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When what you’re doing might not be enough
By ella | August 23, 2007
William is my boisterous four year old. He is in many ways still my baby: not wanting to leave me when he goes to preschool, still sucking his fingers and unable to leave his muzzy comforter at home, still needing cuddles. But in many other ways he is so obviously not a baby: he is as tall as his five and a half year old brother, as fast, legs like a colt, already writing and beginning to read.
But he can’t talk properly. At four and a quarter years old.
He should be starting ‘big’ school in two weeks, but we elected to keep him on at preschool for this year until we have made longer term plans for both him and his older brother about schooling. I’m thankful because the thought of him struggling to be understood in a class of thirty noisy children would be filling me with dread.
He has been in speech therapy since he was two. His vocabulary is probably average. His understanding is good. But his pronunciation is terrible, to the point where he is unintelligible to most people outside the family. I’ve been busy over the last year and I tried not to think about his speech delay too much, figuring it would sort itself out as he approached school age if we did our speech therapy exercises. But the truth is, he is not making progress.
I sometimes wonder if part of his unhappiness at school is because his teacher doesn’t understand what he is trying to say. Because, you know, that would be pretty frustrating, right? I’ve asked her if she has any problem understanding him and she says his speech is not good but generally she doesn’t have a problem. But I’ve seen first hand her misunderstand what he says and had to interpret what he said for her.
It doesn’t help that he and his older brother are like twins - particularly inseparable at the moment - and have their own ’sibling language’. If we all understand him, and make extra effort to understand him, are we doing him a disservice by not making him be more coherent with us, by not making him speak more slowly?
With all my children I have tried to look at the bigger picture, to imagine them as adults when Matthew and I will look back and wonder why we ever worried about these things: Ben’s failure to thrive? Look at him now: six foot four and prop forward for the England rugby team! Harry’s immaturity? Look at him now: in the army and unlikely to be crying whenever he doesn’t get to watch television! William’s speech delay? Look at him now: a public speaker for a living!
But you know, the doubt niggles. It grows and keeps you awake at night. And as parents you know you are doing all you can but still it might, just might, not be enough.
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Categories: All Gone Wrong
Hi, I do not proclaim to be an expert on the speech issue, but I have a nephew who had the same problems with his speech at the same age as William. He is now 11 and has been diagnosed dyslexic. The people who diagnosed him mentioned that the speech problems (which righted themselves eventually) were an early warning sign of his “mixed-up” brain. Just thought I’d let you know so you could keep an eye on it.
Now I forgot what I was going to say.
I actually came here to comment on your last post, which I loved.
Hi Frally - what you mention is really interesting. Dyslexia runs in my husband’s family and we have been looking out for it but it has never occurred to me that it might affect his early speech. I’ll look into this so thanks. It’s also good to know that your nephew’s speech corrected intself.
Please feel free to comment on the previous post as I’m really curious to know whether people think staying at home is hard, even if they disagree with me - I can take it!
As you know (probably!) we are going through this with Ned though he is still in the earlier stages. I too dread him heading off to nursery and struggling to be understood. As well as being frustrating I think it must be the most demoralising thing they experience in their young lives. Ned tries soooo hard to be understood. I think he’s making progress but it’s hard to tell from this close. I guess the only consolation I’m holding onto is the fact that children do stop this. I mean - everyone says not to stress about dummies or comfort objects in that “you never see an 18 year old with them” kind of way, but it’s actually true with pronuciation. You see kids growing up with poor vocab or understanding but not pronunciation and I guess that makes me feel a little relaxed about it when I’m not stressing about it! My husband is also dyslexic - probably; he’s not been diagnosed but his lecturers at uni all said he definitely was and he most certainly can’t spell…..
OK, I am totally jumping in here b/c your link was up at my blog with the BlogHer Ads. Not knowing a THING about your situation, I just want to say, hang in there. And that you might want to look into whether the articulation issues have anything to do with Sensory Processing. My son did a Listening Program which made a big difference in his articulation. I didn’t believe it would, really, but it did. The Mozart CD was the most effective.
Please forgive me if you’ve heard this all before and I am poking in where I have no business.
lori - thanks I’ll look into this as it’s something I hadn’t considered before.