Speech

As two working special education parents, we never thought we would be faced with being on the other side of the table. Over the summer Izzy developed a stuttering out of the blue. As a 5 year old she had developed her speech normally with no irregularities. We are "very" observant parents just because we are in the field. This new change was an alarm to us that something is not right. We brushed it off at the beginning of the summer to her just thinking faster than her brain could go, but as the summer progressed and now into the school year it is definitely more than that. We have been at family and friends house's, out in public or in a restaurant, or at her school, and we hear it in all environments. She will stumble over the first word "L-l-l-l-like" or "Wh-wh-wh what are you doing?" The worst is to watch her try so hard and then get frustrated and either shut down and say she forgot or put up her hands in frustration and cry. It is heartbreaking. She is so smart and has so much to tell us but when it is so hard to form those ideas sometimes she would rather just be silent. Then on the opposite spectrum we have Rees who is really smart and has a super highly developed vocabulary. She will correct or answer her sister, because well, she's two and has no idea that her sister is struggling. Rees will probably just be that bossy younger sibling who will finish all of her sister's thoughts. So just before Christmas break we find out the results of her school district's formal testing and since we have an independent evaluation that was submitted for review and with the 6+ speech and language teachers I have talked with personally, she will qualify which is a blessing for us. She needs support. She needs to "attack those words and beat them up" as Paul and her chant every morning before school.