Hello Operator

Have you heard of video phones for the deaf? And that there are now video relay services in addition to the old text relay services so that deaf people can sign their phone conversations and have a real live interpreter voice for them? Yeah, I didn't either until I got a call from a former student a couple days ago. Wow. Let me just say that communication is so much smoother with the video relay service than it ever was with the old relay. For one thing, there's none of the super slow talking so the relay operator can type, and there's none of that GA/SK business to contend with. Plus everyone gets to communicate in his or her own language.

Still, the relay, video or otherwise, kicks my stuttering ass.

Talking on the phone under normal circumstances is hard enough for me. I was in my late twenties before I really got a grip on phone conversations; now I handle most phone calls with some easy stuttering at the beginning to clue the other person in and to get myself off on the right foot. But the relay takes me right back to my mega-blocking days of yore. What is it that is so stressful for me? There's a lot going on with a relay call -- two different languages spoken, the message being relayed through a third party -- but the pressure really isn't on me; it's on the relay operator. Yet my throat closes up on those calls. In fact, it has crossed my mind that I could just not answer the phone when it's the relay. But I gave up the drug of avoidance a long time ago; one hit, and I'm a goner.

You know, one of my funniest stuttering stories involves a relay call. When I taught at a residential school for the deaf years ago, most of my friends were deaf. One day a friend was visiting me at my apartment and needed to call her husband at work. She and her husband are both deaf, and at the time, I didn't have a TTY. So here's how the phone call worked: my friend signed to me, I voiced her message to the relay operator, and the relay operator typed the message to her husband, who read it on his TTY, and then the whole process was reversed. Complicated. And a potential pit of stuttering madness.

It started off okay, though. My speech was reasonably under control, and we were able to get through the first few exchanges okay. Then, THEN, the relay operator, a very smug-sounding man, interrupted me and said, "You know, lady, this would be a lot easier for me if you wouldn't stutter."

Dumbfounded, I began the usual spiel to educate my listener: "Well, it would be easier for me, too, but I have a speech disorder . . . "

And then my blood started to boil as I thought: Is the relay not a service for the hearing and SPEECH impaired? Are these people not TRAINED to talk to people with whom communication is guaranteed to be ANYTHING but EASY? The humiliation of being caught off guard and of having to educate someone who should already have been educated, hit me like a truck, and I finished my "education" with . . .

"SO F*CK YOU!"

And I slammed down the phone. Only then did I look up and see my friend and the look of horror on her face.

She signed frantically, "Why did you hang up on B.?"

Oh. OH! I had forgotten all about him! And her, for that matter! I apologized and quickly explained what had happened. Then I took her advice and called the relay back to speak with a supervisor about the operator's need for some sensitivity training (I also threw in a sheepish apology for the profanity). And then my friend and I had a giggling fit.

The relay center, by the way, called me no less than three times over the next twenty-four hours to offer their sincerest apologies. The call had apparently been recorded. I wondered how many times they replayed my outburst. And I hoped I hadn't gotten anyone fired.

I guess maybe that's what I worry about when I'm on a relay call now: the responsibility of speaking and maintaining everyone's employment. It can be too much for a girl sometimes. I'm going to have to look into getting me one of those video phones.

Progress

Remember back on June 9 when I did a meme including my goals for the year? What?!?! You don't have every one of my goals committed to memory? Sheesh. Okay, okay. Here's a link. WHAT? You don't feel like clikcing on it? Oh, for crying out loud, what is wrong with you people. Fine. I'll list my goals here so that you may refresh your memories. (sighing loudly)

In the next year I will . . .

• begin my conversion process. (See, I'm being decisive today.)
• find a pre-school for my son.
• find a way to get out of the house at least one day a week, whether it's
  through membership in some kind of organization, a class, or a part-time
  job.
• find a babysitter so that my husband and I can go out more.
• go on our very first vacation as a family of four.
• enjoy every minute of my children's silliness.

Okay, to be perfectly honest, I had to cheat and look myself. So no hard feelings. But my reason for bringing this up is that I realize I've done several of these things already. Yay! And yeah, I know, many of them were not earth shattering. In fact, some of them are just silly. But still, I know life can throw things at us sometimes and knock us off our feet, and I am so thankful that I've been lucky enough to be able to move vaguely in the direction I wanted to go.

