Stutter

I feel so much better today that I did yesterday. Our Church held its semi-annual General Conference and it lifted the dark gloomy clouds that were surrounding me.

But as amazing as it was that's not what I wanted to write about tonight-

I wanted to write about how amazing it is that as parents we seem to have a blind spot for our children. (Actually its probably good otherwise we might go crazy!) But it is always so easy to recognise a red flag in children that are not our own but for our own children we seem to dismiss them as cute or part of their personality. I had one of these blind spot wake up calls these last 2 weeks.

Davis stutters.

Its not horrible and I have noticed it before but I always just dismissed it as his mind going faster than his mouth, plus it was cute! And maybe that's how stuttering starts out - I don't know, I haven't had time to do a lot of research. Either way in the last two weeks it has definitely seemed to get worse, as in 8-10 repetitions and its happening at least once a hour. It usually is when he is excited or frustrated but that is very common for kids who stutter from what Ive been told.

Our good friend Elaine is a Speech/language pathologist and Ive wanted to have her listen to him and today while eating lunch Davis gave her a good display of his stuttering abilities. When I asked her about it later she said she thinks he definitely needs to be evaluated and get some therapy.

Tomorrow I'm going to make an appointment for the evaluation. I'm hoping we can get the ball rolling quickly so that I can some techniques to help him before summer starts. I see how quickly it has gotten worse and don't want to let it go long enough that some of the secondary behaviors start to emerge (long blinking and ticks).

It makes me feel better that we have decided to hold him from starting Kindergarten next year. He is such a tender and special boy. There is something about Davis that turns me to butter. Maybe its because he has so much of his Daddy in him.

I tell you one thing - he makes stuttering look gooooood!