One thing I remember very clearly (again, this was 40 years ago) was that I was encouraged to read books way above my age/grade. I was put in an advanced reading group in school for no other reason than to get me to tackle more complex vocabulary and usage, so that in real life, I’d have way more word choices available to me, to express myself. This, I’m told, was so that I could A) avoid certain phonetics that tripped me up because now I had a larger vocabulary, and B) feel less like I was *forced* to use the phonetics that tripped me up, because now it was an *option*, which helped me to more easily move through those phonetics and keep going with what I was trying to say. I hope I’m explaining this correctly. I think it boiled down to giving me a sense of command over language, rather than feeling threatened or imprisoned by it.