A Christmas Miracle

Our son started stuttering when he was about 3 years old. Back then we thought those were baby steps towards fluency; only now we realize we were in states of denial. When he started preschool at age of 5 (he is September born), his speech kept deteriorating by every passing week. He was being taunted by his peers, misunderstood by his most needed advocate (teacher), turning belligerent – all leading to essentially unintelligible speech. After discussions with his school’s speech therapist, who indicated that getting therapy at public schools was a long and drawn-out process, we finally decided to get professional help. His school’s therapist recommended Mr. Tim Mackesey, and he turned out to be an invaluable and outstanding therapist.

Our son bonded instantly and extremely well with "Mr. Tim". During the first appointment in early December, Mr. Mackesey observed our son closely and graded him as a severe stutterer; however, he gave an optimistic prognosis and shared with us few tips to help him out at home. Mr. Tim held sessions with our son twice a week in December during the Christmas holidays. During these sessions, he kept our son motivated and engaged in activities that involved associating verbal activities with toys and board games; these sessions turned out to be so enjoyable and therapeutic that he looked forward to future sessions with Mr. Tim. We could not believe the transformation that occurred with our son’s speech during that time. When he returned to school in early January, everyone understood him clearly and his teacher was visibly amazed by his fluency and clarity. With every passing day, we are simply astounded by his verbal communication. At this time his thoughts are surfacing like bubbles in the fountain of his “newly-found” speech. This has been nothing short of a Christmas miracle for us. Although Mr. Tim does not know about this, except for the very first couple of days, our contributions to his success have been minimal.

We are much grateful and appreciative of Mr. Mackesey; we thank him for providing such stupendous service and for presenting our child with “the gift of spoken language.”

R.B. - Father