Children’s Book Author Writes About Her Grandson’s Speech Journey

Transcript

Maya Chupkov:

 We are so close to meeting the goal of our crowdfunding campaign for Rock of Hope, a documentary that is being produced by a team of all people who stutter, including myself, the film is going to give hope to the millions of people who stutter worldwide. It centers on a underrepresented voice in the stuttering community.

And walks us through his journey through incarceration, homelessness, and rebirth. We have 16 more days left to raise around 5, 000. Help us get there by making a pledge today at tinyurl.com/rockofhopefilm. If you can't support men monetarily at this time, that's totally okay because what you can do is just simply click follow on the campaign.

When we reach 250 followers, we unlock creator benefits. So that's almost as helpful, um, as making a pledge. You can also use our toolkit. It would be amazing to get this crowdfunding campaign out there to as many people as possible. So we create a toolkit that makes it super easy to copy paste and share it out either in an email. social media, LinkedIn, all that stuff. So it's a really helpful toolkit that you can find the link in our show notes and on our website, proudstutter.org. And if you want to get involved in the film, there are a ton of volunteer opportunities, and if you want to get involved, you can email me at info@proudstutter.org. Um, and yeah, there's a lot of excitement to come. This is only the beginning. So the URL one more time to support the film is tinyurl.com/rockofhopefilm. Go there to learn more and support today.

I'm Maya Chupkov and I'm a woman who stutters. Welcome to proud stutter, a show about stuttering and embracing verbal diversity in an effort to change how we talk about it. One conversation at a time.

Welcome back to proud stutter. I wanted to provide a quick note about today's episode. As you may know, all the interviews we do for the show are almost all remote. And for today's episode, You may hear the occasional dog barking in the background and some rustling of papers Anyway, it's a great discussion. And I love seeing my library grow as people send me books about stuttering or other speech disabilities that You know, they want to share with me. And that is exactly the topic of today's discussion. Um, today we are talking about a new children's book that centers on a young boy with a speech disability and his journey to becoming the president of the United States. I'm here today with the author, the boy in the story's grandmother, Carol Labov. Carol, welcome to the show.

Carol Lebov:

I'm glad to get the opportunity.

Maya:

Thank you, like, to you and Barry for, um, reaching out, um, and, um, like sending me the book. I love the book so much. So just wanted to say that. Yeah, it was certainly a labor of love. I would, um, the book actually goes through, um, what we went through as grandparents and parents and all those. People that you see in there are pretty representative of how Laura and Trevor is her husband and Cooper look and Grayson, my husband. Yes. And, um, so we wanted to, you know, create a book that was just something that could help others.

Yeah. I'm so glad you found me and found the podcast and yeah, now you're here.

Carol:

Well, I, I listened to a couple of other, um, interviews you did. So that was cool. And then I saw that you have the comic book. And so I've ordered those. I don't know if you, if you see who orders and what, but yeah, I ordered the comic books, uh, because I thought that would be great for my daughter to read Cooper.

Maya:

Oh my gosh. I'm so excited. Yeah. No, yeah. I, I usually, um, look at all the orders in batches. So I'm really excited that you're That you ordered one and yeah, all the proceeds will go towards this documentary we're making so and just go going a little into how we met Carol and Barry actually first reached out to me over email. To, um, make me aware of this amazing book and they sent me a copy and I just loved it so much. I think it's so important to have stories like this out there. Um, so, you know, it can be read to young kids who might be experiencing different issues and also for parents to, you know, like make sure there is this awareness and that they're not the only.

One's that, that struggling, like a lot of parents have, you know, that have children who have a lot of these different types of challenges. So Carol, I'd love for you to start and just talk about your, your, your, your, your grandson Cooper and, um, and what inspired you to write the book?

Carol:

Well, Cooper's the. My second grandson, and um, his, my first grandson was Grayson, who is currently nine, and Cooper is now six. And, um, so this, uh, Grayson did not have any speech delay. And so then when Cooper was born, we didn't even think about it at first. And, um, he, you know, he, it basically became obvious after a while that he wasn't, you know, enunciating words or whatever, like we had, experience with Grayson. And so we thought, well, maybe it's because Grayson talks too much.

He's just taking the words out of Cooper's mouth. And, um, so we went with that for a while. There's a picture in there, um, in the book that has Grayson and Cooper sitting on a couch together. And, um, he called him Pooper Cooper. And, um, you can see on the next page, you know, Cooper pointing and going, Oh, So we thought, huh, well, he's just pointing and making sounds.

And we thought, huh. So Laura started getting my, Laura's my daughter and his mom, Cooper's mom. I think Cooper began, um, speech therapy around age two. She came to the house and she would bring these little toys, um, and, and work with him to, you know, here's a jeans and blue and things like that. Um, he went to a nursery school and.

And he did well, but the kids, he got very quiet and he wouldn't interact with the other kids very well, he became an observer, you know, and he, the kid, other kids, sometimes he, he would cry because they, they said, well, we don't want to play with you because you were, you can't tell us, we don't understand what you're saying, so we don't want to play with you.

