Right after bringing Kristi home from the hospital, we began to wonder if something wasn't wrong. She never cried, I kept thinking maybe she was deaf. I knew she was aware of my presence in the room, but she just laid there seldom even making a sound. The other thing we discovered was she could not suckle. Since the breast feeding didn't work in the hospital, I tried the bottle, but this was a futile effort at best. We bought every type nipple on the market, but Kristi just could not get enough formula to gain any weight. I started making the holes larger in the nipples, but this made her choke, so I finally started thickening the formula with a little cereal and was now feeding her by a spoon, allowing her time to swallow it.

     As we watched her development that first year we realized just how slow she was. By the time she was a year old, she could barely sit by herself. She wasn't crawling, instead she had learned to roll herself to get where she wanted to go. I began to wonder if she would ever walk at all. I knew all I could do was keep working with her, stimulating her leg muscles and through daily play show her how her legs and arms worked. Finally at 15 months old Kristi took her first steps, only then to figure out she could get around better now by crawling and we started all over again. By 18 months I finally had a child who decided she could walk and then there was no stopping her.

     Kristi never talked much. Her vocabulary consisted on very few words, (no, yes, mama, dada, milk). By the time she was 3 years old she still had no concept of conversation and mostly pointed to what she wanted. She was persistent, even to the point that no matter how hard we tried to get her to talk the more she would tell us no, and continue to point until we would give in. I was very fluent in sign language, but refused to use it in her presence, I was afraid she would start relying on sign language for communication. At this time the local phone company was testing children for speech and hearing. I had Kristi tested and was told to have her retested in one year.

     The following year we had her retested again and they recommended that she be entered into special education. Their test results placed her communication skills at a 1.5 year level and her motor skills very slow too. I took her to Doctor after Doctor but they just told me not to worry that she would catch up. We did enroll her in school right away. I wanted this to be a positive experience for her, so I kept telling her she was my special student, and attended class with her almost everyday so as to make the environment at home as close to that at school, so she might be learn faster. I am sure my efforts paid off, but Kristi still remained in special education until she was in the 6th grade.

     Finally Kristi was old enough that the testing was able to give us a diagnosis. Once all the results were in and a history of her birth and development we came up with a diagnosis of Aphasia. Aphasia is a condition where there is remarkable brain damage. This brain damage can be caused by various things, the major contributor to aphasia is stroke, but it can be caused from trauma, the use of drugs or alcohol during pregnancy, hereditary, or in Kristi's instance lack of oxygen to the brain.
While this condition is considered to be a form of mental retardation, and can effect many areas of the brain many doctors do not recognize it unless there is significant evidence of a stroke. Aphasia can effect speech, thought process, and motor skills, depending on the part of the brain that is effected.

     In 5th grade Kristi came home and stated that she wanted to learn to play the flute. I always have taken the attitude that she could learn anything she set her mind on, so I purchased a flute and went to the school the next day to enroll her in band. The special education teachers told me that I was setting her up for failure, that she would not be able to learn to play the flute. I ignored their remarks and we started on a difficult long process. We spent hours learning each and every note, then she listened as I hummed the note scale, so she could copy the tones on her flute. Now she not only plays the flute, but she also plays the clarinet and piccolo. It was at this point that I began to look more into home schooling her.

     The following year we started the home schooling. With the intense one on one, Kristi began to learn grammar and sentence structure. We have placed a lot of focus on living skills and Kristi has used the many interests she has to make her learning exciting. Since she loves animals, her science has really incorporated this study. She has even been creative with this in order to create a habitat for salamanders. She studied about the different types of salamanders and raised them for three years. Kristi has a real passion for God, so we have incorporated the bible into her reading and memorizing skills. As she has memorized bible verses, she has also discovered that reading the bible almost comes natural and the understanding of what she is reading just seems to follow. She became very interested in the computer so for one of her classes we allowed her to take classes at Web Tech University and she has built her own website. You are welcome to visit Kristi's homepages.

     Though today most people do not even realize that Kristi has any problems unless she gets tired or is having a hard time understanding. Though some of her motor skills are still slow, she is a very active girl, she loves to swim, ice skate, ride bikes, walk and is one great volleyball player. She still struggles with some muscles that didn't develop properly in one leg and might have to wear a brace on that leg as she gets older, but for now she remains as active as ever. Though she does struggle with Asthma.

     Most people don't realize what it is like to have a special child. One of the first things we learned with Kristi is a schedule is a must. Kristi needs to know exactly what time she is to be doing something and exactly how it is to be done. One can't just tell her that we will go to the store in 15 minutes, because this means nothing to Kristi, she needs to be told the exact time, so she can look at the clock and then boy when that time rolls around you better be ready to go. Kristi's understanding of money is not the best. In fact we went through a time where she would give money away rather then have it. We now have her understanding why she needs money and that she should not just give it away. She is now capable of going to the store by herself and buying groceries, so long as she buying something we normally buy. She is beginning to recognize the sales, and is starting to be able to figure out how much change she should get back.

     One might think that with technology the way it is these people should actually have it pretty easy to manage in today's world, but I am here to tell you this is not necessarily so. The one thing that technology has done is placed everything into such categories, for example, here is what happened when we took Kristi to open her first bank account.

     As we sat in the bank and was looking over the different accounts they offered. We discovered an account that we felt would best fit Kristi. It was for children, and taught the concept of money, saving and making wise spending decisions. We made up our mind that this was the account we wanted for her, but because of her age, the computers would not allow her to have it, and the bank had no way to over ride this. This is just an example of how technology has made things very frustrating for people with disabilities comparable to Kristi. There is no way Kristi could call the phone company, pharmacy, power company or most any other business, as so many of them have gone so computerized, that she would not be able to follow the instructions to get to the person she needed to talk to. What we call progress is actually separating a major group in this world.

The painting used to create this set
is called "White Orchids" by T.C. Chiu