when my brother was very little, he stuttered. there is the old family story of the time we were getting our portraits taken and the photographer said, "say cheese, everyone!" and the camera flashed and the shot was taken.
the light still blinding us, pam and i ran off in different directions, and graeme was still standing there, saying, "ch..ch..chchchch…ch..chch…"
with a lot of diligence, patience and repetition, my mum, all by herself, trained graeme out of his stuttering. i can remember her bending down, looking into his eyes and saying to him whenever he started to get his words tangled,
"stop speaking. think about what you want to say. speak slowly."
not bad life lessons if you think about it. ones that frugal blake has always lived by, i might add.
i can’t put a time frame on it, but graeme’s stuttering eventually stopped. we never teased him about it, because it was the way he was. it wasn’t funny, we saw how much trouble it caused him. but mum’s continual gentle reminders trained graeme out of the stuttering. very impressive. she got us to say it to him as well, so at school or walking home we could remind him as well.
sebastian has a thing that i need to be training him out of. it is one of those traits that kids will start noticing and commenting on soon. his teacher said that he doesn’t do it much at school, but when he does, she stops him.
obviously this is different than a stutter. it isn’t something like picking your nose, it is just a thing that could get him teased. being the ever protective mum, i don’t want that. so mag char (who also noticed it) and i talked about it and when we see him doing it, we remind him not to and give him alternatives.
what line differentiates a mum between a perfectionist who was continually harping and a mum who really helped you? the seriousness of the issue? the success of the initiative? if they recognise the issue needs to be taken care of?
anyone? anyone?
