My daughter has a lisp.
And she's at the age and stage in her life where she's becoming self conscious about it. When she says words with the letters J or S, her tongue sticks out. You can imagine the frustration that comes when people ask her her name.
Jenna Stilling is not the easiest name for her to say. Jenna sounds more like Zenna.
Once, while at a nail salon, the women painting Jenna's nails asked what her name was, and Jenna looked down to the floor and said, "I don't know."
Today, while standing in line for a carousel ride, a little girl asked Jenna her name. Jenna looked at Russ and said, "You tell her."
Both times nearly broke my heart.
Jenna is in speech therapy at her school and we have (speech) drills we practice twice a day. What I hate through all of this, though, is that she seems to be embarrassed. I never want my daughter to feel different than any other child.
Different -- if it's being her own person, and standing up for what she believes in, then that's fine.
But different -- meaning she sounds different ... well, that can hurt, especially when children look at her like they don't understand what she's saying.
And especially when Jenna understands that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Oh, that would just break my heart too. Did you see my blog of Ava being embarrassed for the first time? That is not one of those firsts you look forward to your child experiencing.
You are doing the best thing for her with early intervention to correct it. It is at a point where others aren't making fun of her. KWIM
BTW, Ava still calls herself Aw-va. We can not get her to say the long A with her name for anything. She doesn't care though. :P
Bless her heart!
If I could work with her, believe me I would!
Love to all of you ...
{{Hugs}} That breaks my heart to think of her being embarrassed.
So far Emma hasn't been teased about her speech issues. I have a feeling it will be coming soon, though. She has a hard time saying the S sound at a beginning of a word, but only if the S is followed by a consonant - like speech, snack, school, special, etc. I always have to tell people what she's saying. I'm sure she's going to pick up on that soon.
Post a Comment