In this episode of EPIC Begins with 1 Step Forward, Zander Sprague welcomes speech-language pathologist Jeaneen Tang to discuss her groundbreaking book, Play Dumb and Sabotage. Jeaneen shares her personal journey as a parent of a disabled child and offers valuable tips for parents on fostering language skills in young children. Learn practical strategies for early intervention, mindful communication, and empowering your kids to thrive. From making small and consistent choices to understanding when professional support is needed, Jeaneen provides actionable tips to empower children and create lasting impact.
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Play Dumb And Sabotage: Unlocking Language Skills In Kids With Jeaneen Tang
Introducing Jeaneen Tang, Speech-Language Pathologist
In this episode, I am joined by Jeaneen Tang. Jeaneen, tell us who you are and what you do.
Thank you for having me. I am Jeaneen Tang. I’m a speech-language pathologist. I’ve been doing speech therapy for many years. I have a son. He’s a true tween. Unfortunately, when he was thirteen months old, he had a fall from our bed and became a disabled child. He had a brain injury and had a stroke a few days later. He doesn’t use his right arm or hand. He’s such a wonderful kid though. It’s added so much to my life as a parent and also as a therapist.
Before I had him, I was a therapist without a child. I had one point of view on how therapy should be done and how kids should be raised. After I had my son, before his accident, I was a parent and I could understand all of the turmoil that parents go through, all the struggles, and all the tiredness. After he became disabled, I have a 360 view of being a parent, also a therapist, and a parent of a disabled child. I can have greater empathy. I want to create a greater impact in the world, teach people strategies that they could do every day, and hopefully change the landscape of children who need speech therapy in the future.
Clearly, you’re on this epic journey with your son and the work that you’re doing. What do you think are some of the important things for parents or people who have children who may need some speech therapy or language development?
There are so many kids who need early intervention speech therapy. That’s between 0 and 3 years old. A lot of parents are hopeful that their child will start speaking. I would encourage parents that if you do feel there’s any kind of delay, you’re a pediatrician, or anybody mentions, and your child might need speech therapy, don’t be afraid to reach out to an educator or your local agency that has early intervention.
The waiting part and holding off on therapy is what’s going to hurt the child in the end. You don’t want to prolong the delay. You want to address it as soon as possible. If there’s anything that you can do, it is to get help right away. Don’t feel that you’re a bad parent because your child is not speaking, you’re not doing something correctly, or your ego is in the way of helping your child. You are not a specialist but you can learn things from a specialist like myself. You’re not trained in that special strategy but you can learn it easily by learning it from someone like myself or getting additional training and stuff.
It’s not anything that you were innately born to do. You weren’t innately born to teach your child how to speak and develop naturally. Some people have this intuitive way of working with kids but most people aren’t, especially if it’s your first child. There’s no harm in getting help. Take away that ego part of, “I can do it better than anybody else because that’s my child.” That gets in the way of getting the help. Don’t be afraid of getting help.
Connection Between Hearing And Physical Development
There are things I’ll speak about personally on this. My older daughter was born with a partial unilateral hearing loss. You’d never know. She did have early intervention speech therapy. They came in and the speech therapist said, “You don’t need me. She’s doing great. The speeches is good.” My younger daughter had bad ear infections. We weren’t aware of how backed up her ears were.
However, since we’d done ear tubes with my older daughter, we’re like, “Let’s make sure.” We were all plugged into audiology and stuff because of my older daughter. My younger daughter wasn’t crawling so much. She was doing the sit, scoot, and stuff. We couldn’t figure out why. We brought her in and they’re like, “She’s got a lot of fluid behind her eardrums. We have to do tubes.” We did tubes.
Honestly, within two days of her having that operation, she started to crawl on her hands and knees. I don’t want to say language delay because it wasn’t but we figured out that her ears were all stopped up. There were certain sounds that she didn’t know because she couldn’t hear them. She had some speech therapy. You’re exactly right. Take your ego out of it.
We don’t have any problems in other parts of our life. If you need to change the oil on your car, you could do it but we tend to go to Jiffy Lube or SpeeDee Oil Change. Not because we can’t do it but they know what they’re doing and it happens a lot faster. The same is true with our children. There are experts who can help you and probably do it a lot better and faster than you can.
They can train you better. They can give you, not easy fixes, but that toolbox that you can utilize in your home and the community and carry over those therapy strategies that they’re doing in the sessions.
That is an important part. As a parent, you’re part of this team. It’s great that you’re reaching out and your child is getting therapy but you spend a heck of a lot more time with your child. You do need to know those tools and help reinforce those tools with your children so that they do advance. Like anything, if I only do something one hour a week, my progress is going to be slow.
