R.A.V.E. Part 1 (Rapidly Active Verbal Engagement)
Moms & Dads: Dr Dad Will Help You Teach Your to Child Learn Faster and More Efficiently!
There is NO shame in Wanting the Best for Your Kids!
I bet secretly you feel that your children can DO EVEN BETTER? You probably want to do everything in your parental powers to give your kids “the edge.” (Well maybe not to the Lori Loughlin extent)
Maybe you’re afraid of the backlash from friends & family? “Stop pushing the kids so hard.” “Back in the day, children just played and look how great you turned out.” Don’t want to be the next Tiger Mom?!
Bring out the Lion Dad?!
NOBODY likes to be judged. Since Tiger Moms have negative stereotypes, I’m roaring out as a Lion Dad to take your parenting game to the next level!
Spend just 10-15 minutes reading this post and you will save hours upon hours of time that could be better spent with your kids. Read on and see if any of these tips and hacks can improve your children’s current and future success!
Turning Back Time: Dr Dad’s Origin Story
Let’s roll back the time machine going backward in time: Howard Young, MD currently works full time as primary care doctor & overtime as loving father and husband. Graduated Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, near perfect SAT scores, valedictorian. Sounds great so far right? Here’s where things get interesting really, really interesting:
Life didn’t start out that great. Born in Taiwan, we immigrated when I was 4 years old & our family of four (brother included) crammed into a room 12×10 feet. We were dirt poor! Sadly, I didn’t see much of my dad growing up because he left at the crack of dawn before anybody was awake & didn’t get home until we were getting ready for bed.
Struggling financially, my father tried everything—from Avon door to door sales to used car sales to real estate agent. We never had much, but he made sure all of our true needs were met (food, shelter, clothing). I’m proud of all that he did for the family & I’m super glad that he now has time to be an awesome grandfather since he missed out on the joys of fatherhood to take care of us.
As an immigrant family, English was tough! At the kindergarten parent-teacher meeting, my mom found out that I barely spoke a word of English and was put in the “special needs” or slow class. Was this our destiny? Not a chance. My mom, who didn’t speak English at the time, went out and taught herself English through good-old phonics. She learned how to teach and was essentially my teacher for the next few years until I finally caught up. Tiger Mom? No, how about THANK YOU MOM! I would not be where I am today without the motivation and inspiration from my parents!
Lesson 1: Learn a New Language!
Do you remember taking a foreign language class in high school? Of course you do. As parents, we’ve all been there. There are TWO CRITICAL ELEMENTS to my Rapidly Active Verbal Expansion. PHONICS still reign supreme followed in short order by VOCABULARY BUILDING.
PHONICS & PHONEMIC AWARENESS: WHAT YOU MUST KNOW!
Don’t waste your time with the ABC’s! Trust me on this as we wasted close to a year trying to get our toddler to learn the ABC letters. Save yourself time and teach them the actual sounds that the letter makes instead. This will help build, what is known in speech therapy and educational circles, “phonemic awareness.” https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/understanding-phonics/
5 Quick & Easy Hacks and Tips to Get Started
Tip #1: Focus on SOUNDS of the letters, especially lower case letters first! Most people start with uppercase letters & focus on the actual letters instead of the sounds. Think about this. Just reading this post, you can see that the majority of what you are reading is lower case letters. That’s why you start there, makes sense right?
Tip #2: VOWELS are a top priority as they are in virtually every word.
Tip #3: Stress the importance of real-life application. When you go with your kids to Target, HomeGoods, point to the words and the sounds of the letters. When you give them snacks from a box or package, pick some words in big print.
When your child gets a new toy, they just want to rip it open, don’t they. Well, hold on—two teaching opportunities. First, you can show them the large print on the box or toy and “read” it with them. Second, by making them wait, you are developing self control and delayed gratification, both of which will lead to improved future success as adults. Here is an article from Psychologist James Clear: https://jamesclear.com/delayed-gratification
If you haven’t heard of the famous Marshmallow Experiment, spend 5 minutes and check out this fascinating psychological experiment on delayed gratification, pretty cool!
Tip #4: Don’t Wait: Seek Help From Speech Therapist ASAP! Our child said “mama” at 8 months, then nothing else for the next 6 months. The pediatricians, family members and friends all said “don’t worry, he’ll grow out of it and boys take longer to speak.” He also covered his ears frequently even when there was no loud noise. Autism?!
We could have easily waited until our son was 4 or 5 years old but we actively sought help. It was the father’s side of me, and not the doctor’s side of me, that made my wife and I actively seek help. Trust your maternal and paternal instinct & your gut. If your insurance won’t cover assessment by a speech therapist, then either pay for it if you have the resources or push back and appeal until your child is thoroughly evaluated—be your child’s health and language advocate.
Understood.org is a collective website for 15 nonprofit organizations that have united to help parents who have any concern with their child’s learning & attention issues. Here is one pertinent article: https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/child-learning-disabilities/issues-involving-spoken-language/why-is-my-child-having-trouble-pronouncing-words
Long story short, our child was diagnosed with language delay but no autism by an amazing speech therapist. First order of business was figuring out why he couldn’t speak: we were advised on different techniques to strengthen his oral and tongue muscles, such as drinking through straws, blowing bubbles. She used tongue depressors & placed her gloved fingers into his mouth to demonstrate how to make particular sounds he was struggling with. She helped him stop drooling by having him purse his lips to make a kiss whenever he drooled
Our insurance only gave us 30 minute sessions twice a month so we made sure that our speech therapist showed us what we could do to help him at home. We asked the speech therapist for homework, for us, the parents! At our last visit to his pediatrician, he was blown away and put “highly verbal” in his assessment for his forms. In about a year’s time, he went from language delay to about 6-12 months AHEAD of other kids his age! Had we waited until he was 3 or 4 years old, he would have been BEHIND other kids by 1-2 years in language development instead. Bottom line: seek help and make sure to get set up with a speech therapist ASAP! (If you are in Los Angeles area, email me at [email protected] and I will provide you information and reference to our son’s speech therapist. She is awesome!)
Tip#5 Do you “Speak Well” or “Speak Good” at Home? Do you want your child to say please, may I, and thank you as part of her everyday speech? Would you want others to cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze and keep their mouths closed when they chew food? Sounds pretty reasonable for adults. Our son says “May I…” and “Please” and “Thank You” and covers up when he sneezes or coughs. The same thing applies to using slang phrases or words you might find in “urban dictionary“. You might know how to speak correct grammar but choose not to do so except at work.
Children are always listening. They learn passively by hearing how you speak, and you are their #1 role model. Cut out any swear words, use more advanced or difficult words once your kids know the easier basic words, use correct grammar, and pronounce your words slowly and clearly so they can learn how to say it correctly.
Otherwise, you can just wait several more years for the teacher or their classmates to eventually help them get it right. Unfortunately, some children never do! Start speaking to your kids with the best possible English grammar and pronunciation you can muster. Remember, to the outside world, your kids are a reflection of you and that is how you are perceived by others, even family. Start “speaking well” instead of “speaking good” today!