Let's see . . . well, the conversion process has not started yet. But I have become more active in the synagogue. I know that doesn't count.

My son has started preschool. It's a good preschool we picked, too, I have to say.

I'm getting out of the house a little more now because I've made some friends. I am also (drumroll please) preparing to begin some part-time work very soon. It's the kind of work that is unpredictable -- I have to wait for them to call me when my services are needed -- but I'm just a few days away from being officially on the list as a service provider. Yippee!

My friend now babysits for us sometimes. She's awesome!

We went on our family vacation back in July.

And I am still enjoying my kids' silliness. I squander a few moments here and there when I'm feeling overwhelmed or grouchy. I regret that. But I love them, those little boogers. They're such cuties. I'd do anything for them. Even convert.

But maybe not quite yet.

This One's Going Right Back to the Library

Last night my husband and I watched one of the items I got from the drive-through library. It was this video about children who stutter. Aside from the strange choice of camera shots and the uber eighties glasses the narrator was wearing, the video was just so-so. It was supposed to contain clips of children stuttering. Real kids doing real stuttering.

But we were left with the feeling that they picked four kids who were borderline cases at best to make the techniques they were suggesting look good. Either that, or L. is the only kid in the world who stutters so severely. Which is our fear. There's not much written or videotaped about kids with stutters like hers.

Okay, so there was one cute little blond boy who was shown briefly -- demonstrating both the prolongation and the block, of course, since the other children seemed to have never experienced either -- doing some hard core stuttering. But they didn't show him again in the section where the parents were using the suggested techniques with their kids. All the kids in that section were almost completely fluent. And little Mr. Blond Boy was the only child who didn't make it onto the cover of the video, too. What the hell? It's a stuttering video! Let the kid with the biggest stutter win for a change! Naturally, I considered the possibility that the parenting techniques had no effect on a more severe stutter and that any footage of the blond kid was destroyed. Or maybe they were afraid showing a severe stutter would scare parents? Or . . . or . . . what?

As a parent of a kid with a stutter worse than little Mr. Blond Boy's, I was a bit offended. And alarmed, really. I mean, I've said before to my husband that my daughter stutters like an adult, that I've never (in my admittedly limited experience) seen a child stutter that way. Last night's video viewing reinforced that idea. It left my husband feeling down about L.'s prognosis, too.

Not that we think less of her if she stutters. Not that the stuttering itself bothers us. It's the thought that she will have to struggle, that she might feel the need to hide parts of herself, that people might not always recognize her immediately as the bright and charming person she is.

I said the other day that she was demonstrating two of the eight warning signs associated with increased risk for stuttering into adulthood. She has already added a third: she has "expressed concern" about her speech (when she asked me to help her . . . which, by the way, she has done twice now).

She also substitutes words. She had conned me into reading one of those insipid, plotless Dora the Explorer books yet again and, pointing to a picture of Dora, said, "I-i-i-i-i-iiis D-d-d-d-d-----d-d-d---- (pause) She w-w-wear sssswimsuit?" She gave up on saying Dora and substituted with she. That is such an adult way to stutter. Crap, part of me is proud of her ingenuity. She's not even two, for crying out loud.

I can remember being totally fluent when I was a young child. Or, at least, I can remember not knowing anything about stuttering, at least not being aware of it, not ever feeling tension when I spoke. I can remember a time when I said what I wanted to whomever I wanted, a time when I didn't have to weigh my words or judge the receptiveness of listeners. I remember a time when I didn't know speaking fear. And later I always saw myself that way, as just normal, but with this thing that happened to me and kept people from seeing the real me when I spoke.

What if L. retains none of those fluent memories? What if she remembers only fear and tension and being different?

A Morning of Pampery Goodness

Did I tell you I've made a friend? A really good friend? We met at the dreaded storytime last summer, and we soon found ourselves making playdates for the kids just so we could get together. She and her family moved her a few months ago, and it turns out that before we moved here, we lived only ten minutes from her. And we know some of the same people. Including another interfaith family. And she used to work with one of my best friends. Freaky.

