An Ordinary Mom's Musings

Do you ever find yourself translating your small child’s words to others because their articulation hasn’t developed enough?

When my children were small, I spent a lot of time translating their words for others. Both of my children spent time in speech therapy. My son spent years there.

When he was 3, I took him to a speech therapist for the first time to have him evaluated. I was told he was a little bit behind, but he really didn’t need speech yet. They wanted to wait until he was a little older and his speech issues more pronounced. (Sometimes I think the speech therapy profession is a little behind on the “early intervention” train.)

At the age of 3, not only could no one outside our immediate family understand him, but about 75% of the time I couldn’t understand him. And as his mother, that is a problem.

3-year-old children need to be able to tell you what they want.

I pushed the speech therapist to agree to start my child in speech therapy and I’m glad I did. (I grew up as an oldest child of a very large family, so I do know how to press my point.) We could have waited for him to fall further behind in his speech. Or we could have skipped the hour or two we spent at speech therapy each week and played instead. But, would that have really been best for him? Or was it better that he learned how to better pronounce his words? So that I could then help him with what he wanted and needed?

Our son spent a lot of time screaming at this stage of his life. I didn’t know what he wanted or was asking for. The first tool the speech therapist taught me, was to mirror back to him what I thought he was saying. This gave him a chance to answer with a yes or no, or a shake of the head. I spent a lot of years mirroring back to him. A lot of time I spent guessing as to what he might be saying. It was hard, frustrating, and slow going.

A couple months ago, I discovered that all that training trying to figure out what my son was saying had prepared me for something unexpected.

I was sitting in my college class “Death, Dying and Bereavement” one day. My Professor couldn’t understand what a student from Japan was trying to say. My skills of listening carefully to what was being said and translating it into understanding, suddenly became valuable again. I was able to “translate” for my Professor and fellow classmate what the other was trying to say, not only that day, but frequently throughout the quarter.

Sometimes Having A Child With Special Needs Pays Off Click To Tweet

I would never have thought that all that time listening carefully (and frequently impatiently) to my son try to say what he wanted, would come in handy trying to assist someone else with communicating in their own broken English.

Special needs and the disabilities we deal with aren't easy. They aren't fun and games. But sometimes, it teaches us something, it prepares us for something else. And in those cases, I can't help but be grateful. Read more! Click To Tweet