Does your child stutter?

Mine does but after several years of speech therapy his disfluency is under control.

Speech disorders are among the most frightening because they effect a person's ability to communicate but also how we respond to that person. Stuttering can have an impact on a child's ability to demand and receive a good education. Unfortunately, most budget-conscious school districts only offer speech therapy for severe stuttering. My son falls in the moderate range although I've been able to advocate for a 30-minute session once a week from our school.

I shudder to think of my son in a busy classroom pushed by a harried teacher to collect and articulate his thoughts quickly. I suspect he is judged, i.e. graded, in part on his communication skills, both good and bad.

Among the things I've discovered by having a child who stutters is that there is a strong genetic corrolation. I've found that there are outlets, including camps for kids with disfluency.

Everyone has a burden to bear, to help my son shoulder his I've taught him to refuse to let anyone hurry him when he is talking. I tell him to raise his voice or in other ways reject any attempt to talk over him.

I also remind him that some of the most captivating people in the world stutter, including actor James Earl Jones. Here's a list of some of them.

Good Hair: The Insanity Continues

If you haven't seen it already, watch this YouTube video and tell me if you think it is an example of self-hatred or a normal day in a black household.

Here's the take from several women on "Tell Me More" an NPR show hosted by Michel Martin. Responses to the exploration of black hair was painfully telling. In black America, hair is political and personal currency. We are obsessed by hair and what it says about us.

For some of us, our self-esteem is built on the shaky foundation of hair. Others have chosen friends and lovers based on physical characteristics that include, sometime partially, sometimes chiefly, hair. Whom among us will admit that when we envisioned having children with our loved one, among the many things we fantasized about was how our child's hair would look?

We've been bullied for things we can't change like the texture of our hair; we've done the bullying because we couldn't change the texture of our hair. One of my most salient memories growing up was spending summers with a cousin who pressed her short hair every DAY in an effort to always have it laid neatly against her scalp Twiggy-style. I eschewed the pressing comb in favor of brutal whacks of a brush and lots of hair product. We both paid a price: On even the steamiest Maryland days, neither of us went near a swimming pool.

How did we know back then what I know to be true now. Whole personalities have been assigned based on a black woman's hair. We read hairstyles like fortune tellers read tea leaves. We anticipate, predict and stereotype based on the trajectory of the strands atop the head in front of us.

Check this out from a columnist friend who penned this piece upon her return from a screening of Chris Rock's docu-flick, "Good Hair.

And here's evidence that it isn't just our hair that battles the standard of beauty. My friend, Mary Sanchez, a columnist at the Kansas City Star, received this from a public relations exec. Dear Mary: I'd love to offer you leading NY facial plastic surgeon, Dr. Sam Rizk, who has masterminded the technique behind Ethnic Cosmetic Surgery, to give a pure NATURAL looking result for African American faces."

I won't bore you with the whole thing. Dr. Rizk's flak mentions that not every nose is created or treated equal ... she includes a bit of anatomy and eugenics in explaining differences in skin and cartilage from race to race... and ends with a cheerful offer to set up an interview with Dr. Rizk and/or one of his patients.

If I attributed all of this to self hatred it would render a judgement not always deserved. Some people want a different nose, or wider eyelids or hair unnaturally straight or curly. I go through periods where I wear my hair natural and other times where I wear it chemically straightened. One of my best discoveries has been cute wigs for when I want to change my hair color or temporarily take on a funky new look. But in some cases, like the YouTube video, it is clear self-hatred is alive and well.

What makes you happy

If you blinked you missed the summer heat and now we're back to the cool, yes cold, days that mark August in the Northwest. No matter, I'm chilling in front of the fireplace watching Nigella show me the essence of Express Cooking through a Lamb with carmelized onion tangine. Doesn't take more than that for me. I just discovered this interesting read on the pursuit of happiness. I'll settle for a lifetime of contentment much like this lazy Saturday.

For proof that around the world people are engaged in the same peaceful pursuit of happiness, check out this wonderful video. Thanks Peggy!

Why Johnny still can't read.

From my colleague at the Seattle Times comes this column on what makes for a successful school. His take is based on the The Money Myth: School Resources, Outcomes, and Equity. I'll have to actually crack the cover of this book to determine whether it rises above the annual cache of books promising to transform education.

Yesterday, I spent the morning at an elementary school in an affluent Seattle neighborhood watching a teacher teach reading to third-graders. This teacher is touted as being one of the best at unlocking the doors in the brain that lead to reading fluency. The bulk of academic problems begin with trouble reading, which compounds academic problems down the road.

This class was so hard for me to watch in part because I read well and I learned to read early. I never had to go through the building blocks of reading and trying to do that now is like an architect trying to tell you how they built a building. Unless you went through every step, you don't know. One thing I learned is that the biggest predictor of reading success is having good sight memory (you see a word once and remember it from then) and having high phonemic awareness, knowing the sounds letters make.

Later in the morning I met a former architect who quit her job to volunteer full time as a reading tutor at the school. Watching her pull apart the building blocks of reading to get to the origins, the way kids learn the sound of ph or what it means when they see ck at the end of a word, gives me hope for improving America's literacy rates.

First tooth, first mugging, say what???

A paen to raising children in the city begins this way: First shave, first concert, first kiss, first smoke — they’re all teenage rites of passage, right up there with bar mitzvahs, quinceanaras and Sweet 16 parties.
But when you raise your kids in the city, there’s another to add to the list: First mugging.

Makes you want to run, not drive trailed by a moving van, to the nearest suburban enclave. But the New York Times piece has more to say.

Including these four words that made me lol, if only because last night I had the ultimate suburban experience as my son and I walked one of his friends home, shouting out the names of constellations brilliant in the midnight blue sky and taking turns watching out for coyotes: “Check yourself for ticks.”

Here's a way to enjoy Valentine's Day without the extra calories

Read Bill Buford, Notes of a Gastronome, “Extreme Chocolate,” from the October 29th, 2007 issue of The New Yorker.

I came across this while researching for a Seattle Times editorial arguing that chocolate is recession-proof. Everything you've ever wanted to know about the origin and value of chocolate is in there. Plus, Buford is a good, evocative writer.

The worst sin? Procrastination

I've always felt uneasy but okay with my tendacy to put things off since half of America is right there with me. Put off until tomorrow what you are dreading doing today seems to be our motto. A list of things I plan to do some day clutters my brain and I move things either to the forefront or the back burner, only when I cannot ignore their embarassing presence any longer.

Minutes ago, I found out someone I knew and liked, someone I thought I had all the time in the world to get to know and become friends with, has died. The first thing most of us think of when someone dies is how? We want to make sense of such a permanent occurence. When the death occurs suddenly, we are left speechless and devastated, the loss all the more acute because we had no time to prepare for it. Death hits hard whether you see it coming or not, but the unknowing, versus knowing and steeling oneself, is like a punch to the gut out of nowhere. Perhaps your hands would have flown up to protect yourself, perhaps not, but the reality is you weren't given the option of choosing.

I will pray for this person's family and remember again how there are no coincidences in life, people are placed in our paths for a reason. There is beauty and meaning in every encounter, if only we have the sense to recognize it. Her premature death also reminds me of the imperative to move through life with the understanding that it is fleeting. 

On his deathbed, Michaelangelo told his apprentice, "Draw Antonio, draw Antonio draw, and do not waste time."