The Bible says what?
Yesterday while we were learning the boys’ memory verse for Awana – yep I am raising two procrastinators – nothing like learning the memory verse hours before church – Evan’s speech issues really took over.
You see, I haven’t mentioned it for awhile, even though I did promise to keep you posted on the speech decisions for Evan, Evan has been going to an amazing speech therapist for several months. He has made great strides in his speech. They have a game plan to fix his “L” first, then “th”, and finally the “R” sound. He is pretty much finished with the “L” and “th”. Even though he has made amazing progress, we still are working on those sounds in every day conversation, because of the habit it has created. He is able to correct himself on the “L” and “TH” if we inform him that he just said an “L” or “TH” word. The other thing that has come from it is that when in doubt (when a word doesn’t sound correct to Evan) he self corrects by adding an “L” to the beginning of it. Most of the time putting the “L” in front makes the word not a word, you know like “rooster” would be “looster”, which immediately he hears it not correct.
But yesterday was the most challenging speech lesson as of yet.
We were learning Psalm 33:4 – For the word of the Lord is right.
Now say that to yourselves as if you are a child who, up until a month ago, had all “Ls” and “Rs” make the “w” sound. Go ahead, I’ll give you a minute…
The first attempt:
“The word of the word is white”
As you can hear and see, in this instance, his speech problems did not make nonsense words. All words are correct making the verse sound silly.
Evan does an amazing job with synonyms and definitions when someone can’t understand what he is saying. So immediately I changed the verse to make more sense to him to see if he could correct the verse on his own. “The Bible is from God and it’s correct/true.”
Okay let’s try it again:
“The Lord of the Lord is light”
So this time he used that ol’ standby of putting “Ls” in front of all the words he couldn’t say correctly. And again, all the words were words although the sentence made no sense.
Then it progressed to:
“The word of the Lord is light”
Okay, getting better! At least the sentence makes sense although incorrect.
We practiced for 10 minutes at least, and if you have a child with speech problems, you know 10 minutes is eternity for them. By the end, he was frustrated and tired. I was able to squeak out one correct verse, not all the words together but each individual word on it’s own.
“Mom, I know the verse, will you leave me alone now.”
“Okay Evan, you have done an awesome job trying to say it correctly! And you did! Just to make sure, can you say it for me one last time.”
“Fine mom, For the word of the word is white.”
Perfect!
