Did I mention that I spent a small fortune purchasing more plastic storage boxes for the play room closet after Christmas? This required a few hours spent organizing Tanner’s playroom. Every time Tanner and I take this challenge on he gets a real ear full on how unhappy I am when I have to clean ALL the toys in his room. The rule is one box at a time and somehow that never quite happens. Finally the room was clean and everything neatly stored. A few days later Tanner was playing with toys on the coffee table in the front room. I was walking down the hall. In our house, the hall has a cut out and you can see from the hall into the front room. As I was passing the play room I saw Tanner watching me from the front room wide eyed. I glanced into the playroom and noticed that, once again, several boxes were out. I looked at Tanner without a word and he said “Woops. Mommy no gonna be hoppy”. Woops is right!

Speech Therapy

I just knew it. I knew the minute I got an ST for Ty, it would be Tanner that would get noticed. Tanner is over 3 and a half now and his speech is quite immature. His sentences (as you know) are usually grammatically incorrect and he can’t prounounce several sounds still. The ST talked to him a little bit and noticed right off that Tanner has trouble with fricatives (s, sh, th, f, v)…sounds at the front of the mouth. The good news is that he doesn’t get ALL his fricatives wrong. He is a pro with “s” and “sh”. He can’t say “f” at all and usually he cannot say “th”. “F” sounds are always “sh” and “th” sounds are either “d” or “sh”. There are other sounds he gets wrong to depending on how they work in the word. The ST explained that if I paid attention, there would be an observable pattern. Here are a few examples. If he is saying “car” he can prounounce the “r”. If he is saying “right”, he uses “w” and say’s “wight”. If he is saying “lion” he can prounounce “l”, but if he is saying “love” he say’s “wove”. If he is saying “yes” he can say “y” if he is saying “yellow” he say’s “rellow”. The crazy thing about this, is letters he can’t say in some words (as in “r” in right), he will use as a replacement in other words (as in “rellow” in yellow). Strange. I would have to study this for awhile to figure out the triggers. The thing that is concerning me though is that the ST says that nearly 100% of the time, when a child can’t say his fricative letters he has a hearing problem. Fricatives have a higher pitch and these are sounds that get “lost” when a child has hearing loss. He explained that irregardless of how many times I say “Tanner say FFFFFInger”, he will never learn that way because he hears “Shinger” so he thinks he is saying what I said. He also told me that I will have to teach him how to prounounce “f” as opposed to “f” in repetative words. He said that children should know all their sounds by the age of 3, definitely 3 and a half. If they don’t, they will not learn on their own and will need speech therapy. If I don’t get a handle on this now, he will struggle by the time he is 6 with learning to read. Aaaaghhh!!!!! Is this true??????? That was GREAT news. So I am off to get Tanner’s hearing tested. That just makes me want to cry even considering he may have a hearing issue. He doesn’t seem like he can’t hear though and he has never (to my knowledge) had an ear infection so what would have caused this? The ST feels certain that it is his hearing. I hope he is wrong.

I also am going to have to take a different approach to teaching Tanner in general. He is very smart but he is not interested in learning colors, numbers, letters, etc. He gets aggitated very quickly when I try to work with him. For example, in the car today he saw a flock of birds on a wire and he wanted me to count them (this is rare). I jumped at the opportunity and said let’s count together. He counted with me saying “One Two Shree Shour Shive”:). We went over and over this. I had him do it by himself and he could only then count to two! Argggh! After several attempts I said “Tanner why can’t I teach you to get to three!!” He said, “Mommy. I sheel sick.” (Not because he couldn’t count, because he didn’t want to try anymore”). I told this story to the ST and he advised that I celebrate him counting to two. He said that for right now I should ask Tanner to do what he can do and celebrate celebrate celebrate. He reminded me that if Tanner COULD count to three, he would have…he just isn’t there yet and he gets frustrated very easily with failure so I need to watch for success moments. Very good advice I thought.

Interesting too because when the speech therapy was talking to me about Tanner’s immature speech, Tanner’s ears perked up. After he left, Tanner said “Mommy? What dat guy say?” My heart sank. He knew someone was talking about him and citing what he could not do. I learned a lesson quickly from that. No more discussing sensitive subjects in his hearing range. That includes adoption. I do talk to Tanner about adoption but I don’t beat a dead horse either:). He wouldn’t tolerate that. He listens more when I am talking to someone else and it is VERY important to me that he never ever learn something new by hearing me talk to anyone but him. For this reason, I am asking friends and family to not discuss adoption in front of Tanner now. When he gets a bit older and understands it, the conversations can pick up as appropriate but for now, we can’t talk about him as though he is too young to understand because he is picking up more than you think! This also means that I won’t be telling people where his red hair came from anymore while in public:). They will have to settle with “God” as an answer:) We think adoption is awesome and are so grateful that God chose this for us but quite honestly, it has nothing at all to do with our everyday lives. It is simply a little side note fact that is not really relevant to anything. I like to share Tanner’s story because it speaks so cleary in defense of life but I don’t want to do this at Tanner’s expense when he is at an age where he isn’t old enough to really comprehend but is old enough to know I am talking about him. Sometimes other people word questions terribly too and I certainely don’t want that to happen. For example “Do you ever talk to Tanner’s real dad?” Aaaaghhhh!!!! What is Tanner supposed to make of THAT question if he hears it? Jim is Tanner’s REAL Dad….period!!! I hope I hit this point hard enough that no one makes this mistake in Tanner’s presence. At 3 it is time to prioritize what Tanner needs and he needs to understand the truth on a 3 year old level so I’ll keep my adoption thoughts to writing in this blog (where he can read when he is older). To my friends and family – thanks for understanding this and for being considerate with this for Tanner’s sake. Note: The same thing applies to Ty. Until Tanner is old enough to really understand Ty’s adoption too, I really need to monitor conversations about Ty’s adoption in Tanner’s presence.