word choice practice
As Kevin and I sit down at the bar to eat our salads, Adam suddenly announces, “word choice practice,” as though it’s a track and field event and we have just found our seats in the bleachers to watch.
I’ve noticed that he likes to have at least one witness for this process, which has been part of Adam’s routine all Summer, someone to test his choices and lead him in the right direction when he strays. This is something I understand; I know I need a shepherd, too.
Kevin and I glance at each other and smile, knowing this means that Adam’s verbal repetition of his work will provide the background for our lunch.
Recent data suggests that apraxia of speech, which experts have generally categorized as a rare disorder, impacts about 65% of individuals with Autism. Our son Adam fits into that slight majority, which means that he struggles to get the words in his brain to come out of his mouth. Speech happens to be a far more complex process than most of us need ever to consider, involving countless neural connections in the mind to access and select and use appropriate words and build sentences, as well as connections that activate the vocal chords and the muscles required to create sound and to articulate syllables. Some of these connections in Adam’s mind just don’t work, and so, we hope and pray for new and better pathways for communication, knowing God gave our brains the amazing ability to regenerate and re-create resourcefully. Adam needs a new mind the way I need a new heart.
Kevin and I have walked through this with Adam so long now that we have memorized the look on his face when he starts reaching into his mind for words and keeps coming up empty, as though the words he needs sit on the ground just on the opposite side of a very high wall, and he can’t quite figure out how to scale that wall and feels uncertain about whether the effort will really be worth it. There are days when our hearts break over his effort and his frustration. Sometimes, Adam will finally, angrily, only say, “No,” in response to our efforts to start a conversation with him, but on better days, when he’s trying to pronounce a word and the syllables keep getting jumbled on his lips, he’ll turn to me and grin, laughter bubbling out over his mistake.
At the end of this school year, Adam will graduate from Dynamic Opportunities, the amazing, project-based middle and high school for “uniquely-abled” students where both of our kids with Autism have thrived and grown, and it remains to be seen whether he will be able to earn his high school diploma or a certificate of completion. In either case, we’ll be supremely grateful and excited for Adam, but in order to make our best effort for him, we’ve been tutoring him all Summer with help from one of his teachers. One of the biggest hurdles standing between Adam and that high school diploma happens to be a section on a state test that requires Adam to choose the appropriate words to complete a series of sentences. So, I’ve made Adam worksheets for practice, offering him a small word bank for each sentence that includes several right responses and some wrong ones, just as he’ll see on the test.
“On Friday…On Friday…On Friday…On Friday…On Friday…On Friday,” Adam begins, his voice fading every time he says, “day.”
I turn to watch his face, because I can’t decide if the repetition happens because the words get gummed-up in Adam’s mind or if he mentally tests his word choices before saying them aloud or if his use of echolalia as a sensory coping strategy just makes him want to say the words repetitively before he moves on with the rest of the sentence. He bows his head over the paper in front of him, staring at it with some intensity, and it looks as though his lips still move, just lightly shaping the ghosts of words after he has stopped speaking aloud.
This could only be what speech apraxia looks like in real time, because for years, Adam has used sound when necessary to “grease” his own neural pathways so that words will finally glide out with the sounds he makes. For a long time, I have plucked Adam’s intentional phrases out of this verbal detritus like precious treasures that would otherwise be unrecognizable.
“On Friday, I will have…On Friday, I will have; On Friday, I will have; On Friday, I will have…”
He repeats those two phrases so many times I lose count. Kevin and I munch on lettuce and give each other crazed looks. ‘Have’ is a good choice for the blank, although he could have also chosen ‘go to’ or, less preferably, ‘ride to.’ Adam has an endoscopy on Friday; for three weeks, I have used a word choice worksheet as a social story to help prepare him. Adam has learned, as he has considered his sentences, that word choice, the agency to communicate with specific care, is not a thing to be minimized. He knows that ‘I won’t eat breakfast’ conveys something very different than ‘I can eat breakfast,’ ‘I want to eat breakfast,’ or ‘I need to eat breakfast.’
Writers understand this, how a specific word can at the same time fractionally and significantly change a statement, and so, in any good survey of literature, a teacher will train their students to ponder why a writer has chosen one word over another, when many words exist that might be used to convey a similar idea. An apt word can support or grasp, strengthen or encourage or heal, while a weaponized word can wound or disfigure, weaken, defeat or destroy. The wisdom literature of Scripture puts it this way, “The words of the wicked lie in wait for blood, but the mouth of the upright delivers them.” I have felt, dark in my own heart like a dagger, the kinds of words that lie in wait, and I have experienced the life-giving force of words that have lifted me up.
On Sunday, using Words written by the Holy Spirit through James, the brother of Jesus, our teacher challenged and reminded us not to sin in what we say. James did not always believe that Jesus was the Christ. I sat there thinking he probably had some regrets about things he’d said before he believed, just as I have plenty of regrets about my own careless words. In fact, James probably felt his own idle words burning when he wrote of the tongue, “How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell.”
I thought about Adam and his apraxia of speech, how he labors over his choice of words, testing and repeating, testing and repeating, and I began to wonder if a good many of us aren’t also afflicted similarly, at least in some spiritual sense, because we struggle to choose our best words for each other while remaining dangerously unaware of the challenges we face. Adam at least possesses continual awareness of his trouble, and I’m thinking now God has handed me a greater awareness of mine, for James wrote that, “if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.”
Maybe, as a spiritual practice, I could stand to spend a little more time doing word choice practice the way that Adam does, that’s what I’m thinking, as I watch my son’s mouth carefully forming and re-forming the ghosts of words before he’ll venture to say them. I need a re-forming of my heart to catalyze a reformation of my words.
“On Friday, I will have a…On Friday, I will have a…On Friday, I will have a…” He looks so intent, bent whispering over his paper, his fingers going white while he restrains his pencil, holding it poised to write. That’s gentleness, I’m thinking, that restraint of power, that restraint of his tongue.
So, what is the way of gentleness for me? I can’t help but wonder how many of my words I’d say if first I formed and re-formed them and tasted them and tested them again. What if before speaking I repeatedly pondered whether I had chosen the right words, whether my words would build someone up or be of any benefit to those who listen? What if I took the time to consider how one word conveys more of God’s love and grace than another? What if I paused and thought and prayed about what I might say, about the Spirit guarding and shepherding my speech, for as long as Adam seems to be thinking about this one sentence?
“On Friday, I will have a……doctor’s appointment,” Adam says finally, the last words sliding, the word ‘appointment’ spoken so softly it comes out as a whisper. He nods, bends down closer over the paper like he’s praying, and begins again. “On Friday, I will have a…doctor’s appointment. On Friday, I will have a doctor’s appointment.” This last one he says, finally, with some confidence, and then looks up to catch my eye, to see if I approve. “Yes,” I say, smiling right into his sky-blue eyes, “you do.”
