Did I Stutter?

        Is anyone else a fan of Stanley Hudson from the Office? No? Perhaps I'm too big a fan of that show...In high school I use to fake being sick so I could stay home and catch up on episodes I'd missed...that only happened once or twice so no harsh judgement please! Anyway, the episode that Stanley yells "DID I STUTTER?!" is a perfect introduction to what I want to talk about today! Speech Impairment. 

        Neither I nor anyone in my family grew up with a speech impairment. Now that I'm thinking about it, I only knew two people growing up who had any kind of speech impairment. One was an older cousin who stuttered for a while, and the second a girl in my ward who couldn't quite properly pronounce her S's. However, a statistic shared in class reported "25% of the students served in the public schools' special education programs were categorized as having a speech or language impairment (almost 1 million children in the 1993-94 school year, which is the year I was born!). Although I didn't grow up with too many people having this impairment, its far more common than I was aware of. 

       After learning a crash course on this impairment, I found I was most intrigued with those diagnosed with Hypeplexia.  Thanks to good ole Google I further looked into the definition as 

"Children with hyperlexia have a significantly higher word-decoding ability than their reading comprehension levels. Hyperlexic children are characterized by having average or above-average IQs, and word-reading ability well above what would be expected given their age."

     Simply I would say these Children have a difficult time understanding auditory instruction and verbally communicating. However, they're like reading wizards with their higher level reading skills then other kids their age. This got me to thinking, would I rather have a difficult time communicating but be able to read like a pro, or communicate like a pro with normal reading skills. I decided...neither, I just like the way I am! Though these children have difficulty while in their early years, they're not doomed to struggle the rest of their lives. The earlier the impairment caught, the better chance the child has at overcoming this difficulty. 

     God makes each person different. I'm grateful He didn't create me with a speech impairment, but is it really the worst thing ever to have? I'm sure it must be frustrating for those who experience it, but more often than not these children (with the proper therapy) are able to overcome this battle while in school.

--Julie