It’s interesting with your younger daughter that the physical aspect was also impacted by the ears but think about our balance. In the inner ear, we have those canals that go and determine our balance. We have vertical or not or we know where we are in space. That’s interesting that her physical aspect improved so much more by taking those tubes in.
It’s things that you realize afterward that seem so very obvious. One of them was the reason that she wasn’t crawling on her hands and knees is it was making her dizzy. She didn’t say that because she was only one or on her first birthday but there were milestones that we were aware she wasn’t quite hitting. We are all dynamic human beings. Some children start to learn to walk at seven months. Some are a year.
If it’s longer, the pediatrician will tell you certain windows that if we haven’t hit that milestone, we need to look at it. Just because your neighbor’s friend or brother’s sister’s child does something before your child doesn’t mean that they’re delayed. Everyone’s on their own schedule. With my younger daughter, we looked back and did talk to the doctors and they said, “We would hypothesize that the reason that she was not crawling was because when she tried to do it, it threw her off.” It makes sense.
The hearing loss is probably worse with that fluid in her ears than your other daughter. Your older daughter could hear in one ear at least. Your younger daughter couldn’t hear in both ears. Everything was so muddled. That high frequency like the S’s and all those other sounds are completely lost.
Understanding The “Play Dumb and Sabotage” Parenting Technique
Initially, there were some sounds that she had a hard time making because she hadn’t heard them and stopped. That’s interesting. I see over your shoulder that you’ve written a book. Play Dumb & Sabotage does not sound great. As a parent, I’m like, “What?” Tell me about it.
My mom was very much against Play Dumb & Sabotage. She’s like, “It should be Play Ignorant and I’m not sure what else.” I’m like, “No, mom. It’s Play Dumb & Sabotage.” It’s a term for many years as a speech therapist. As parents, caregivers, and educators, we over-anticipate what a child might need or want. A great example is the new parent who wants to make sure their child is dry, fed, warm, and has all these toys, and that they’re never crying. They’re like, “I’m a great parent because I know what my child needs and wants.”
The child doesn’t have to communicate or indicate that there’s a need or want because they’re being tended to and why have to communicate when everything’s going to happen. A mother or a father knows that gibberish. “They want this and that.” They know each little gibberish. Before the child even has to do anything else, the parent is providing that for the child.
Kids love it when they are smarter than us. Kids love to be smarter. When kids are a little bit older, and I might be looking at a picture book, they’re not so engaged but I want them to have some more play and interaction. I might point to a dog and be like, “Does a dog say Baba?” Usually, they’re like, “What? No.” I might say, “This is a pencil. Am I going to eat it? This is a doll. Am I going to wear it?” Do something absurd and play dumb because then it gets them to interact a little bit more.
Kids love to play when they are smarter than us.
The sabotage part is creating opportunities to practice these language things. Like in a sport, if you’re doing basketball and free throws, you’re not just going to shoot a free throw every now and then. You’re going to practice them so you get good at them. Sabotage at snack time is super simple. Usually, at snack time, a parent might give a child a whole bowl of goldfish. That’s what the child wants. They want the goldfish. Here’s a whole bowl.
A great way to sabotage is by giving them a couple of pieces of goldfish and having the bowl in sight but out of reach. Even if they gibberish, you can model for them, “Do you want more?” You can do a simple sign or word. Hopefully, that child learns to imitate and progress from there. You give them a couple more goldfish and have more of that back-and-forth opportunity. Another thing could be having a favorite toy in sight but out of reach. They need to indicate that they want it using your words.
I would love to say that I wasn’t that first parent who was like, “Here’s what you want.” I did learn as a parent that I know you have the words, even when it’s taking time. Sometimes it is a battle of will. I will gibberish until I get what I want. You as a parent have to go, “No, I know you have the words. You can tell me what you want.”
You have to be more stubborn than they are.
We are smarter than them.
Importance Of Choice In Child Development And Communication
You have to be able to hold out and be like, “Nope.” When I’m rushing out of the house, I’m like, “We’re grabbing these things and we’re going.” If there is a time when you can offer choices like when I would get my son dressed in the morning, I’d be like, “Do you want the red shirt or the green shirt?” He can hear the vocabulary. Even if he can’t say it, he’s looking at one of them and I’m like, “Oh, the red shirt. I love red. Red is the color of apples.” You can also expand on that vocabulary.
One thing I would tell parents in one of the chapters I have is don’t ask a yes-no question unless you’re willing to honor the no. There are so many times we ask kids, “Are you ready to work? Are you ready to clean up? Are you ready to have dinner? Are you ready to do your homework?” They’ll say no or whatever. We can’t be like, “You’re going to do it anyway, right?” If they’re saying no, then we need to honor that.
