When is a Speech Impediment an Impediment?

Karah was born talking. Her first word was literally a sentence......"whatisthat?" She went through her Spanish stage where she rolled her "R's" and pronounced her "L's" as "Y's" and "J's" as "D's". For instance "I Yove Uncle Donny!"

She then went through a brief "lazy talking" stage - where she would only say portions of a word. One night Tommy T was dancing around like a 12 year old boy...to which I said, "Don't be RIDICULOUS!".....Karah quickly chimed in with her lazy talking and said, "Yeah Daddy, don't be dickless!" After that I was SO a fan of lazy talking.

Click here to read another of her classic impediment stories.

Beyond that - she has mastered the English language, demonstrating better word usage than I could ever dream of. For instance, I might say...."Class was crappy today." Karah, in her 6 year old voice would say, "Today was difficult because I found it challenging to concentrate with all of the noise happening around me."

Well, I first delivered a Thesaurus .....three years later to deliver a sling shot. Tom gave him this nickname on a road trip when he was very little. His first word was "Ehhhhhhhhhhh" - but officially it would have to be "NnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnO!" Driving to Oklahoma City, windows up (threatening to implode from the vibrations of his voice). He would start the "Nnnnnn" and draw it out as if he were pulling back a taught sling shot....and then with INCREDIBLE force - release the rest of the "NNNNNNNN" and the honkin' "O" until it was delivered from his juicy lips to then rupture our ear drums. Blood was coming from our ears - and Tom was literally crying and begging him to stop. Three hours of this relentless Hell.

A couple of years later his vocab exploded and he developed a stutter, trying to catch his mouth up to the brain. He grew out of it and now struggles with wanting to put a "d" on front of everything....similar to Karah's old habit.

He can MAKE the sounds.....just not at the right time. The other night he said, "I want a Dookie." I corrected him and said, "Say, KUH, KUH, KUH, KUH Cookie!" He looked annoyed and rolled his eyes and yelled " KUH, KUH. KUH, KUH, DOOKIE!"

Another afternoon he and Dawah (karah) were playing outside and she stole his tree branch he had been playing with. He chased her through the neighborhood, yelling...."DAWAH! DATS MY DICK! DATS MY DICK! GIMME MY DICK BACK!"

Tom and I have decided to give it another year before we look into speech therapy. The neighbors would be so disappointed.....but I guess they would still have the Tutu....watch below....hilarious!