Mar 10 2009
A Mother’s Fear
My son will not be three years old until July, but I worry constantly about his speech development. I believe that most of this comes from my background as a former Early Childhood Special Education teacher. Deep down I know that he is still very young and he has many years to go before he needs to be completely and accurately articulate, but I can’t get these nagging thoughts out of my head. I fear that he won’t be accepted in groups or that he will be made fun of all because he may not be understood all of the time. Some of these new fears are the result of something that happened this past Sunday. He attended Sunday School at church for only the second time, the first time I attended with him. Each Sunday has new and different teacher volunteers and this Sunday’s teachers did not know his name. When they asked him what his name was, he did answer with “My name is Sam.” However, the teachers could not make out what he had said. After church, I sought out the teachers to make sure he was okay. He is the youngest to attend and this was only his second time attending. They said that he was perfect and participated in all the activities, but they couldn’t make out his name when he gave it to them. The fear sets in, again.
So, today, I am on a mission to make an alphabet and sounds book for him. I have cut out pictures of objects from magazines. I will glue them onto construction paper and make it into a book. Then, we can read the book, name the objects, and practice our sounds together. I also have the idea to make the book a fun book by rewarding him with stickers each time we practice our words.
I know that I may be over-reacting, but I feel that I need to do something to assist him in his speech development. Like I said, it’s the teacher coming out in me. I would do anything to keep him out of special education or just the public school in general.
I think most parents have concerns at some point about their child’s development. You can’t help it when you see what other kids can and can’t do. It’s good that you’re working with your son now, rather than later, whether there truly is an issue there or not (I’ve found mom and dad can decipher just about anything a child says while strangers may not be able to). My daughters receive speech therapy in preschool. I’ve never really considered them delayed in speech but the service is available so I figured why not? Their language has exploded in the last few months. While some of that is because of the work they do with the therapist, I think it’s mainly because their around other kids who don’t understand their “babytalk.”