When You Listen to the Voices of the Non-Speaking — Misty Nodine Coaching

We have a strong but erroneous tendency to equate not being able to speak with lack of intelligence. When a child is growing up and their speech does not develop, we tend to make the assumption that the child is stupid. This is reinforced by the fact that our normal intelligence tests (IQ) tend to […]

When You Listen to the Voices of the Non-Speaking — Misty Nodine Coaching

I also found this blog post through WordPress Reader. I couldn’t figure out how to reblog/share it until the next day, when I figured out how to it with the previous post I reblogged. And it’s taken me a few days to figure out how to (and that I could) add my own words to explain why I’m reblogging it. (Or at least I hope that’s the right term).

I’ve always loved the t-shirt from People First that says “Not being able to speak doesn’t mean not having anything to say.” (It also came as stickers and a poster, if I recall). Having been on the other side of the intelligence and verbal ability stereotype, I can say it’s just as frustrating to be obviously intelligent, and yet struggle with verbal language, especially when written language has always been a strength. Having been forced into speech, without really understanding it, having had so many physical and cognitive issues with it, yet having no support with these (and my parents having no support, or even professional understanding), because “someone with your intelligence can’t possible have issues with speech”, especially decades ago, when understanding of speech and language disabilities was limited to “complete lack of language” or “pronounciation difficulties” … was needless to say, difficult.

Being an academically talented teenager, who had just discovered language could be used expressively, but who still couldn’t grasp that speech could be used similarly, was not particularly well received either. I could go on, but I’ve posted earlier posts on my struggles with speech and language, so you can go read those if you want to hear more about my experiences on those topics. Being in university, and still having only minimal interactive speech capabilites was no easier.