Naturally, thismademe verydepressedbecause Iwas the one at home all the time with him, and so it was a very tough time for me. And then finally, the speech therapists started coming home when he was two, and then he terminated when he was three. So they put him in school, on the early childhood program at three, and they startedwith speech therapy at school. What I used to do was, I would take him to school, taking him for therapy first before he went to the classroom, and then I would come home, and pick himup when school closed. So he did therapy for five years until second grade. And then he graduated. The awesome thing was that, although he was nonverbal for a good five years, Kendall taught himself to DJ in so many languages. In Latin, German, French, and Spanish. The little boy loved music right from the womb. One day, he pulled his dad all the way to the computer and pointed at some DJ equipment, and so his dad got it for him. And that’s how it started at the age of two. By the time he graduated from KG, he started talking. He started talking because he found himself through music. His favorite thing to say in the Akan language is ‘wo saa akolaa wei.’ So that’s how Kendall became verbal. The good thing about the whole situation is that my husband and I worked very hard together on his speech, instead of allowing the experience to strain our relationship.Whenever Iwent for speech therapy sessions, his dad joined via video calls with us. So we did the sessions together. Even on days when he was at work, I would teach him all I had learned when he returned home. Little by little, Kendall started learning; he began reading. You won’t believe it, but he won his school’s spelling bee twice. 21 The Birthday Journal
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