I do not have much experience with speech and language disorders. I worked for a long time in preschools, so I do have some experience with emerging language, and some children developed their language faster and more deftly than others, but at a preschool level most speech delays are not diagnosed yet. Many speech delays straighten out before kindergarten.
My own daughter turned 5 and was still not pronouncing her L's, K's, or G's. I had been working with her on flashcards, trying to get her to pronounce these sounds. When she turned 5, I became concerned. She would be starting kindergarten in a few months and she was calling it "tinderdarden". I called the school district and made an appointment for my daughter with the speech pathologist, 3 weeks away. During the next 2 weeks, my daughter started pronouncing all of her letters correctly. I cancelled the appointment, and my daughter never had any speech problems again. Some speech problems are temporary, and some are permanent. In early childhood, language can develop slower than "normal". Some impairments require accommodations. The media portrays people with speech impairments as people with intellectual impairment. The media is reflective of our culture, and our culture is mean and exclusionary. People with speech impairments are different, and people who are different get ridiculed. It's terrible, but it is true. When I thought about a famous person with a speech impediment, Elmer Fudd was the first to come to mind. But then I thought about a real human example and I thought of Mike Tyson. People will make fun of Mike Tyson's lisp, but never to his face. I found this great video of Mike Tyson 30 years ago, on the Joan Rivers Show. Young Mike Tyson was so soft spoken, level-headed, and humble. https://youtu.be/1C9dNG1-uIc
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April 2017
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