It is hard to believe how quickly time has gone by. From the start, it felt like forever—and it was overwhelming to think of the rigorous labor ahead. Frequently, I report that Matt is talking better. While true, perspective is essential. If I had rated his speech and language abilities on a scale of 0 to 10 at his discharge in September, he would have scored a 1.0. Now, seven months later, his score might have reached a 1.5. Better, yes, but we were still miles from the destination.

Matt’s fight to reclaim his voice was a seamless collaborative effort. This intensive undertaking involved twice-weekly speech therapy sessions with his therapist, Jessica, supplemented by daily home activities. This holistic approach integrated speech proficiency, language processing, organization, and sentence structure.

We’ve celebrated the early "yes/no" victories, but the plateau between recognition and expression has been steep. For months, when asked whether he wanted pancakes or eggs, he could only say "option one." As much as we prompted him to say the actual word—pancakes—he simply couldn’t. We’ve pushed for complete phrases: “I would like pancakes,” and later, challenged him to recall what he had eaten. We have even addressed his pitch, encouraging a deep voice rather than a falsetto. His attempts aren’t always successful, and occasionally quite funny. Fortunately, he still has a sense of humor and doesn’t mind laughing along with us.

Matt’s ability to start and sustain a conversation, and our difficulty deciphering his words, remain ongoing problems. Usually, we have to "prime the pump." We’ve found that asking open-ended questions or suggesting a theme for him to expand upon encourages him to vocalize more. For example, once when I asked him to talk about something he saw in our backyard, Matt identified Ryan’s old tree fort and reminisced—with pauses and glitches—about all the fun the kids used to have playing on the zip line. Mike and I deeply appreciated these random moments of natural give-and-take. A different strategy to enhance dialogue has been to focus on his passions, such as his dancing career or his work in computer engineering. Matt also explained that it was easier to talk when it was part of a natural exchange rather than a specific question that might make him get tongue-tied.

By April, Matt had started the exacting task of reading short stories aloud to us. It was a massive endeavor. Silent reading is a unique act of receiving and understanding, while reading aloud forces the brain to comprehend and speak simultaneously—two heavy gears that don’t always align. As he read, the mechanism often slipped. He commonly missed small connecting words like on, if, of, or in, or randomly swapped suffixes like -s, -ed, or -ing. Since he couldn’t sound out words phonetically, he lacked a 'backup strategy' to decode unfamiliar text. Instead, he relied completely on a mental inventory of words recognizable on sight. Therefore, until he could re-establish phonics, he basically had to rebuild his vocabulary from the ground up.

Unfortunately, whether Matt read silently or aloud, it was difficult to assess his comprehension because he couldn’t convey what he remembered or understood. Reading familiar books like Harry Potter’s The Goblet of Fire gave him a small advantage in recalling some of the details. Like so many things, it was a starting point—an additional way to encourage him to verbalize.

Matt learned to express himself with greater clarity and more often during our weekly long-distance family Google chats. It wasn’t easy for him to get a word in edgewise. This required organizing his ideas and speaking up quickly enough to interject his opinions in the briefest of lulls before someone else went off on a separate tangent—no small feat, but he managed—sometimes.

Long ago, Matt’s PopPop introduced our children to the ‘Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits’ rhythm. It became a family tradition to rap the first part of the jingle on the interconnecting wall between bathroom and kitchen; the person on the receiving end was expected to tap the two-beat finish. I had been rapping on that wall for several weeks with no response, but I kept at it. Then, one glorious day, I got a hearty reply. I stood there and smiled. It was more than just a silly jingle—it was a way to communicate, share a memory, and convey our love when words were still out of reach.

A promising sign emerged related to his passions. In early May, Megan and I had played a pseudo-Disney trivia game with him. His clues were skeletal: "boy" or "girl" and the release year. To get anywhere, we had to play twenty questions. But by August, the progress became undeniable.

During our drive up to Rocky Pine Island for a summer vacation, Matt and I listened to a book on CD. His speaking impressed me; I could hear him over the drone of the car without leaning toward him, and we had a nice give-and-take conversation. Once we arrived at the cottage, that same self-assurance carried over to the deck. While playing Disney Trivia with Megan’s friends, Matt rattled off an array of nuances: gender, person or animal, sidekick, a good person or villain, and precise release dates. Everyone quickly realized Matt was the resident expert. The group was hard-pressed to stump him.

This "Disney training" and increased vocal strength were precursors to the year's most significant milestone: Megan and Ben’s wedding on September 7, 2019.

Two months later, family and friends continued to praise Matt for this and other skills he had developed, such as using a compound (if/then) phrase in conversation. Just as fuel injection augments an engine's performance, these moments boosted Matt’s resolve to keep fighting.

While the journey from a 1.0 to a 1.5 might seem insignificant to an outsider, those few tenths of a point represented a world of difference: the return of laughter, the ability to initiate a thought, and the boldness to stand before a crowd. This slow, steady reacquisition of language, one syllable at a time, was the reclaiming of Matt’s place in the conversation of life.

© 2026, Sarah Watkins