Kairos Speaks: A Journey from Non-verbal to Verbal
Apr 3, 2023 It all started when I received a call from Kairos’ Montessori teacher. “Kairos can’t come back to this school, he doesn’t sit still & maybe he needs to be evaluated.“ The words no parent wants to hear about their 2-year-old baby.
Shortly after Kairos’ evaluation, we were told that he may be on the spectrum but he should be given a year to monitor his development. Kairos was always a loving and affectionate toddler but never spoke. No “mama”, no “dada”, nothing. He would pull and push us to the kitchen when he wanted something to eat and no matter how much we prompted speech, he would not say a word. My husband and I were devastated.
We worked virtually with a developmental therapist during the pandemic but saw no signs of progress. The clock was ticking, the pandemic was coming to an end, a few months shy of Kairos’ 3rd birthday and anxiety kicked in. Anxious and desperate to help, I started putting together an intense speech plan for Kairos. I started following speech therapists on social media, set up meetings with speech pathologists, bought a ton of craft material & downloaded Speech Blubs on Kairos’ tablet.
Diagnosis day arrived, and indeed, Kairos was diagnosed with Autism. We were overwhelmed with sadness & felt defeated, but we knew we were chosen to be Kairos’ parents for a reason so we put on our capes and recommitted to his growth.
We worked hard every day on narrating every aspect of our lives to Kairos. We made cutouts of words and conversational sentences. We taught Kairos how to spell his name. We waited minutes at a time while prompting Kairos to form basic 2-word sentences like “want juice” before giving him what we thought he wanted. Finally, we accessed a therapist on Speech Blubs who helped us build a learning plan, we deleted most of the other apps, no more useless games. Some called us crazy, we called it intentional programming. This was our way of saying “At least we did everything we could”.
We remained consistent and finally, just a few weeks before Kairos’ 3rd birthday, he blurted, “JUICE.” A small light shined bright at the end of the tunnel. He gave us hope to keep prompting and to keep pushing forward. We got the whole family in on the game plan. We ensured that whatever he was doing in speech therapy, we did it at home. We consistently coordinated with the speech therapist at school and his private speech therapist to ensure Kairos was learning the same methods.
Words turned into two-word sentences, two-word sentences turned into three-word sentences and with the help of the Speech Blubs app Kai started reading. We set goals to help him read one to two stories daily and his progress quickened rapidly. Kairos started repeating most of the words and sentences that we had been saying throughout the previous year. It was and still is amazing to see and hear.
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It’s been 18 months since his speech journey began and we remain intentional, consistent, and positive about his journey.
Our message to other parents is to remain intentional and consistent. Seek knowledge and be an advocate for your child. As the clock continues to tick, what goals are you setting for your little this year?
Follow Kairos on IG at @kairosspeaks to keep up with Kairos’ speech journey. For personal questions, comments, interviews, or features send an email to kairosspeaks@gmail.com.
Checkout Kairos’ kids’ book on Amazon:
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