Speech Pathology

            A while back, we had Adriana in the doctor about the whole pooping thing. That seems to have cleared up nicely. Our magical dosage was not 17g of PEG, it was 8g. Things have been sailing along for her these past few weeks and she is starting to amass my herd of My Little Pony. At the same time, the doctor had made note about her adenoids. The connection was made that her adenoids may be causing a lisp. Which brings me to last Friday.

            I had to go to one of the health unit offices to complete a training session with other parents who have children with similar issues. There were nine of us plus a Speech Pathologist around a board room. None of the parents in the room looked overly chipper about being there to put their child’s faults on display to strangers. I don’t view her lisp as a flaw, I think of it as another issue to be taken care of to ensure that she can be understood in school and also so that her loyal subjects will understand her commands when she takes over the world (and hopefully bans the tails on cocktail shrimp).

            So, there we were. In a cheery room with peach paint on the walls and dangling bobbles on the ceiling. The temperature was set to 5000 degrees. Or maybe it was just me having a hormonal moment. The instructor pathologist began by asking us what, specifically, our children were having difficulties with. She pointed to the guy sitting to my right to start. He ran off a laundry list of consonants and vowels that his little one was stumbling over. Coincidentally, mine had the same problems with all of the same sounds. Then she pointed at me.

            “Her name is Adriana and well, she has all of those,” I pointed to the last guy, “plus she has a tendency to change letters in words when she’s pronouncing them.”

            “OK, can you give me an example,” the pathologist was starting to dig.

            “Hmmm, well sometimes she mispronounces words, like...” I was starting to panic. Like what? What is she having issues with? Why is this so hard? Right! I just finished writing exams yesterday. I left my brain on campus.

            An awkward silence was hanging over the boardroom table while my inner dialogue ran amok. “Sometimes she switches the letters when she is saying the word Percy.”

            “Oh, what does she switch them to?”

            “U and S.”

            “Um hum, OK, so what does she say instead of Percy?” She was really leaning forward, intent on what I was about to say. Another pregnant pause.

            “Pussy. She says pussy.” There it was. My child’s speech eccentricity in all of its glory. I could’ve just said she has a lisp. I could’ve explained the theory of the enlarged adenoids pushing her little tongue forward, making it hard to pronounce words like lips without changing it to whips. But no. My exam addled brain went straight for the gutter.

            But in that same moment, laughter erupted from my cohort. It wasn’t the kind of laughter one would hear on a playground from a cluster of bullies. It was relief. Relief that they weren’t alone, that they could still laugh at their situation or more specifically one like theirs. As the colour in my face rose to what I would imagine was a lively scarlet, the introductions continued, but not before the pathologist offered up her opinion.

            “Oh wow, OK. Well, that’s why you’re here and we’ll help to get her to say Percy in no time,” she was oozing professionalism.

            The rest of the session was informative and brought to light such things as auditory discrimination and auditory bombardment. The other parents, now entirely relaxed shared their stories openly. The best part of all this speech stuff is that it only takes five little minutes of practice per day. We’ve had one session with another speech pathologist and I feel like this is going to be a pretty easy fix. But then again, when your kid has been known to shit all over the place everything else seems that much easier.