Not long ago, I said “Eliza, you had a seizure. It was super scary.” My 4-year-old girl brought me a scissor and said “I have my tiny scissor. It’s not scary!” My response was “No. no. no… Seizure. Seizure. Not Scissor.” Well actually I couldn’t tell the difference. I was saying the same sound the whole time.

When Ethan was 2-3 years old, I read Eric Carl’s book called ‘Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?’ In the book, there is a page with ‘hippopotamus’. For more than one year, I pronounced it like ‘hi-po-pa-tae-i-ma-u-s.’ Finally one day in the car, John quietly said ‘it is actually called ‘hɪpəpɒtəməs’. After one whole year!

The hardest vowel sound I had to master was ‘leave vs live’. When the elevator isn’t moving, in English we say ‘we aren’t moving’. Fun one was ‘Chopstick vs Chapstick’.

You name it. Never ending story…