Meet Nyles: Patient Success Story

Nyles had a rough start to his young life and found himself in foster care; he was placed with loving parents who quickly made him part of their forever family through adoption. His parents noticed speech/language concerns that frequently caused Nyles to be frustrated and led to negative behaviors, such as self-harming and resistance to following verbal directions. Children in foster care have an uphill battle to face, and Nyles was already struggling with delayed/atypical communication development, so his parents knew they needed to seek the guidance of a professional. Nyles first met Marc (speech-language pathologist) when he was four years old, and not only did these two make the perfect pair during speech therapy, but Nyles gave Marc a run for his money during their competitive Uno games!

Nyles’s success in speech therapy was a team effort all around – Marc used creative strategies to address Nyles’s individual needs and encourage participation, and his parents worked diligently to implement the home exercises that Marc provided into their daily routines. Although he continues to struggle to communicate as effectively and efficiently as same-aged peers due to fluency, language, and articulation disorders, he is now able to better express his wants/needs, which has drastically decreased his self-harming behaviors and improved his ability to understand and follow verbal requests by his caregivers.

Nyles’s parents are not only grateful that their little boy now has the tools to no longer get so frustrated by his difficulties to communicate that he hurts himself, but that Marc has helped Nyles come out of his shell and develop self-confidence, so that everyone can see what a kind and gentle little boy he is. He is able to communicate using longer sentences and in structured conversations as well as repair communication breakdowns instead of shutting down using the strategies Marc has taught him and his parents. Nyles is now flourishing, and his personality is beginning to show more with his love for learning, reading books, and playing outside with his younger sibling. As he grows, Nyles and his family have become aware of another communication concern, his stuttering, but they know they will tackle this challenge, too, with the support of Marc!