The light at the end of the tunnel | Our speech delay journey
I cannot quite believe I am saying this, but I’m standing in the light. The metaphorical light, that is, at the end of the exceptionally long tunnel that has been our speech delay journey. When your speech delay journey starts, seeing the end of the tunnel feels like a very, very distant dream. Sometimes you even think it’s an impossible thing to achieve. But you will make it. Like we have.
I’m saying we’re ‘standing in the light’ because Annabelle turned a corner a few weeks ago. She’s always been that kid who happily bimbles along doing what she’s doing, in her own way and then BOOM – she levels up! It floors us every single time because she always does it when we least expect it.
For example, I walked up the stairs a few weeks ago, calling out for Annabelle. She replied, “I’m on the toilet” – my Mama meerkat persona immediately picked up on the ‘ilet’ pronunciation because it was new. She had always said “Toiet” – leaving out the ‘l’ sound. Without trying to make anything of it I said “You’re where?” and she replied, “Mama, I’m on the toilet!” – thus confirming my ears are in fact working and she did in fact just smash a new pronunciation. Queue the squealing from me and the cheers and YAYS! Which is always met with the biggest smile from her!
Every new pronunciation or a new sound, or word is a massive deal with a child with speech delay and every single victory {because that’s exactly what they are!} should be celebrated with fireworks and cake!
A month or so ago, we made Annabelle her very own book nook and started reading to her more than usual. We felt, as her Parents, we had let her down especially when it came to her reading. Whether this was a factor or not it didn’t shift the guilt we felt. So we decided to rectify that.
We started with a selection of Songbird Phonics books from the Oxford Reading Tree, kindly sent out to us from Books2DoorUK {you can find my post Learning to read with Books2DoorUK here}. The routine was that we would read to her and then she would read a book to us. Within three weeks, the difference we saw in her reading ability was amazing.
Over the recent weeks, she has also been dishing out words like “distracting” and “difficult” and I know saying that it may not mean much to you. But for a speech delay kid? It’s everything. The amount of syllables and sounds within those words is tough – more so for someone who has difficulties with pronunciations. But she is just…coming out with them like she has known them forever and I could honestly just burst.
So, here we are, standing in the light at the end of a tunnel we thought we’d never conquer. Through those days, that weaved into weeks, months and years of the tantrums, the frustrations, the inability to understand our daughter {even though she could understand us}.
Through being let down by consultants refusing to snip her tongue tie, to teaching ourselves ways to help her stretch her tongue tie. Also dealing with the reality of not getting any help from S.A.L.T to researching endlessly to find ways to help our daughter overcome her speech delay. It was a tough few years, I cannot deny that. Infact they were some of the toughest parenting hurdles I’ve ever had to deal with. But here we are…
Standing in the light at the end of the tunnel.
The feeling of relief is pretty impossible to explain. So let me tell you this. My little girl’s tongue tie was missed at birth and not diagnosed until she was one month shy of three-years-old. She chirped to communicate up until she was four. She didn’t get the help she deserved following her diagnosis, but that’s OK because we had her back. We saw her through it and now we are on the other side of it.
So, if you have a child with speech delay, you will reach the end of the tunnel too and if your child will turn out anything like mine? They’ll never stop talking!
Here is a selection of previous Speech Delay journey posts that you might want to read:
