well.

How Much Should Parents Simplify Their Language for Kids?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:45

That's awesome. It sounds to me like when you're having these conversations with this age group that language has to be simplified to some extent. So how much do you think parents should simplify their language when talking to babies?

SPEAKER_01 1:35:02

Yeah, so I think that um, you know, the baby talk is is out, right? They say don't do baby talk with kids, which I agree with. Um I think what's really important is slowing your speech down just a little bit. So I'm not gonna say like, oh, the ball is blue. I can bounce the ball, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I'm gonna say, like, oh, here's a ball. It is round, it is blue, whatever it is. So slow your speech down a little bit and think about it as as in chunks or scaffolding things. So you're gonna have maybe one word, and then you can say two to three words, and then you can build up to four to five words, and um, then you can you know talk about whatever it is, but you don't need to necessarily dumb things down. You just need to slow things down and have it be in more like manageable chunks than giving all the information at one time.

Play That Supports Language Development

SPEAKER_02 1:35:57

Yeah, and that's an important distinction that it's not dumbing the content or the information or the language down, it is just slowing down so that the brain can process it over time. And you mentioned before that that requires a great deal of patience, and you're right, and I just I think that that's an important distinction for people to know is that you're not dumbing them down or oversimplifying or anything like that. You don't need to talk to them like they have a PhD. They're not you're not doing them a disservice by talking to them like you would someone who's a full-grown adult. You are meeting them where they are and slowing down so that they can really absorb the power of language and the complexity of it all at an age appropriate, in an age-appropriate way, it sounds like. So I love that. Now, in terms of play and development, language development, we've talked a lot about words, conversation, and all of that. But is there a a type of play? You mentioned the slinky, I think, earlier as well. Is there a type of play that sort of best supports speech development, especially for kids that are not fully linguistic yet?

SPEAKER_01 1:37:10

Yeah, I would say play that is either repetitive, right? So you can do bubbles once you do, once you blow the bubbles, you need to get more soap. Or if you do like a wind up toy, you need to wind it again. Or if you do like a ball tower where you put the ball and it goes down a slide, you have to do that again. So things that are repetitive, things that can be done again and again, right? So we have also this animal pop-up toy where you push a button, you twist something, you slide something, and all these different animals pop up. Um, so it's things where they can have repetition, um, where you can have high interest and also, you know, have that interactive play between either the therapist and the the child or the parent and the child. Um, so anything that has high interest that you can repeat over and over again is really, really fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:06

That makes sense. Are there any toys or games that sort of inhibit development? Um discourage communication, I guess I could say.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:19

I would say um, I don't really think I think you can as a speech therapist, I can always adjust almost any toy to kind of fit some kind of speech goal, right? I can't think of something that'd be like, oh, I would never play with this thing. Um I would say limit the iPad or the screen time interaction. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, because when a child is just looking at a screen or watching something, sometimes, you know, parents will give the child a screen as a babysitter, right? While they go and cook dinner or whatever. I always try to do as interactive a game as possible and do it with the child. So there's there's some great apps that I love to use, and um but I always make sure that it's interactive rather than here, here is a screen and you can just do whatever you want with it. Um so I think that the iPad or tablets, they should be used with discretion and uh also TV, right? So if you're gonna be having a child watch an educational show, it becomes less educational if the parent is not there, right? It becomes more just watching a show. But if a child a parent is there, you could be commenting about, oh yeah, did you see them? They went down the slide. Or, you know, they can be commenting about um, like, oh, they're having pizza for dinner. We had pizza last night. We are eating the same, we ate the same thing, you know. So they could be the parent needs to be able to interact with the child with the device, whether it be the TV or the screen. I think that's really important and not just let the child have a free-for-all. Um you know, and my son still loves the iPad, which is great, but as much as possible, we try to have him do educational games to match his whatever YouTube time or whatever he's doing as well.

Is Having the TV on an Asset to Language Acquisition?

SPEAKER_02 1:40:25

Which is great. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Is having a TV on in the background, even if the kid isn't actually like actually watching it, is that a bad thing? Or can it be helpful, you know, just to have that TV because somebody's talking and all that?

SPEAKER_01 1:40:43

Uh I would say I mean I don't usually have a TV on unless I'm watching it. So um I think it's I don't think it would be harmful, but I don't think it would be super helpful, if that makes sense. Because they're not if they're not really engaged in it, then it just becomes white noise. And you want to make sure that interactions, uh language interactions are very meaningful. Um, so if there is just something playing in the background, if you're playing like their favorite movie or something, if you're playing, you know, some kind of Disney thing or whatever it is in the background that they just enjoy their songs or whatever, that's fine, I think. But um, if you're just playing like random things in the background, um, I don't think it is as helpful as if you were actually engaged in what they're watching at that time. Yeah, I don't think it's helpful either.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:42

I think I'm probably asking because I because I don't I never have like the TV on or anything like that. But I go to my mom's house a lot and they have that TV on all the time at like max volume, and it is so annoying to me because I am I I guess I don't know, some people say like you're a visual learner, you're auditory, you're this, you're that. If I am any of those things, I would be auditory, and having constant noise and stimulation like in through sound, is it's it's horrific for me. I absolutely hate it, and um, I I just can't see having the TV on unless you are being interactive with it, with the child benefiting anyone at any point in time. And the thing is, is that even if the kid is not totally interacting with what show is on, even if it's a cartoon, I feel like there's so much passive learning that's happening that could be good in a certain sense, but I don't trust the stuff on TV or YouTube well enough to have it just playing in the background unless I'm like fully in control, I'm putting on some soothing music or or something like that. You know, maybe it's church music, gospel, whatever, you know, something that I know is upbuilding and positive. But if it's just something random from YouTube or whatever, I I I don't I wouldn't want a child absorbing that, even in a passive sense. Um, and that probably just comes from my own sensitivity. But I don't know. Do you have any uh lingering thoughts on that that you want to share?

SPEAKER_01 1:43:25

Yeah, I think absolutely true. Like I said, it becomes this white noise, right? And they don't know what to focus on, right? So it just becomes this noise that they hear and they don't know what to tune into or what to tune out of, right? Yeah. So like at the end of my night, I always have silence as I'm getting ready for bed and doing all that because I want my brain to be shutting down and not hyper-focused about things. And sometimes when, you know, they say, especially these teenagers who have their headphones on all the time, they just require this high level of stimulation that to have silence is really difficult for them. And so to learn that, and you know, to have the ability to tolerate silence and be in silence and think and be focused on whatever's in front of you, I think is really important. And when you have too many things going on, then it's like your brain is just overstimulated and has a difficult time learning. Absolutely.

Which Matters More: The # of Words or the Quality of Interaction

SPEAKER_02 1:44:27

So I have three more questions for you. The first question is, and I think I already know the answer to this, but I just want to hear it from you is what matters more for language development, the number of words that a child hears, or the quality of the interaction? Ooh, let's see.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:42

Um I would say the quality of the interaction because from there you are building this great communication foundation. And then from there, you're gonna find that the number of words that they're able to absorb is better, right? So you don't want to give them a plethora of stimulation and words and ver vocabulary. You want the interactions to be meaningful, and that's what's gonna build that foundation for them to then understand more words later on.

How to Connect with Jeanneen Tang

SPEAKER_02 1:45:17

Makes sense. I appreciate that. That's definitely not what I thought you were gonna say, but good. Good. Okay, and then um as far as your book and where we can find you. Of course, I'm gonna send you an invitation so that you can join the Facebook group, The Gentle Year, where you can connect directly with the listeners and share things. If you want to share an excerpt or an activity or something like that, you're more than welcome to do that. But where can we find you and where can we find your book?

SPEAKER_01 1:45:45

Amazing. You can go to my website, it's called playdumbandsabotage.com. Um, you can also find me on Instagram um at you know JT808 or at play dumb and sabotage. Um, my book is on Amazon. It's on also anywhere you can find um books online or an ebook or audiobook.

The Most Important Education a Child Could Ever Receive

SPEAKER_02 1:46:06

Awesome. That's awesome. I love having it an audiobook. I'm definitely gonna have to because it just goes along with the whole message of today. That's really cool. Now, um, last and qu last and final question. I always ask the guest of the show the same question, so feel free to interpret it as you, you know, in your own way. There's no speci like specifics or anything like that. You interpret it just as you personally see it. And the question is what do you believe is the most important education that a child could ever receive?

SPEAKER_01 1:46:37

Oh, that's a good one. Um I would say that the golden rule is really important because I want my son to treat others as you know he would want to be treated, and that's how I try to live my life. And and I think learning that um the world is not about yourself, it's about what you can provide in this world, whether it's helping others or being a model for somebody else, and and every interaction that you have with people, I think is very important because it's a reflection of who you are and also an ask of like how you want to be received in the world as well. So treat others as you would like to be treated.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:27

Well, thank you for that. I really appreciate that. That is a great answer, and it's one that no one has ever said. So that's very good. That's awesome. Well, Janine, I can't thank you enough for coming on the gentle year today. If you're ever in Virginia, hit me up. If I'm in California, I'll be like, hey. Please, please. Yes, I appreciate you so much, and thank you for this invaluable information. And um, I just, you know, want to express my appreciation to you for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. You're very welcome. Before we wrap up today's episode, I want to take a moment to thank the partners who helped support the work we're doing here at The Gentle Year. Turning the Tide Tutoring helps students develop the skills that often go untaught in traditional classrooms, how to think clearly, express ideas with confidence, and communicate with depth through reading, writing, and conversation. Acting with Pippi, led by Tammy Aaron, best known for her role as Pippi Longstocking, uses acting as a tool to help kids build confidence, social awareness, and authentic self-expression in a supportive and creative environment. You can find the links to both of these programs in the show notes. And as always, thank you so much for being part of the gentle year. I'll see you in the next episode.