Parenting 101 never mentioned this.

Looking at this picture, it's no wonder Rakes is a nervous ball of energy. If you had THAT waiting around the next corner for you YOU'D be a little bit jumpy as well.

For the past few years, however, Ang and I have been increasingly concerned with Rakes' speech. He'd stutter and stammer whenever he was in excitement overload, had a hard time getting the pronunciation of certain letters down and had the weird habit of repeating a certain word about 1,000 times before he could get it out.

By the end of the school year it seemed like he'd gotten it all figured out until about 3 weeks ago, when he suddenly started clucking like a deranged chicken before trying to tell us something when he was amped up. I'm a firm believer in letting kids work stuff out on their own and think that society has been inclined to over medicate and label kids before they really know what is happening, but at this point I'm debating on whether to get him some counseling or take him to Vegas like Tom Cruise did with Dustin Hoffman in "Rainman".

On one hand, he may have some sort of speech impediment.

On the other hand, he could have the ability to count cards and get me out of debt in a 24 hour period so you sort of see my hesitation.

Meh; you can't take it with you so I'll make sure he's OK first.

But I'd bet you $100 we could clean up on the Strip.