Maurizio Changed His Stars

Maurizio is a very happy, tremendously smart, and amazingly curious child. Although he has always been very affectionate, he didn’t speak more than 10 words at the age of 3. He wasn’t interested in socializing with others and had the most heartbreaking meltdowns because he couldn’t communicate what he wanted. His preschool began using an AAC device to help him with his communication. With his success at school, he began bringing a school owned device home to meet his communication needs. I was enormously skeptical about this until shortly after, I started noticing how Maurizio began naming a large amount of things I didn’t even know he knew. His meltdowns were less frequent and he seemed… happier. I spoke with his teacher and she explained how the device worked and how well he was able to navigate the device to communicate. Although the school continued to send the device back and forth from home to school, we wanted to continue with the magic by owning our very own device. We couldn’t afford the AAC device. Maurizio’s school shared information about the Sophie’s Run Foundation and they came to our rescue. Sophie’s Run is an amazing group of people who wanted to make it possible for my kid to continue learning, growing, and communicating. Now Maurizio begins his day by getting out of bed with his “words” in his hands. Sometimes I even find Maurizio exploring the words in his device and repeating them. He really wants to be able to communicate! It has been a year since Maurizio was introduced to his AAC device and his vocabulary has skyrocketed from speaking one word to 5-6 word sentences! I believe he now has over a 1000 words that he knows. He was able to learn colors, shapes, animals, and numbers. Sometimes he is even able to speak in complete sentences and share his feelings. We continue working to help Maurizio and we are more than grateful for the donation Sophie’s Run contributed to changing his own stars and what the future holds for him.