My four-year-old has a speech
delay. Anyone who know us, knows
this. Jack’s speech can’t be hidden,
partially because for an unintelligible kid, he sure talks a lot. But as soon as he starts talking, people
realize they can’t understand him. So of
course, they look to me to translate. I
usually can, and do, but there are times when even I (with my Mommy
superpowers) can’t understand him. Those
are the times that break my heart.So lately, I’ve been working really hard on doing speech development activities at home. He is in speech therapy, but once a week for 30 minutes is a drop in the barrel, so I find myself working harder and harder at designing games we can play together. My cousin, a speech language pathologist, mentioned that he may have trouble with phonological awareness. So I’ve been educating myself on what exactly that means.
In that research, I came across this little snippet:
Acquiring phonemic awareness is important because it is the foundation for spelling and word recognition skills. Phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of how well children will learn to read during the first two years of school instruction.
I read that and immediately felt freaked out that Jack will always struggle with words, sounds, and by extension, reading. I took off my glasses, closed my eyes and rubbed my fingers over the bridge of my nose. I took a deep breath and told myself that even if he does struggle to read, it’s okay. It doesn’t make him stupid or slow. It just means he has challenges. And I feel equipped to help him meet those challenges.
And then, suddenly, I felt thankful
that I’ve been given this awesome kid who forces me to raise my game as a
parent. Sure, I could wish for
everything to be easy, but that’s not Jack.
And he is going to help me learn so much about the world and
myself. Is that corny? Maybe, but it feels a lot better to embrace him
as a whole child rather than constantly trying to address speech as a separate
problem. It’s not a problem…he’s not defective…he
just has to work harder than a lot of other people to reach the same goal.
Hopefully that’s a lesson he brings
into the future with him. After all,
there’s nothing wrong with a little hard work, right?
And while I know all that is true,
and I know he’ll speak properly someday, when I start reading articles that
begin with “Does your child have a speech delay?” I nearly start crying. Every.Time.
Even though I know the answer and have known it for nearly 3 years. I still want to cry every time I start at the
beginning of new reading materials on how to approach a speech delay.
I think it’s why I often skip right
over the beginning stuff and plow into the “what to do about it”
materials. If I can DO things, I don’t
have to feel helpless. And lately, I
want to DO everything I see that applies to speech therapy.
