Kelly gets to the root of son’s speech problem

One of the biggest worries Kelly Clarkson has had as a mother was confronting the possibility that her son, Remington, may have been born with a hearing impairment.

“He had a speech problem because he had an ear problem when he was a baby. And we didn’t know,” the American pop star related in a recent interview with People magazine.

She and her husband, Brandon Blackstock, eventually discovered that there was substantial congestion deep in the child’s ears.

“We thought, almost, he was deaf because he spoke as if he was underwater,” the singer-songwriter recalled. While the issue wasn’t actually that serious, it did hinder Remington’s speech development.

“We found out that it was something simple, but it pushed him back almost nine months,” she pointed out, adding that it was tough not being able to talk to her child, now 4, the way she had hoped to.

“It has been frustrating for him to not be able to vocalize his emotion. It’s an important thing, and it’s very frustrating for him and us because we can’t communicate all the time,” she said.

But through therapy, Remington has been showing some progress.

“We have been working hard on his speech, and he’s still seeing his therapist via Zoom,” Kelly said. “The big milestone for us is that he’s getting to really find out his own personality and identity.”

Meanwhile, Kelly revealed that she has been crafting new material. And with her in the studio is an unlikely collaborator—her elder child, River.

“She was like, ‘I want to sing.’ So, she went in the studio and started singing all this random stuff, so she might be featured on my next album,” she said of her 6-year-old “crazy cool” daughter.

River is now at an age where she has been starting to pick up on hints that her mom is a celebrity.

“She’s very much into, like, ‘Why do they want your picture? Why do they want you to sing? Why don’t they want my picture? Why can’t I sing?’ I’m like, ‘Oh, Lord,’” Kelly quipped. “She’s very passionate and can drive me insane. But I don’t want to break that spirit in her because it’s going to do her well later in life.” INQ