The Crisp S

I took Addie to the Children's Hospital yesterday morning for a speech therapy evaluation. She's had trouble with her r's sounding like w's and with a pretty pronounced lisp, and the doctor thought it was probably time to get some help.

The Children's Hospital in Denver is beautiful--very colorful, with lots of cheerful art and play structures and wagons. But to go in there, you pretty much have to put on your emotional flak jacket and not look around too much, because your heart will break into about a thousand pieces, what with all those sick kids.

Yes, I'm a big wiener. Wimp. Civilian. So sue me.

Anyway, it was a weird appointment. Addie has been working on pronouncing her r's, and is getting better at them, and the specialist wasn't too worried about them. She did say she was two years too old to be having that lisp, though, which of course made me feel anxious--that old fear that there is this problem with our kid we haven't noticed and for God's sake where the hell have we been?

I beat back that particular anxiety just in time for the specialist to skooch me next door to a hidden spy room. There were headphones and a one-way mirror and everything, and I basically sat and spied on my kid while she got evaluated.

Awful. AWWWWWWWful.

My observations:

1) Addie is a sassy little thing. She bout ate that specialist (who was a bit on the sweet and gullible side) up for a snack.



2) Addie fidgets like she had ADHD pellets for breakfast.



3) Addie purposely mis-answers some questions to see if the evaluator catches it.



4) Addie is bored quickly and manipulates the specialist into letting her out for a) a bathroom break; b) a water break; and c) a reading break.



5) Addie is going to be just fine. I, on the other hand, need to chill the heck out. I was ridiculously anxious the whole time, watching my kid misbehave. Then I thought about what a scamp I was as a kid, got the giggles, and relaxed. As my friend N reminds me, "You really don't want to push for a perfect girl."

I realize it's creepy that I took these photos. I couldn't help it.

And we're not going back there, by the way, to the speech therapy. We're going to play "s"-flavored games at home and work on that lisp all by ourselves, for the meanwhile. I'll let you know what changes.