Kelly Clarkson Reveals How Her Son’s Hearing Issues Impacted His Development

Kelly Clarkson is getting candid about the challenges her son is facing in his development. 

She reveals to People that her 4-year-old son Remington “Remy” Alexander has struggled with speech from a young age, something that was a huge concern for her and husband Brandon Blackstock. “He had a speech problem because he had this ear problem when he was a baby. We didn’t know,” Clarkson shares. 

According to the singer, Remy “spoke as if he was underwater,” which briefly caused her and Brandon to believe he might be “deaf.”

Eventually, the pair took him to a specialist and learned that his ears were “clogged up” with a “ton of wax,” thus causing the muffled hearing. Thankfully, she says this was a “simple” enough problem to fix, but this health issue “pushed him back almost nine months” in not just his speech development, but also his interpersonal skills. 

“We’ve been working really hard with his speech and he’s still doing his speech therapist via Zoom. The big milestone for us is Remy getting to really find out his own personality and his identity, because it’s been frustrating for him to not be able to really vocalize his emotion,” Kelly explains. 

Now, the family is happy to see him making progress after struggling for many months. She says, “The fact that he’s making full sentences now and full-on engaging with us is really a blessing.”

As for the rest of the kids, Kelly jokes her quarantine situation is “kind of nuts,” as she, Remy, daughter River Rose, 5, Brandon and Brandon’s 13-year-old Seth are holed-up in a cabin as they wait out the coronavirus pandemic. She reveals she feels lucky though because they also brought their nanny Allie, who she thinks is “probably about to drive into a lake.” Allie has been a huge help as Kelly continues to be a judge on The Voice and hosts her Kelly Clarkson Show from home.

Jokes aside, she shares, “At the end of the day, I know people who have had coronavirus and I’m just very lucky and we’re very blessed to not have been sick,” she notes. “We keep reminding our kids of that and we keep reminding each other of that. But we definitely have some cabin fever going on.”