Parents must never ask a yes-or-no question unless they are willing to honor the no.
One thing to get around that would be offering choices. I might ask my son, “We’re going to get ready for bed. Do you want to brush your teeth first or change into pajamas first?” One thing with him is, “Do you want to cut your nails?” He’ll be like, “No.” I’m like, “We’re going to cut your nails. Do you want to do it tonight or tomorrow night?” He can make a choice.
As a mental health professional, choice is so important, especially for children who feel like as they’re getting older, they don’t have control over what’s going on. I certainly know things not to say. Don’t ask your kids what they want for dinner. Give them a choice. Would you like chicken nuggets or macaroni and cheese? You’ve given them a choice they can utilize their words to type. I’m not a short-order cook. I’m not like, “Whatever you want under the sun.” One person wants chicken nuggets. Another one wants mac and cheese or says, “I want pancakes.”
You can go down that rabbit hole. It’s like, “What do you want for dinner? Do you want a hot dog?” “No.” “Do you want pizza?” “No.” “Do you want a hamburger?” “No.” If you give them choices, then they have two different things to pick from. Hopefully, they pick one of them and like one of them.
Psychological Impact Of Anticipating A Child’s Needs
Even if you go, “Those are your choices. I’m sorry. Here’s what’s on offer for you.” You’re right. I do think that when children are smaller and they’re learning to talk, we do want to try and fulfill. We do over anticipate like, “I know what you want.” That honestly is, from a psychological standpoint, a conditioned response to a conditioned stimulus.
When you have your baby and it comes home, it can’t communicate other than crying so you figure out what all of that means. You have let’s say a whole 9 months to 1 year of trying to interpret what the sound means and what they want. They start to have language and we have to break ourselves off, “I no longer need to do this.” What suggestions do you have for parents? They’re like, “I spent a year taking care of this nonverbal child, listening to the sounds, and trying to interpret what the cry meant.”
For those first nine months when they don’t have any real words, they’re absorbing everything or maybe doing some visual or auditory tracking. That’s when you want to do vocal play with them. You want to get close to them. They want to look at them in their face. You want to touch their face. You want them to touch your face and have all these vocal sounds that they want to hopefully imitate.
As they’re getting to have some words or being able to even reach out to grab something, you want to start offering those choices so they can hear and see the vocabulary and then provide simple expressive language about what that item is. I was like, “Do you want the rattle or the ball,” and they reached for one of them, “Oh, ball. It’s round.” They can have it. You can talk about it a little bit.
Do that kind of stuff and then work up to adding simple things like the snack, giving a little bit here and there, giving a little milk or juice at a time so that the child can indicate. You want them to start to indicate whether it’s through reaching or looking, and then slowly building that up to words, sounds, and other things like that, and then up to sentences eventually.
The subtitle of my book is Mindfully Under-Anticipating The Child’s Need and Create Opportunities to Practice Language. You’ve already learned to over-anticipate because you’re a great parent. It takes more work to mindfully under-anticipate, knowing what they need and being like, “I’m going to not provide that right now because I want them to practice and interact with their environment.” It becomes more of a struggle on your part because you’re like, “I have to hold back but I know it’s more helpful for the child.”
I’m smiling because I still remember those feelings and stuff. I’m torturing my child. The other thing to keep in mind is these beautiful, wonderful little beings are ed-based, meaning it’s all about what they want right now. Believe it or not, they can wait. They are not going to expire without a full bowl of goldfish or a full sippy cup of juice, milk, water, or whatever.
With a lot of kids, the parents don’t understand that the kids can wait or that they want to provide everything that the child might need at that moment, that the child doesn’t learn to wait or doesn’t learn patience.
Late gratification.
The child gets upset and then the parents react right away and think that they need to console or provide something right away. It becomes the cycle of behavior. The child is controlling the parent and it becomes like, “We need to intervene as a school.” I work in a preschool with some kids. The school has to be like, “No, this is what you need to be doing because this behavior in the school is not appropriate.”
My girlfriend does early intervention special ed. Her population, not exclusively, but tends to be on the spectrum. She’s got three-year-olds who have been diagnosed and she’s working with them. All the stuff you’re talking about like the language, she’s super good at, “I don’t understand. Use your word or a symbol of what it is that you want.” She’s very patient. She’s like, “Squawked at me all day and upset. I know that they have the word.”
She’s working with whatever their limitations are, the non-verbal. There are some of them who are at a much lower cognitive level than their actual biological age but everyone has some skills. That gratification, I don’t know about you but I certainly heard in the car, “I’m so thirsty.” We’re five minutes from home. I’m like, “I’ll get you water in five minutes.” “No, I need water.” “No, you’re okay.” I’m older. I didn’t have sippy cups and water bottles. We have the most well-hydrated population in the world. I certainly wasn’t being asked if I needed water.