And that was very hurtful for him. be much better at home. But at school, he was scared to interact because what, you know, what am I going to be judged by? So what they eventually um, diagnosed him out because I said, well, what is this? And it's basically articulation because they could tell that he understood everything, but it was the articulation that he lacked, uh, specifically words with S M combinations, you know, smoke, uh, other things, stray, things like that would have, that's a particular problem. Um, but it wasn't until he got unconditional love everywhere. I think at school during COVID of course, they wanted to mask the kids. And even down to age, you know, two, they were masking kids. And, and when you're, when you have a speech problem, you can't see the faces of people. It's very, very difficult for kids with speech problems to, you know, look at adults and all they see is this little, you know, and it's, it doesn't help at all. Um, so COVID was in particular, a very, challenging time. So we switched him to a different school, one that wasn't going to mask and down to that age. And we're in Indiana. So basically they have certain things that they Indiana required, you know, schools to do, but it was kind of up to the area you were in.

So he, um, uh, he grew and grew there at, I would say, but much better, much better. Now he's in kindergarten. The kids there, uh, take their cue from the teachers and the principal and they, they have an acceptance. of kids, you know, how to treat others with love. And so that's been probably the biggest thing that we've noticed about his, his journey.

Maya:

What was it like, you know, like writing the book, like, how did that come about? Did you like, when did you have the idea? Who did you work with on it?

Carol:

I had the idea, probably He was maybe four and my husband, uh, look at what I wrote and my process of writing is kind of like, I get, I get like, um, get on a roll and then I would, you know, it only took me actually, you know, I would say a week to write it. However, then it was getting it illustrated. I love that. To find a local guy, he would work on certain portions. And then we made At the local International House of Pancakes and then we, um, yeah, we would, I would say, well, I like this part, you know, like, you know, maybe you need to do this or that, you know, so, and his, uh, his name is in the book. It's Alan McLuckie and, um, turns out he has a black belt in karate and martial arts. Oh, wow. It's very interesting. So you can see his picture in the back of the book. You can see, uh, Cooper's picture is there.

Maya:

And how did you decide on the theme?

Carol:

We decided on the dinosaur theme because of the Flintstone, um, you know, thing. He's a cave boy. And he would, you know, he'd substitute words. You'd point at something and say, Oose! And he meant juice, that kind of thing. So, so we, Illustrated all that. And you can see on the back of the book, it's Cooper. That's Cooper on a dinosaur. Yeah. And throughout the book, he's holding different dinosaurs.

He, we have a huge paintings there in our house that he did and, and we, so we have this big painting, this one here on the back, and then there's one with Grayson on a dinosaur too. So we have those.

Maya:

Oh my gosh. I love that. And how did you make the connection between this Flintstones theme, dinosaur theme, to the kind of character arc of being, becoming the president? Like, you know, one of the things we thought of when I was writing the book was that, you

Carol:

People always have their kid and they think they're going to be the best kid in the whole world and maybe they'll someday be the President of the United States and that's I know how we went from there because how can the President of the United States be, be a stutterer? How could you do that? And, um, so we basically needed to show how he could become, um, the President. And one of the things we thought was really unique and, and, He's a great listener because that's how he learns more than anything. And, um, so I really put that in the book quite a bit, you know, where he's talking with teachers. And they're, you know, he's thinking, and he never speaks without having quickly, you know, having way what he's saying. And we found that that's something, especially with Cooper, um, and his teachers will say for him, he needs to weigh what he's going to think, what he's going to say in order for him to speak. to come out clearly on it. And, um, so that's what he does. You know, he still does, you know, um, na na, I do this, wait, oh, and he has to really wants to be perfect when it comes out. So he's really working hard and perhaps, but don't want to surprise him in like in class and say, Cooper, what do you think? Uh, he, that makes him very uncomfortable, but if he's given time, he raises his hand that shows he means. He already has evaluated what he's going to say, now he's going to do it. That'd be a great trait in a politician.

Maya:

So I know you have a 501c3 attached to the book where all proceeds goes. Either into the non profit or good causes. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Carol:

Um, so any profits from the book or any sales actually are going to be in that, in that organization. And we will donate the proceeds to a cause. And it would be for speech therapy, to help kids who can't afford speech therapy, that kind of thing. Because it's pretty expensive. I mean, pretty expensive. And um, so we thought, and you know, the insurance pays so, so much, but after a while they say, well, you're done.

Maya:

You've had your so many sessions or whatever. Is there anything else you wanted to share that we haven't covered yet?

Carol:

Well, I think the one thing I point out is that, you know, my husband and I, and Laura, whatever, we didn't do the book for money or profit. We did it to help others and to You know, because you're kind of as a parent or grandparent thrown into this and you don't know what, you don't know how it got there, you know, and you don't know what to do for sure and slowly you turn to the school system and other therapists and things like that. So I think if people, and I've had grandparent, other grandparents come up to me and say, I, this is so like what we just experienced, you know, my grandson was born and he has, you know, and so it really touched hearts. I feel for those who are in the situation and they don't know what to do and they're doing their best. And I think maybe COVID, and I don't know if you've, I've heard this, that it um, it was harder. It created more speech delays and disabilities than, than would it normally have been. And I do want to see it put into more libraries and things like that. I can give, I've given a few talks to book, book, book. Book groups and things like that, you know, but most book groups are for all adults, but it's the adults who have to, you know, spearhead this, this effort to get their kids, you know, some help.

Maya:

And that's it for this episode of proud stutter. This episode of proud stutter was produced and edited by me, Maya Chupkov. Our music was composed by Augusto Diniz and our artwork by Mara Ezekiel and Noah Chupkov. If you have an idea or want to be part of a future episode, visit us at www. proudstutter.com. And if you like the show, you can leave us a review wherever you are listening to this podcast. Want to leave us a voicemail? Check out our show notes for the number to call in. More importantly, tell your friends to listen too. Until we meet again, thanks for listening. Be proud and be you.