What Are You Saying?

By Jordan Sadler, SLP

 We sat at the dining room table this morning, my family and me, enjoying breakfast together.  My almost 3-year old held up his oddly-shaped, partially-eaten bagel and chirped, "Yook, Mommy, dis yooks just yike a [cao]!"  "A cow?" I asked, trying to see a bovine in his breakfast.  "No!" he said, immediately irritated, "A [cao]!"  "Oh, a car!" I said, relieved that I had gotten it.  At this point, the child burst into loud sobs.  I am talking about from-the-gut, frustrated, no-one-understands-me sobs.  He simply could not recover.  There was to be no more guessing, no more trying to say it another way.  Leaving my untouched coffee behind (the true maternal sacrifice), I got up from my chair, made my way around the table, and knelt by my child.  All I could do was hug him and say the familiar words, "I know you're trying, sweetie...we want to know what you were saying...sometimes it's so hard," and then, "It's going to be okay, honey, it's going to be okay," and then: nothing.  In the end, I took him from his chair and held him on my lap.  He asked for a story, and listened to it as the sobs gradually subsided.  We never made it back to the table; I never knew what funny thing his bagel looked like this morning.  And I was sad about that.  Very sad.

For more than 10 years now, parents have been asking me the important question, "What can I do when my child is trying to tell me something that I don't understand?"  Each time, I've shared all the tricks I knew: "Listen carefully and try to figure it out.  If you can't, though, don't fake it - they'll know your response is not genuine", "Ask him to try showing you", "Ask him if he can say it another way, with different words", and "Be sure he always knows that you want to understand, that what he's saying is important, that you're trying."  Of course, I'd been in that position with their children as well, in our speech therapy sessions, and I knew it was really challenging.  We don't want to damage a child's self-esteem, and we're doing our best to keep frustration at a minimum whenever possible, but sometimes it is very upsetting for a child who is already working so hard to communicate with us.

Now that I have a young child of my own who came into the world with some oral motor and articulation difficulties, I know that it feels qualitatively different to a parent than it does to a therapist: sometimes, when a child is working on speech production these suggestions don't cut it - they aren't enough - and at times this struggle leaves both parent and child feeling very, very sad. 

So now I will add to my list of suggestions, "Sometimes, you just have to sit with him, hold him tight, and not say anything at all."

Comments

[kristen]

Well said. Thank you Jordan. And thank you Susan for continually giving us just a little bit more in your posts.

[Niksmom]

Oh, I cried when I read about Jordan's son's upset. I know the feeling all too well...even without the words. Thanks for the additional insights, too.

[t]

Well, My Is has articulation issues and a friend has a daughter who is deaf, but tries to speak too. I tied this and it worked me and then I told her when she could not understand her daughter to just go back to your old hangin' out in bars before kids and pretend you are intepreting a drunk friend speaking. Worked for me and my friend! we undertsand our kids most of time and a lot of other kids with speech issues!!! :)

[kristi]

I go thru the same thing with my son. It is hard! But I do the same thing, I just try to comfort him. That's all you can do.