speech-language-pathology

For The Record

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Professional Development, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

dressup

 

For the record, she is fierce, even if she is in fluffy skirts and fleecy socks and every color of barrette holding on to dear life in her hair.

For the record, she is loving, even if she screams at her baby brother, narrows her eyes to daggers when she doesn’t get her way, and pushes every one of her mother’s buttons till something gives and tantrums fly.

For the record, she is smart, even if she cannot quite “do numbers” the way some of her classmates can and even if her words tend to come out upside down and sideways and in the wrong order and all too often not quite on the topic.

For the record, she has lots to say, even if she shrugs an “I don’t know” or grunts a precocious “whatever” because explaining feels too hard and some words hide and narrative does not form the way she senses that it ought to.

For the record, she is funny, even if she may not laugh at some jokes other people say, because she doesn’t get the puns and is still out to lunch on idioms and doesn’t quite see humor in confusing riddles.

For the record, she is thoughtful, even if she often acts before she seems to think (because she cannot always get the thought in time to matter), and reacts as if she doesn’t care (when she if fact cares more than many).

For the record, she is brave, and utterly indomitable. She works harder than most realize and deals with more frustration than is reasonable. And yet, she does still try. She may do so in frowns and pouts and at times even in ways that appear less than fully loveable. But she has no bone in her that isn’t kind. Just all too many that are over-tender.

For the record, she is a handful and a heart-full. She is bubbling with spirit and wriggling with life. She’d keep you on your toes, but oh boy would you earn a good dance for it! For a little body, she packs some serious soul punch.  She is fabulous personified. A guaranteed-to-wake-you-up-in-the-morning child.

 

 

For The Daily Post

Mini Picasso

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , 6 Comments

 

“This is a big big big mountain and it have a train and it go ‘choo-CHOOOO!’ round and round and also flowers but you see them fast because it a train and rainbow and my name.” (J.N, age 3:4)

 

mini picasso

 

 

For The Daily Post

English: Tough Enough?

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Good stuff!, Speech Language Pathology, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Bel Air Library Baltimore

 

English …

The impossible nuance of words that do not follow through

And rules that leave one without clue

Enough to grow a frown on many brow

As they doggedly attempt to plough

A minefield of delivery so rough

It leaves them justifiably gruff …

 

This video never fails to make me … laugh!

 

Butterflies

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

butterflies-photographer unknown

 

She had butterflies in her tummy. Her heart was in her throat. Jitters like little worry critters jumbled through her thoughts. She felt apprehensive, anxious, wary, shaky. Her feet felt twitchy, her hands clammy. She was timorous and nervy.

Not quite frightened. Not quite sorry. Hyper with a smidge of happy and a sprinkling of uneasy.

She was both hungry and queasy. She kept fretting. She felt trembly.

Recital day in all its glory.

 

 

For The Daily Post

In Plain Sight

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

 

His face gave him away.

Guilt wrote itself into every centimeter of his little visage. It colored his cheeks cherry and turned his lips downwards and his eyes up and away. He pressed his lips together to prevent admission. Tucked his hands deep into his pockets, one fist bulging in a telltale sign of something hidden.

Or not so well hidden.

I raised an eyebrow, more amusement than ire.

“I didn’t take anything,” he blurted.

My eyebrow climbed along with a corner of my mouth.

The four-year-old’s eyes darted down his arm, eyes magnetized by a conflicted conscience. “I don’t have anything in my hand …”

“I see …” I noted.

His looked up at me in alarm and the cherries on his cheeks bloomed beet.

“But …?” he examined the opaque fabric of his pants before exclaiming in half-question, half-fact: “Oh, you have magic eyes!?”

His little chest sighed and he pulled his hand out, candy clutched in guilty fingers. “I … I didn’t take it. … Uh … I only did … um … can I have one?”

 

dish-of-candy

 

For The Daily Post

The Sounds In The Silence …

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

 

“Hello darkness,

My old friend,

I’ve come to talk to you again …”

The song plays incessantly in my head, sparked awake by the words of a pre-teen who shared her nighttime worries with me.

She finds it difficult to sleep. Her ears strain to pick up any errant sound: A car’s brakes, a slammed door, people’s voices, steps, a distant bark. She’s afraid they’ve come.

She’s been told she shouldn’t worry. She’s done nothing wrong. Yet there are those who hadn’t, and still had loved ones taken. And she’s not from here. Not really. Not from birth, anyway.

