Article "The Kids Speech"

The Kid’s Speech by The New Journal > When I first met Wendy roughly sixteen years ago, I was an extroverted kindergartener with a spitty interdental lisp, biting softly on my tongue with each /s/, and the inability to pronounce my own name. > Section one, æntoniə, wasn’t an issue. The hardest part of my first name is just remembering to connect the /n/ and /t/ sounds, but my parents had always called me Anna anyway, voiding the issue of the consonant blend. Section two, ɛɪrz brɑʊn, was my trouble spot, and until I began working with Wendy, I proudly introduced myself as Anna Ayrethhh-Brown to everyone I met. > I don’t remember much about our weekly lessons besides the fact that Wendy rewarded me with Cheerios and M&Ms for maneuvering my tongue against the alveolar ridge. She was similar back then—same office, same lupine eyes, same melodic tones—and she taught me to fix my speech impediment by looking, listening, and imitating her, just as my older brother, Henry, had already done with her. >

Henry’s challenges were more debilitating than mine. As he entered elementary school, both his /r/ and /s/ phonemes were unintelligible, which fractured his ability to communicate with peers, teachers, and our parents. My mother still winces whenever she recalls one evening when Henry asked her to read him a story before bed. Because of Henry’s /r/ and /s/ omissions, she heard him ask for a “toy,” and scolded him for trying to play so late at night. Henry, desperate to be understood, whined in frustration, “No, Mom! A toe-ey!” >

Henry began speech therapy with Wendy in kindergarten and continued until his /s/ and /r/ sounds improved. Other facets of his impediment, like substituting “ch” sounds for “sh,” persisted well into middle school. This impairment presented itself most overtly on Sundays, when Henry would gab about singing in “shursh.” At our school’s annual book swap, where used titles could be traded for tokens called “chits,” Henry’s classmates mocked him for confidently announcing how many “shits” he had collected.