I want to share a story about fud jr.
About 5 years ago, my wife and I decided to adopt a child from foster care. We met this young boy just shy of his 3rd birthday. He was born 6 weeks premature and tested positive to cocaine in his system. His birth parents were drug addicts and parental rights were given up at birth.
When we met him, he only had a few words to his vocabulary, since he has moderate to severe hearing loss in both ears and the foster mom who raised him to that point never followed up with any medical care such as hearing aids etc.
There was also substantiated abuse in foster care. He had chipped front teeth and a scar over his eye.
Once we became legal guardians, we had him fitted with hearing aids and tested in the sound booth. The audiologist whispered his name and he looked at the speaker and heard his name for the first time. He never really smiled. He kept his upper lip down to cover his chipped teeth We had new crowns put in and once he got used to that he beamed.
We enrolled him in a preschool for the hard of hearing and total communication. (HH/TC) to learn sign language and language skills.
Now at 8 years old, you would never know he had 2 words in his vocabulary and he's a normal kid who loves reading, math, playing and nearly fluent in ASL.
He made honor roll with a letter from the state capitol congratulating him. We also received a letter from his school administration the other day and he qualifies for Gifted Services.
We live near NASA/Langley and when we drive by and he sees the wind tunnel, he says he wants to Virginia plane doctor (AKA Aerospace engineer)
K. I'm stepping off my soap box...
Thanks for reading <S> fudmukkr