What if the rules change and she’s deemed “returnable”?

What if they keep her away from her parents, send her back to where she’d come from? What if she cannot find the words, if they not let her explain that she is finally, finally, home?

She lies in bed at night. Listening. Making and discarding plans. Fretting in the dark.

Maybe she’ll hide. But where? Someone at school said they sometimes have dogs. She loves dogs. Police dogs — beautiful and focused and proud — never used to scare her. They do now. At their handlers’ command, they can hunt her down. She’s seen it. On TV. In her mind. Now her dreams.

“I listen to the sounds in the silence,” she whispered, eyes bright. “And I wait. Even in my dreams, I listen … and I cry when they come.”

 

 

For The Daily Post

Expectant

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Life and love, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

 

“My mommy have a baby in her tummy!” she announces even before her little feet clear the steps.

“How lovely!” I’ve known for a while, but delight never gets old.

“But the baby not coming out yet,” she clarifies soberly.

“Oh,” I match my tone to hers.

The girl nods sagely. “It not ready yet.”

“I see.”

She shrugs out of her coat and wriggles a bit as she lets me help her remove her snow boots. She pauses mid-wriggle. One socked foot liberated.

“Will mommy have to blow?”

“Blow?”

“Yeah,” the almost-four-year-old cocks her head with bewilderment at my lack of immediate understanding. “When the baby come out.”

I look up, slightly flustered. Someone did a tripe-knot on that other boot. Fort Knox.

She stares at me.

It is one of those times when I have a feeling that my hypothesis about her question is quite different than what she is actually asking about.

“What do you think?” I default to my when-in-doubt-return-the-question-to-the-kid.

She nods vigorously. “Yeah. Because when the baby finish cooking it going to be too hot.”

 

hot-food

 

For The Daily Post

Do It Anyway

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Quotes, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

He has stage fright. The real deal.

Social phobia with all the trimmings.

Speaking in front of anyone renders him paralyzed with irrational but no less numbing terror.

Talking to a store clerk makes him sweat.

Let alone giving a speech in front of assembly.

The whole school. Faculty, too.

He trembles at the thought.

“You don’t have to do this.” His mother. She is distressed by his distress. Protective.

“But I do,” he says.

He’s scared.

Determined, too.

He asks me to teach him how “to speak even when my throat gets stuck.”

We work on it. On breath, on visualizing, on rhythm and on parsing and on tone and pitch and breath again. He practices. With me, at the mirror, with family, with a good friend.

He knows the words by heart. He wrote them. A speech about things that oh-so-matter and are so very needing-to-be-said.

“The words come into my dreams,” he tells me. “Is that weird?”

I shrug. I don’t think so. “What do you think?”

He smiles shyly. “I think they want me not to be afraid. The words. Like we are friends now, words and me.”

 

The day comes.

He calls me in the evening.

“I threw up twice and I trembled like crazy,” he says, but his voice is giddy. “Then I thought about the words. My words … like friends. The beads on the necklace like we practiced … and I could breathe … I was still scared but I did it anyway!”

 

learn-how-vvg

“I tried and I tried”

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Professional Development, Reflections, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Everything is harder for this little one.

Her body doesn’t quite know how to calm itself. Her hands don’t always know the extent of their reach. She trips. She falls. She bumps into. She upsets the cup, the plate, the markers on the desk. It takes her longer to climb up a flight of stairs. She needs help tackling them going down. Her mouth doesn’t quite make sounds as easily as others’ can: words come out jumbled, not always the right sounds or meaning, often in a mismatched grammar and word order. Food gets messy. Swallowing’s tricky. She gags. She coughs.

But she tries.

Oh, boy, she tries.

And tries.

And tries.

She’s a perfectionist, too.

Indomitable.

Determination personified.

Everything requires repetition. Still she tries again. Again. Again. She shakes her head at any suggestion she accept the unperfected.

“I do more time,” she insists, sometimes in tears but with no less conviction.

And she does. ‘More time’ and time again and then again and then some.

And slowly, sometimes out of the mist of helpless frustration and gritted teeth and hugs and endless patience — she succeeds.

A circle that closes. A list of items in a category. An idea expressed. A multisyllabic word with no sounds missing. A full sentence with all words in attendance. A coat pulled on without assistance. A triangle traced. A tower of blocks. A pattern of beads. A banana that peels without the insides getting mashed. A sip of apple juice from an unaided cup, no spill, no cough.

