Isaiah Grewal was in speech classes by the time he was two. He wasn’t saying the words other kids his age were saying, or responding normally when people spoke to him. When publicly funded speech classes didn’t work, his parents got him into special, private classes. Still, he did not speak.
Isaiah was eventually diagnosed with autism. He turned five, he turned 10, and still he was not speaking.
His parents couldn’t tell from his reactions whether he understood what they were saying. He didn’t nod or mirror them. He’d utter sounds, sometimes loudly, but they didn’t seem to be purposeful.
But every once in a while, something strange would happen, like when he’d use foam letters or fridge magnets to spell things out — words like “contents” and “bonus material” that he’d seen when watching a Baby Einstein DVD. “I just felt there was more cognitive ability in him than was being tapped,” his mother, Melody, says.
But how could she know? She and Isaiah’s father, Christian, felt like they’d tried everything. But then, at age 13, Isaiah started working with a communications therapist who taught the family how to use letter boards. These are large boards with the 26 letters of the alphabet printed on them — large enough that even a person with poor motor control can learn, with enormous effort, to point and spell.
It was challenging. Isaiah didn’t have much control over his arms or hands. It took hundreds of hours of training and practice. But eventually, he began telling his parents what he was thinking. One of the first things he spelled out to them was about food, and specifically about restaurant food: “I want to eat off a menu like a normal teen.”
They were stunned. Their son’s diet had been limited to things like fries and nuggets and chocolate. New foods had always upset him, so they’d stopped pushing him to try. But now, using the letter board, Isaiah told them that he’d been upset because he’d wanted to eat the new foods, but he didn’t have the motor control to do it. The same muscles that made it impossible for him to speak, he told them, made it impossible for him to eat those things.
But he wanted to eat them, he insisted, and he wanted them to help him train to do it. Using the letter board, he gave them advice on how. Push it into my mouth again. Chop it into squares. Say chew, chew, chew in a rhythm. For his 18th birthday, Isaiah celebrated at a fancy restaurant, and ordered lobster mac and cheese, from the menu.