Anyway, the point is that my friend decided I needed a morning to myself. She very graciously offered to keep my daughter (who is just the best of buddies with her daughter) while my son was at preschool, so that I could do whatever I wanted. Yes, that's right. Whatever I wanted. At first I couldn't think what that meant. And I admit I wasn't very good at it since most of what I chose to do was in some way related to my children, but hey. It was still pretty cool.

So after I dropped my children off, I went to Toys R Us to do a little birthday shopping for the wee one, who will be two in just a few weeks. Mind you, we cannot go into that store with my son, for it turns him into a screaming and whining beast. So I got to shop at my leisure and even purchased a Chanukkah gift or two while I was there. Yea, me.

Then, then, I did the coolest thing. Okay, which I totally could've done with my kids. But still. I drove through at the library -- the one we dared not enter yesterday -- and picked up an assortment of reading and viewing material for the family. This was my first time placing a hold and picking up the books at the drive-up window. I must say it was exhilarating. Okay, so I could've gone in today for I was without child. But I didn't. I drove through. And I see a lot of that driving through business in my future.

Next, I drove through another establishment, picking up a strawberry milkshake just because I wanted one and because I could do so without having to buy one measly thing for my messy offspring. I then drove around town slurping my milkshake until, finally, I went over to my friend's house and claimed my daughter.

It was a lovely time. Really. I'm pretty bad at using my free time these days since it's such a new thing for me. I feel like a cave man looking at a computer. He pokes it, chews on it, rubs it with a stick to start a fire, finally sits on it. Give a mother a fish, and she looks at you as if you're crazy. Teach a mother to fish, and . . . well, she says, "When the hell do you think I'm going to have time to do that?"

Um, but as I was saying, I had a nice morning. And it made me extra patient when my daughter, apparently paying me back for having abandoned her, threw a big fit in the parking lot of the preschool. I patiently and calmly peeled her up from the asphalt three different times, waited while my son retrieved his dropped backpack twice, and didn't even make an obscene gesture to the totally evil and snooty and perfectly made up high cheekboned beeyatch who, rather than waiting the twenty seconds for me to get my children out of the way of her gas guzzling SUV, tried to drive around us and rolled her window down, opened her thin little impatient mouth to say something snotty but -- and she should thank herself for this -- thought better of it.

Ah, amazing what catastrophes a little me-time will prevent.

Why We Spent the Morning Reading Quietly at Home

We played hookey from storytime today. Oh, the guilt. But our last library visit for storytime ended in sibling warfare, serious mommy embarrassment, and some substantial kid grief over my confiscating the identical blue balloons over which they were fighting. I had to drag my children kicking and screaming (and I do mean that literally) into the elevator and through the normally quiet library lobby. If not for the kind look of sympathy from the first-floor librarian, I might well have been frustrated and humiliated enough to advertise both of my offspring on ebay that very afternoon.

So it was official: I became one of THOSE mothers. You know, the ones whose parenting skills I used to question silently in my childless days of yore.

This morning when my son asked if we were going to storytime, I said yes, but then I proceeded to remind him of the proper way to behave, and how he lost his balloon last time, and how if he ever acted that way again at the library I might never ever ever ever take him back, and did he think he could stay quiet and obey me. At which point he said, "I don't think I want to go."

And yeah, I felt some guilt that my warning was dire enough that I might have made him afraid to try again, but on the other hand, I was relieved that I had an excuse to stay home. Because really, it is hellish. I'll take them again next week. I'll be a really good parent then. Somehow I'll manage not to be one of THOSE mothers.

More Notes on L.

Today was a really bad speech day. L struggled on nearly everything she said, especially this evening. I wondered if she was aware of the struggle. Actually, I wondered how she could not be aware.

And then tonight, after struggling on one word for fifteen seconds or more, she cried a little, tried the word again, and then stopped, looked me in the eye, and said, "Mommy, help me."

So I guess that answers my question.

Bedtime Conversation

My Son S: Mommy, where am I going when I wake up?

Me: You have preschool tomorrow.

S: Will you take me there when I wake up?

Me: Yes, and we have to remember to pick out some nice clothes for you to wear because you're having school pictures taken.

S: Well. Okay. But I'm not going to say cheese.

Me: And why's that?

S: Because I think I'm going to say vagina.

