From the Spen2 archives

Since the boy is out of town, I thought I would take the suggestion of one of my blogging mentors and relate some classic Spen2 funnies for you.   

Where to start? How about this classic.....

Spen2 had a severe speech impediment when he was younger.  He's advanced, gifted.  He's a genius with papers.  He started talking really early and had complex thought processes to express.  6 yr old brain 10 month old mouth, not a good match.  Couple that with an adoring family all too eager to translate for him, and you have got yourself a situation!

Almost everything in his vocabulary started with a T or a D.  At 11months he ate a fruit cup at TGI Fridays and declared to the waitress that it was Tan-tas-tic.  He had names for the girls ...Nikita was KiKi, makes sense.  Camille, on the other hand, was NuNu....we still don't know why. But, she answered to it.  Heck, we all started calling the child Nunu. 

By the time he was ready for preschool, it was pretty darned bad.  He would be frustrated if his translators weren't around and even more so when his translator missed the mark.  For instance, there was the time his aunt took him out for dinner and he wanted a Sprite, which to him was "Ray".  Everyone at the table was darned near in tears by the time Auntie reached me on the phone for the translation.

So, it's preschool time.  I take him with me to check out Mt Healthy Preschool-- as he had quit the previous school after ONE day because they made him take a nap.  We encounter Ms Brenna.  She notices his speech and mentions it to me.  I explain that he's been diagnosed but there is a waiting list for therapy through Children's.  She tells me he can receive Speech Therapy through the preschool.... And is FREE.  As a matter of fact, the preschool is free if he needs it.  She goes to get the Speech Therapist, who thinks I'm just trying to work the system to get free preschool.  She's quite skeptical.  She asks him to count to ten. And it went something like this:  ton' two, tree, tore, tive, tix, teven, tate, dine, ten.  The therapist first grinned then gave him the "sad eyes" like "poor baby".  Me, being ever prideful, couldn't stand the thought that this woman might think my baby wasn't bright... So I said Spen2, "do it again, this time in Spanish".... here we go:  toono, does, tres, twato, tinko, tace, tiete, toocho,  tueve, deis.  That prompted riotous laughter from the teacher and the therapist.  The therapist proclaimed it to be the cutest thing she ever saw, "but, we've gotta fix that".

Spen2 began preschool and, as is his nature, pretty much took it over.  He became a teacher's aide of sort.  It wasn't unusual for any new student to be assigned to Spen2 for mentoring.  Makes sense until the new student in visually impaired.  Spen2 comes home and tells me all about the new young lady in his class that can't "tee".  A few days go by and I ask him how things are going with the new girl.  He tells me things are not going well.  He keeps trying to show her the activity chart so she knows what to do when.... Me, "but Spencer' isn't she blind?"  He says he knows that, so he reads it to her too.... That's when it hit me, they have pairèd this little visually impaired girl with the little smart alleck, speech impediment boy..... That is tantamount to child abuse!  How was she supposed to know what he was saying she when he couldn't even point to it for her?!  I don't know about you but that made me giggle till I almost wet my pants!