AT Changes Life for Tommy
Collins
By John M. Williams
Fourteen-year-old Tommy Collins and his mother are
sitting in the Old Country Buffet restaurant in Fairfax, VA. He has just
finished typing on his laptop what he wants for lunch. He hits a button on his
laptop and his mother hears, “Fried chicken. Mashed potatoes. Brown gravy.
Vegetables. Bread and pizza. Two pieces of pizza. Soup. Apple pie and ice
cream.”
His mother smiles and then nods her approval. An excited
Tommy leaves the table and walks to the stand where he picks up a plate,
silverware, then chicken, pizza, stuffing, and the rest of his lunch.
“Tommy’s grown since his grandparents brought him his
augmentative communications device last year,” says his mother, Irene Collins.
Tommy and his mother are vacationing
in the Washington, DC area for 10 days. They have been here for four days. His
father will join him and his wife in two days.
Tommy returns to the table and sits
down. His plate his loaded with food. He gets up immediately and gets himself a
glass of milk and then returns. Irene leaves to get her lunch. Tommy starts
eating, stops and types, “Are you hungry?”
“I am,” I reply.
When Irene returns, I get my lunch.
While eating, Tommy and Irene tells
me Tommy’s story.
Tommy was born with two speech
impediments. He has difficulty pronouncing words starting with w, r, s, p, a, m
and c. For example, wear is pronounced er. Radio is pronounced adio. Slim is
lim. In addition he stutters. Sometimes his stuttering is slight and other times
severe.
Irene says Tommy was late in
starting to speak. He did not speak until he was almost three and a half years
old. His parents took him to speech therapists and a number of different
doctors specializing in voice disorders. Irene says, “They could not find any
medical reason fir Tommy’s silence.”
Tommy and his parents were having
lunch on their patio on July 25, 1993 when he said, “I’m ho, ho, hot.”
His parents were stunned. His father
said in disbelief, “What!”
“I dropped my hot dog. His speaking
was like a scene from the movie the Miracle Worker when Annie Sullivan finally
communicates to Helen Keller,” said Irene.
“I’m ho, ho, hot,” he repeated. His
parents tape recorded his sentence and called their parents and their family
doctor. Tommy said other words that day. Some of them were, “Tommy.” “Hello.”
“Dad.” “Mommy.” “Ball.” “TV.”
The next day, Tommy and his family visited a
speech therapist and a pediatrician specializing in communication disorders.
“No one could pinpoint why Tommy did not speak. All they could say was he was
developmentally delayed,” Irene says.
Tommy started speech therapy lessons
immediately. A year later he entered pre-school. He was speaking then, but he
had not started stuttering. He began stuttering when he was eight-years old
near the end of his second grade year. He started speech therapy immediately.
No one knows why he started stuttering.
Irene stops talking and Timmy begins
typing on his laptop. He types about 25 words per minute. When he finishes, he
hits a button, and I hear, “I was afraid to talk when school began.” His
stuttering gained a strong foot hold on him, and he became withdrawn and
somewhat of a problem child. He would not talk to anyone. Sometimes he did his
homework, and other nights he did not. Sometimes he got into fights.
It took nearly two years of
counseling to persuade Tommy to come out of his shell. He types, “I was
embarrassed to speak. When I stuttered, people looked at me strangely. When I mispronounced
words people stared and laughed. I was angry.”
Tommy isn’t a quitter. Based on the
recommendation of a speech therapist, his parents bought him an augmentative
communication device. He types, “I did not want to use it at first. I believed
it would draw attention to myself.”
His teachers and a few classmates
encouraged him to use it in the classroom. Eventually, he came around and
started using it only in the classroom. At first he used it to give short
answers. Gradually, he started expanding his answers. As his answers lengthened,
his typing speed and accuracy improved, and his confidence improved, so did his
temperament.
“People stopped looking at me
strangely, and started praising me for my answers. I grew,” Tommy says. He grew
so much that he was in a school play in seventh grade, and used his
augmentative device to participate in a minor role. He wrote his lines.
Last year for his 13th
birthday, his grandparents purchased a new augmentative communication device for
him. He says, “It changed my life.” He
uses it in school, when he goes out to restaurants, when he makes telephone
calls and in other communication situations, such as his first date.
His friend Mickey Carlson says,
“Tommy has shown me that his technologies make a big difference in his life.”
He also uses it for speech therapy.
He practices speaking while looking into a mirror. As he speaks he types what
he is saying. “When I hear myself speak without stuttering, I gain confidence
in my speaking ability,” Tommy says.
He says he stutters less now then he
did two years ago and even last year. He stuttered moderately while using a
cell phone. He is more embarrassed over his articulation problem then he is his
stuttering.
Tommy enters an exclusive private
high school in September in New York City. Before he graduates from high
school, his goal is to rid himself of any devices used to help him speak
correctly.
Irene says he believes he will
accomplish his goal and she will assist him. So will her husband.
Tommy praises his augmentative
communication device. It has helped him assimilate into a society of fluent and
distinctly speaking individuals. He encourages other people with speech
challenges to use assistive technology to benefit themselves. He believes
assistive technology increases his independence.
Tommy wants to go to college. He
wants to help disabled people improve their lives as his has improved. He sees
himself as a role model for people with speech disabilities.
John Williams can be reached at
jwilliams@atechnews.com.
|