Calming Down

Well, things have settled down here. I am no longer panicking. I received my packet of information from the National Stuttering Association, and I have regained my perspective. The NSA is just awesome. I used to be a member and even led a local chapter, but then I got busy and not nearly as active, and eventually I failed to renew my membership. I rejoined last week. One of the booklets I got from them for a meager fee is called Young Children Who
Stutter. It answered several of my questions. Here's what I've learned:

• Secondary behaviors can indeed happen in young children.
• Even children who stutter severely enough to have secondary behaviors often "outgrow" their stuttering.
• Only about 25% of preschool stutterers continue stuttering into adulthood.
• There are eight risk factors that might indicate a childhood stutter will continue. (My daughter exhibits two of the eight: a family history of stuttering, and signs of struggle and tension when she stutters.)

Also, on a visit to my parents' house this weekend, during which my daughter stuttered some but not nearly as much as she was doing in the middle of last week, I was able to ask my parents a few questions. Here's what I learned:

• I began to stutter at age 4.
• For the first year or so at least, my stutter was not as severe as L.'s is.

I think what was scaring me last week was that her stutter seemed more severe each day. Finally, by Friday afternoon, it was improving. I was afraid she would struggle like that every single day. Stuttering is cyclical, I know, but it worried me to think that her cycles might go from severe stuttering on her bad days to moderate stuttering on her good days and never any higher. I see now, though, that she still has almost-fluent periods. I'm glad of that. She'll appreciate them.

And Teej's comment about L.'s having an advantage because I stutter myself reminded me of the stuttering daughter of an adult stutterer whom I met several years ago when I was active in the NSA. I remember watching her discuss her stuttering openly in a group meeting. I never would have felt comfortable doing that at such a young age. So maybe I can't give my daughter fluency, but I can show her by example that stuttering is nothing to be ashamed of. I think I was twenty before I figured that one out.

Stuttering Yada Yada Yada

I talked to my father yesterday about my daughter L.'s speech. I mentioned it to him mostly because I wanted information about the beginnings of my own stutter. I knew my parents always thought I was just imitating my brother, who went through a pretty noticeable period of normal disfluency. But that was all I knew.

My dad says he never noticed my stuttering himself. The speech pathologist who did my kindergarten screening was the one who noticed. The pathologist told my parents that I was demonstrating the beginnings of what he feared would be a serious problem. They put me in therapy, but deep down they didn't think I needed it until, well, until it became obvious a year or two later that I did.

Initially I took this information as bad news. If my speech problem was hardly noticeable at age five, and L.'s is so totally noticeable at age 23 months, that's a little scary. Then I found some information that says a child whose stutter develops after age 3 is more likely to continue stuttering as an adult than is a child whose stutter develops at a younger age. So, oddly enough, I'm finding L.'s early onset of stuttering to be not that upsetting; at least hers isn't developing just like mine. I'll hold out hope that hers won't be as severe in the future.

The severity of her stuttering, however, still concerns me. From everything I've read, her problem is not a "borderline" one, but one that most certainly requires intervention. I haven't read anything at all about secondary behaviors in children under the age of six. I hope I'm just not reading the right stuff and that it's more common than I realize. The secondary behavior has evolved from just the back of her hand over her mouth to sometimes her hand stuffed in her mouth while she is struggling to speak.

She has also developed a strange way of dealing with the word I, which gives her much grief. Just yesterday, she was repeating and prolonging the I with much tension as her voice rose in volume and pitch. Now, however, she is repeating less and simply prolonging a gurgling version of I that sounds more like the Hebrew /ch/ in words like chaim and challah. Is distorting sounds to make them easier to handle a secondary behavior? Whatever it is, she's doing it.

We decided to proceed with scheduling a speech evaluation for her while we wait for E.I. to contact us. I contacted a local speech clinic, filled out and sent in a case history form, and am now waiting for them to contact me about scheduling the evaluation.

It was so bizarre calling the clinic and requesting speech therapy for my daughter. I told them, not so fluently myself, what the problem was and then added, feeling like a total dork for even having to say it, that "stuttering runs in our family . . . obviously." Sheesh.

