về một con khỉ - the developmental specialist never rests

Tôi đã gặp một con khỉ khi tôi đang làm việc tối nay; ông đến với bà ngoại và anh trai, P, để hoạt động tối nay. Tên của ông là B, và cậu bé ta là một cậu bé rất khôn khéo.

I was helping some friends out the other night by keeping kids engaged and happy while their parents were in a meeting. Most of the kids I know speak English pretty well once they're about seven and have had some time in school, but aren't hearing English that much at home before that. I don't have a problem with that. (Believe me, there are educators that do, but my rant about that shall be another blog post.)

Now, I've worked with kids for a million years. OK, I've been taking care of other people's children since 1976, taking care of my sister since 1967. And I'm obsessed with it enough that I got a fancy 30k piece of fabric to put around my neck to prove I could write about it as well. (No, I'm not going to translate my journal articles into Viet. See Professional School Counselor and Psychology in the Schools if you really want to know.) 

The point is that I've watched a few kids grow up, and I do know a thing or two about child development.

B đã một speech delay. This little Monkey Boy that I met has a speech delay. It’s obvious that his auditory processing and comprehension of both Viet and English is quite high, as are his social skills. But he has difficulty with the muscles and other moving parts that make the speech happen. 

This little guy was constantly engaging me and his brother, and toward the end, even other kids - pulling on my arm and pointing at the Sponge Bob concentration cards and making jokes and giggling despite our communication difficulties.

The problem? I don't know Vietnamese and cannot determine if he's been screened/served. Even though I cannot fully assess the child myself, I could, theoretically,  talk to his family about the situation for referral, if we spoke the same language, or if I spoke even a little bit of their language. As it is, I am white and though they would probably respect me, because that is the default Viet to White person mode, there’s no reason why they should trust me. 

I am worried that this little boy will arrive in Kindergarten with absolutely no previous attention to his condition and I have seen how the school systems treat such kids and their families.


This bothers me.

Perhaps I will post later about kids with speech delays who get tracked into special ed. Perhaps I will post later about English Language Learners that get tracked into special ed.  Given that this little boy is an English Language Learner with a speech delay means he is up against a potential double dose of barriers. This bothers me even more.

For now all I can do is keep showing up, keep making a fool of myself because I can’t even freakin pronounce “thank you” properly. Don’t know how long I can continue to grapple with it, but for today I’ll keep holding my thoughts on the prize and maybe someday I’ll understand how this language works.

Afraid of the keyboard

VPS Keys 4.3 is the software that B put on my new laptop for me. And I show my gratitude by never using it, sadly. 


Switching back and forth between English and Viet is challenging, because once you come upon an English word in which there is a repeating vowel (as in "between," above), VPS changes the letters and adds a  little thingy jobby (diacritic, officially) and you get betwên. 


(I like that, though it is not a word in either language. Betwên is a name I might consider for a character: "Priestess Betwên,  from the Fertile Valley of Happy Livestock and Killer Feta bids you welcome.")


In addition to vowels, the letter d is also Doubling Diacritic Dictated, for d sounds like "zuh" and đ sounds like "duh."


So the solution to this dilemma is to become fluent in Vietnamese so I don't have to fall back on English words in the middle of the sentence.


Onward, ever onward.