Differentiating Between Crying Due To Pain And Crying For Wants
They have five different sippy cups or water bottles and all this stuff. We’re going back to the abilities of different kids. Every child has a different level of skill. One of the chapters I have is no child’s ever died of crying, at least as far as we know. Parents don’t want kids to cry. I understand that. I don’t want to hear my child cry but there is a difference between a child crying because they’re hurt and there’s a child crying because they’re not getting something that they want. There’s the ability to communicate and not to communicate. There’s this gray area or this range that you can stretch. You would never ask a child who cannot walk to run or who’s nonverbal to speak in sentences but you might ask them to babble or imitate a sign or part of a word or something.
There is a difference between a child crying because they are hurt and because they are not getting something they want.
If you have PECS, which are Picture Exchange Communication Systems, point to what you want. “You want a goldfish. Okay.” They get the reward because they communicate it.
If you have a child who is able to do a certain skill but doesn’t want to do it, that’s when you become the educator, person, or parent who is a little bit more stubborn than they are because you know that they’re able to do something. It’s not because they’re not able to do it. That’s the line where it’s okay if a child cries. One example is my niece. When she was two and a half, she could feed herself but she wanted my brother to feed her.
It was a peanut butter jelly sandwich. She cut it into these tiny little squares. She could pick up and feed herself but she wanted him to feed her and he was in a rush. He had to go to do some errands. I could tell that he needed to get out of the house. I’m like, “I don’t have to go anywhere. I’ll stay with her.” He’s like, “Okay.” He left and I said, “You’re going to feed yourself.” She was like, “No.” I was like, “Go sit in the corner. When you’re ready, you can come back.” After she was ready, she came back. I go, “Feed yourself.”
We did this back and forth for a while. I always say, “This is the day I broke you.” Eventually, she did come back and feed herself. She was completely fine. That’s one example of where she had the ability to do something. She just didn’t want to do it. That’s when I say it’s okay for a child to cry. If she cries and gets her way, then she’s going to cry and get her way another time.
As parents, what we want to do is reinforce the positive behavior. For example, indicating that you want more, then you get more milk. If you squawk at me, play dumb. “I don’t understand. What is it? I know that you can tell me. You can communicate with me. What do you want?” You can lead them a little. I agree that sometimes it’s a battle of wills but it’s mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. Keep in mind that being ed-based creatures, I don’t know if I should say this but I’m trying to think of a good way, we don’t negotiate with ed-based creatures.
Another way to play dumb. Sometimes my son will hand me his water bottle or be like, “Mom, here.” I go, “Thank you for your water bottle. That’s nice.” If a kid says, “Milk,” I’m like, “I love milk. I love to drink milk. I’m thirsty. I think I’m going to have some milk. Did you want some milk?” They nod yes. “Yes, I want some milk.” I know that they can say a longer sentence. It’s fun to play dumb. It frustrates the kids sometimes but at the same time, it’s like, “That’s an appropriate way to ask when you say milk. The appropriate way to ask is by making a request using a sentence or a question.” When you play dumb, it’s almost a natural way to get them to that point.
When parents play dumb with their kids, it is almost a natural way to get them to do what you want.
Jeaneen, this has been a fascinating conversation. I’ve so enjoyed it. How can people get a hold of you? How can they find your book?
Connecting With Jeaneen And Finding Her Book
The easiest way is to go to my website. It’s PlayDumbAndSabotage.com. There’s a link for my book there. They can also reach out to me if they want to do a virtual or in-person training or have me as a speaker. It’ll be amazing to spread the word. We could decrease the number of kids who need early intervention speech therapy if we had more parent and educator training early on.
There’s always going to be those kids who are on the spectrum or have an actual delay that needs speech therapy. I would love to be able to address a lot of these normal developing kids who are physically and intellectually sound. They’re just late talkers because these parents are over-anticipating. This is a book that could help every child, whether they have a disability or not.
Goal of Reducing the Need for Early Intervention Speech Therapy
It’s a great resource for parents and educators. Thank you so much for writing.
Thank you for having me.
No problem. I want to remind my audience that if you’re ready to begin your epic journey, go to EpicBegins.com. If you live in the San Francisco Bay area and would like to be a guest, I have a brand new TV show starting in 2025 and I am looking for guests. As always, remember, epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
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About Jeaneen Tang
Jeaneen Tang is a speech-language pathologist with over 20 years of experience working with early intervention (0-3 years old) to the elderly. She specializes in early language development and has a passion for training parents, caregivers, and other educators on how to best to address the needs of young children with learning to understand and express themselves. Her goal is to shake up how we approach language development and to decrease the number of children need speech therapy.