The dreaded R

So I've been in an Elementary school in Rowlett this semester, learning about the speech pathologist job in public schools. I've really enjoyed it so far. The kids are so very cute, but the paperwork is absolutely overwhelming. Today I had another interesting experience trying to explain to an 8 year old how to say 'r' sounds. That is a very hard concept! We had out this big model of the mouth, showing her how the sides of the tongue in the back should touch the top of the mouth right beside the teeth and the tongue has to be really tight because otherwise that sounds like a 'w'. Yikes. Little girl didn't get it. Not at allllll. I mean, no freakin wonder it's the hardest sound in the English language! I mean, you try it! Sit there and say "errrrrrr". Now think about where your tongue is and how to describe that to an 8 year old....nearly impossible. And it's so hard to see where she's actually putting her tongue since she's doing it incorrectly. Not to mention that there are 21 different variations of the 'r' sound. That's wayyy too many. We're gonna get it though. We're gonna get it.