dear Drummingbird, well done on posting your first comment so welcome to the site.
By having a parent in the Defense force could mean that you have to move on a regular basis, which can be very disturbing
for the family, especially when you are trying to make friends and once you do this then the family has to move on again,
so it's going to affect your confidence, which actually hasn't been done by yourself, it's just by the circumstances
of your parents job, however once it keeps happening then you unfortunately learn this to be the norm, in other words
'oh no here we go again', so making new friends at your new school is going to make you think 'why should I get close to
somebody because we are probably going to move again'.
This maybe so, however at each school you go to you make friends which you may meet somewhere later in life.
It's so unfortunate that you have a lisp and if you were able to stay in one spot then a speech pathologist would
definitely be able you overcome this, so I would ask one of your parents to take you to the doctor and get a referral to
see a speech pathologist, I'm not sure but some of them may bulk bill, so they won't have to pay, but I maybe wrong here.
Having this lisp is only going to make you very nervous when you have to speak, and I'm so sorry that this is the case,
but generally speaking for me it would be very nervous for me if I had to speak in front of a crowd, and even if
this helps, a professional actor does get nervous before each performance on stage.
At the moment I feel as though you need to have lessons with a speech pathologist, so this would be a great step
forward, and would certainly gain some confidence for you. Geoff.