Which brings me to a related topic. Someone suggested to me that L. might be picking up the stuttering from me -- you know, just imitating me. I'm all about guilt and blaming myself and all that good stuff, but you know, this time I think I'm off the hook. When I'm at home with the husband and kids, I hardly ever stutter. Even when I'm at the grocery or on the phone or any of the other places L. might hear me talk, I don't stutter that severely lately and most certainly not with that secondary behavior -- mine is more uh and um, thank you very much. Funny, but she learned to stutter all by herself. She's independent, that one. She grabs hold of a gene and just runs with it.

That's my girl.

I'm No Good at Waiting

So I'm waiting for a call back from the early intervention folks. I'm impatient. I want a professional to see her yesterday. Her speech has gotten so much worse just overnight.

It's as if our Little Miss Words was flying along at 90 m.p.h. and hit a brick wall. She was chattering about anything and everything only a week ago, mild stutter and all, but now even the basics are a struggle.

She has developed her first secondary behavior. When she is blocking on "I" or "is" or "pretending," three of the words that trip her up the most, she now covers her mouth with the back of her hand. A secondary behavior at twenty-three months? I have never heard of such a thing. But then, I only know the adult side of stuttering. Maybe it's not so rare? Maybe it's not such a bad sign?

She has been laughed at twice in the last twenty-four hours by well-meaning people, once on the playground and once by one of my husband's coworkers. When she tries to start a sentence with "I," she blocks and produces only a choking sound that goes on for five seconds or more. People don't recognize it as stuttering. They just see this tiny child opening her mouth and producing a strange sound, so they laugh.

Today while riding in her carseat and trying to ask me a question about the song playing on the car stereo, my daughter got so frustrated she cried. I was driving, and I couldn't reach her to comfort her.

I'm supposed to know what to do. I'm supposed to know how to deal with this. So why do I feel so helpless?

Come on, folks. Call me back, call me back, call me back.

My Daughter, My Mirror

Sometimes you're right and sometimes you're wrong, and sometimes you're half right. My three-year-old son quickly outgrew his pseudo-stuttering phase. I thought we were in the clear. He's the son, after all, and boys are more likely to stutter than girls.

My daughter, however, who is not yet two, has begun to stutter. And I don't mean the easy repetitions that her brother was doing. She's repeating initial sounds in words throughout each sentence, and she repeats the sounds at least four times. Tension and forcing have begun to show themselves, and while I've not noticed all-out frustration, she has most certainly resigned herself to stop speaking mid-sentence several times, finding it just wasn't worth it. This, folks, can't be anything other than the real thing. Dammit.

When I first mentioned it to my husband a couple weeks ago, he initially dismissed my concerns. Several days later, however, when my daughter repeated and semi-blocked on several words in a sentence, he said, "Whoa. You're right." And I told my friend about it a couple weeks ago, too, but she said I was probably worrying about nothing. Then when our kids were playing together last Friday, my daughter's stuttering was severe enough that my friend, trying to hide her look of alarm, said, "Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, maybe you should get that checked out."

It very well might go away. She hasn't been stuttering for more than a month. She could end up with perfectly fluent speech. And yet, with the family history she has (a stuttering mother, four stuttering great uncles, two stuttering second cousins), the odds are not on our side, and I feel the need to give her the best chance possible. Right now I don't know what that is -- therapy, or just a relaxed wait-and-see approach with careful monitoring.

Part of me is in take-charge mama mode: researching tips for parents of toddlers who stutter, looking for speech pathologists and early intervention programs in the area, etc. The other part, under the surface, is fighting feelings of guilt and sadness. I mean, it's not as if she has a terminal illness or a profound disability. I know what to expect, I know what she will need as she grows, and yet, crap, I hate to see the hard parts of my life repeated in hers.

Today my husband wanted to show us some photos he had taken at a little get-together we had yesterday. The kids and I joined him at the computer, watching the slide show of pictures, each one flashing for only three seconds or so. We were all commenting on the photos. My daughter had a lot to say. "I-i-i-i-i-i-s tha-tha-that br- I-i-is thaaaat brother?" But by the time she finished, the picture was invariably gone. I did my best to answer her questions, but before long she stopped talking, unable to keep up the pace. I could always slow down the presentation for her next time. But life isn't like that. There will be so many times when the conversation will be too quick, and she will fall behind, not stuttering, just mute. How I want to slow it all down for her, to give her the time and space she needs to let her words out, every last one of them.

This week, I have some phone calls to make. Wish me luck.