Both my sister and my daughter are speech language pathologists.They are trained and experienced in evaluating impediments and teaching people how to communicate with language. They both specialize in children. Sherry worked in Elementary schools in California for over three decades. Both Sherry and Annie will tell you that if you want your kids to learn to talk, you need to basically do one thing; talk to your children. More specifically, talk to your babies. Not in baby talk either. Just talk. Tell them stories you know they cannot understand. Whisper sweet nothings in their ears. And when they get a little older, don't dumb-down your word selection for them. Let them rise to yours, hearing words in the correct context.
Like most eternal truths, if you want something - offer the same. If you want love, then love. If you want a fight, come out fighting. If I want a kiss from four-year-old Walter, I just need to pucker up my lips and get in his face.
I suspect it is no accident that Annie's first child spoke in full sentences before he could walk. And I am always moved when I see Sherry looking straight into the eyes of our Littles, telling them very long and interesting stories, full of detailed images and exciting verbs, moving her head from side to side with the ebb and flow of the tale. Our mother used to do the same with her Littles, my own Treasures. When I was young I used to sit on the edge of Mom's bed after school and listen to her talk on the telephone. The lilt of her voice was like a lullaby to me.
I like to think that my own voice is the compilation of all the voices I ever heard. I inhaled all of them and held them deep down in the mysterious gathering place near my heart. They reappear in certain songs, and in stories, and recipes I recite to myself. And perhaps, I like to think that this is possible, I also carry the voice of the angels who speak to me at night; the grandmother I never knew, old friends who are gone, my dear aunts, and other family members whose voices I can conjure up at this very moment. They rise from that unknown place within me, up through my brain. Though the timbre and tone may not be the same, and the word selection may be different, when I speak truth, I believe I speak them. The truest parts of us remain, I suspect, and they manifest in those whose lives we touch.We are their voice.And if we speak well, perhaps one day someone we love will speak our voice as well.
