Milestones in Language development & aquisition:

Or “more kids say the darndest things”

“No! No Gwacie! Gimme it baaack!” Ellen, the two year old protested. Struggling to get the toy, comb, condiment, whatever it was back from her four year old sister Grace at the dinner table. I don’t really remember what it was they were fighting over, because my wife Bethany and I were so excited.

“Yeah Ellie! You got your sister’s name right!!!” we cheered and clapped. If you remember from a few columns back, Ellen thinks that Garce’s name is “Hewlwn.” We’ve been working to correct this for some time.

The parenting books all say you’re supposed to reward positive behavior with such praise. We’ve applauded Ellie’s proper use of “the big girl potty” so much this way that now when we flush the toilet she claps for us, as it “Yeah Daddy (or Mommy), you wen powddy by yosewf!”

The victory didn’t last long. We decided to play a game of point-to-the-family-member-and-ask-their name. It didn’t go all that well.

Parent: Points to me, “What’s HIS name?”
Ellen: “Daddy!”
Parent: “Yeah!!! great job,” points to Bethany, “What’s HER name?”
Ellen: “Mommy!”
Parent: “Hurrah! Wonderful, you’re so smart,” points to older sister, “What’s HER name?”
Ellen: “GwHelwen!”
Parent: “Noo-o, no, sweety, her name is ‘Gracie.’ GRAY-SEE. Sigh.” In desperation, points to Ellen herself, “Okay, then what’s YOUR name?”
Ellen: “ummmmm… I ME!”

Well, at least she’s mastered the use of personal pronouns. She’s starting to repeat lots of what we say, that’s been a lot of fun. We missed many of those typical toddler benchmarks with Grace. Those of you who know her, know that she’s pretty hard to understand much of the time. At the risk of embarrassing her years from now or “airing my dirty laundry in the press,” I’d like to try to explain it to you.

Grace suffers from what is called Dysarthria. Dysarthria is a speech disorder that is due to a weakness or in-coordination of the speech muscles. Speech is slow, weak, imprecise or uncoordinated. It can affect both children and adults. "Childhood dysarthria" can often be a symptom of a disease, such as cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, or Bell’s palsy. Grace does not have any of these.

By the way none of those are forms of mental retardation. I say this because many of us might mistake them for forms of autism, Down’s syndrome or severe mental or learning disabilities. They’re muscle, nerve, or speech problems, not problems with intelligence or learning abilities.

A child once asked me if Grace was “retarded.” I held it together and didn’t cry or lash out in anger, instead I did my best to explain what Dysarthria is, but I took a long walk alone to wrestle with God when I was done.

Someone recently asked if we planned to hold Grace back from kindergarten since she was so behind. We were dumbfounded because as far as we or her teachers and doctors can tell, she’s right where she needs to be. Recognizes her name, knows her colors, counts to twenty, gets dressed by herself, starts the VCR by herself… We’re just getting stated on zipping up her coat though.

Besides, there are more forms of intelligence than math or language. Harvard Education Professor Howard Gardener teaches that there are multiple forms of intelligences.

You know how they say that if you lose one of your senses, you’re others become more acute? Like how blind people have really good hearing? Well, I think Grace has compensated for some of her weaknesses with other strengths. I know I’m biased as an Art teacher, but I think she’s got spatial intelligence ("picture smart"). Grace loves to paint and cut things out. She experiments with neutral colors and cuts out “hair-styles” and beards and hats for people.

There’s bodily-kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart"), not Grace’s area, but that would be consistent with Dysarthria since it has to do with muscle and nerve development. This would be Ellen’s area. This chick loves to jump off of high furniture and land on her feet and she loves to throw balls. Although, in Grace’s imagination, she’s come up with her own basketball league- the Dinosaur league. The boys are the “Sharp-tooths” and the girls are the “little foots.” You have to see the cartoon movie “Land before Time.”

There’s also musical intelligence ("music smart") Grace loves to sing and dance, but obviously the speech and coordination things hamper this.

There’s Intra-personal intelligence ("self smart") too many of us think we have this but don’t. And of course there’s interpersonal intelligence ("people smart"). I’d like to think Grace has this, she’s usually pretty sensitive and compassionate and a fairly decent judge of character.

In both adults and children, Dysarthria can result from head injury or stroke. As far as we can tell, Grace’s Dysarthria is a result of trauma in the womb.

She had her umbilical chord wrapped around her neck, making matters worse, she got stuck in the birth canal during labor. Unfortunately the policy of the HMO in California where she was delivered was to encourage natural child-birth as much as possible and to discourage Caesarian sections whenever possible.

Of course, we haven’t been able to convince our insurance company that this is what caused it, and we seem can’t get ample proof from the HMO to satisfy them. They’re policy is that they’ll pay to get help if it was caused by trauma, but not if it’s a “pre-existing condition/congenital condition.” But, in theory, she’ll grow out of it and eventually her speech will improve at least somewhat. And so far, she’s made friends easily and hasn’t had to endure any cruel teasing from her classmates. Of course, she might not tell us if she had, we might not understand, literally.

If you’d like to learn more about Dysarthria you can visit these websites, http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/dysarthria.htm, http://home.ica.net/~fred/anch10-1.htm

I know this column has gotten long again but I feel bad that it’s also gotten pretty somber, so I’d like to leave you with a couple more Ellie stories. One Sunday we sat in the balcony at church, “Grammy Mawdge,” is an organist. We had the hardest time convincing Ellie that there weren’t “Monstaws” living behind the organ pipes.

Last Sunday Ellen noticed the stained glass window in the back of Jesus praying at Gesthemane.
“He sad, he cwying,” Ellie noticed.
“Yes, He is, why do you think He’s sad?” I asked her.
“He want His mommy,” she explained.