“I tried and I tried,” she beams. Each time anew. Sometimes with tears still glistening from the last attempt that didn’t quite get up to her own standards. Each time there’s fire in her eyes.

“I told you I can!”

Indeed you had.

Indeed you can.

Hats off, little one.

Every. Single. Time.

drseuss-determination

 

For The Daily Post

 

You going to have to wait…

Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
stubborn
photo: pinterest.com/pin/339810734368459869/

 

She didn’t want to wait.

She wanted a treat NOW. Not later. Not after she finished her work. Not after session. Not after dinner.

No waiting.

NOW!

She was NOT going to move, or sit, or come, or go, or climb the stairs, or listen, or ANYTHING until she got her treat.

Which she wanted NOW.

No waiting.

Making her wait was “mean.” It was “not fair” and “not nice.”

She wasn’t having any of it.

None of her mom’s cajoling. None of her mom’s reasoning. None of her mom’s threats of consequence or punishment or loss of playdate or no TV or no iPad or no … something … unless …

I heard them argue. They were still at the bottom of the stairs. Two frustrated voices. Volume rising.

I could visualize the little girl. Arms crossed and foot stamping and lips pursed out in a pout, jaw forward in clear dismay and stubborn determination. I’d seen her do the ‘you’re not gonna make me’ before.

“Upstairs!” The mom ordered, fed up. “Now!”

“You not waiting EITHER,” the child accused, sounding vindicated. “You say go upstairs NOW. I saying go to the store NOW. I want my treat NOW!”

“Don’t be cheeky!” Mom’s voice went up an octave.

“YOU not be cheeky!”

This was devolving. I walked downstairs toward them.

Red faces, one large, one smaller, looked up at me. One in exasperation, one in challenge and a touch of “yeah … so what are you gonna do about it?”

I smiled. “Seems like I’m the one whose waiting…”

The child frowned. This didn’t quite fit her script.

“I’m not going!” she huffed.

“She won’t come up,” the mom accused.

“I want a treat NOW!” the little one dug her heels.

“Oh boy,” I lowered myself onto one of the stairs. “Mind if I sit down? Seems like you’re a little stuck. Can you tell me what’s going on?”

“She won’t get me my treat/She won’t cooperate” They spoke together.

“Are you hungry?” I asked the girl.

She regarded me suspiciously. She knew me well enough .

I raised an eyebrow in question.

“Yeah!” she raised her chin accusingly. “And mommy said we can go to the store and get a treat and now she say go up NOW. I’m not!”

“Hmm …”

“There was lots of traffic,” the mom’s chin was only slightly less raised… “I told her if there’s a lot of traffic we may not have time to stop at the store.” She turned to the girl, “maybe next time you get your stuff faster so we won’t leave so late …”

The child’s face grew angrier. Couldn’t totally blame her … this was a bit low …

“Traffic can be tough in the city,” I intervened. “We can think together about some better planning for next time but now … we have a hungry child and no snack. Good thing I have some snacks upstairs. Shall we?” I got up and offered a hand to the child, eyed the mother meaningfully.

She understood. Stayed silent.

The child narrowed her eyes at me. “What treats you have?”

Bargaining. We’re making progress.

“I don’t know. I’ll have to check upstairs. Let’s go see.”

Eyes still narrow. “What if I don’t like them?”

“I guess we’ll have to see.” (I get really boring when I’m not going to say much more…)

“But I still get a treat after.” This was demand, not query.

“This is between mommy and you, but for now, lets get something into your belly so it isn’t hungry.” I moved my arm closer and she took it. We began climbing, mom trailing a few steps behind.

“Na’ama says I can still have my treat later,” the child swiveled her head back and declared to her mother. A little victoriously.

“This is between you and mommy,” I repeated, not quite able to keep the amusement out of my voice.

“Mommy promised me a treat,” she insisted, but her legs were still climbing so I knew she was only half-combative now, making conversation.

“Yes, you told me. Too bad there was so much traffic.”

“Yeah …”

“I don’t like traffic much.”

“Me too,” she sighed.

“Me three…” Mom piped up from behind.

The child stopped, turned, giggled. “That’s not how you say it!”

“I guess Na’ama will have to help me say things better?” Mom smiled back.

“Yeah!” she liked that. She climbed energetically up a few more stairs. “But …,” she paused again. “You going to have to wait …”