My Mountaintop Breakfast Speech (written copy)

Below is a written copy of the speech I gave about Katie, at the Mountaintop Breakfast this past year (it's long).  I hope to post a video of the speech soon.

Katie’s Story

Good morning!  My name is Todd Metcalf.  I am a board trustee for Summit Academy.  I am also a parent of a student at Summit Academy.  My wife is Beth, sitting over here, and we have 2 kids.  Tyler is 5 and is our youngest.  Katie is 7 and is a student at Summit Academy. 

It is not even a slight exaggeration to say Katie was always sick as a baby.  Katie had numerous sinus and ear infections and none of the treatments we tried seemed to fix the problem.  By the age of 5 Katie had surgery for ear tubs, adenoids and tonsils removed, allergy tests and sinus surgery at Cincinnati Children’s hospital.   My wife is a physical therapist and also noticed a slight delay in Katie’s gross motor skills.   The pediatrician referred us to First Steps for Physical and Occupational Therapy.  Katie did not begin walking until the age of 18 months. 

In addition to gross motor problems, Katie’s speech was delayed.  We started speech therapy and continued to bounce between the doctors in search of answers.  We were getting daily reports that Katie was having trouble interacting with her peers at daycare.  She was constantly in trouble for hitting and pushing.  Katie was restless, rough and stubborn. She broke most of her toys and tore up any book she got her hands on. She was always banging her head on the walls and floor and I was afraid she would hurt herself.

We were really struggling as a family trying to get Katie healthy, scheduling doctor and therapy appointments around work, and trying to balance our finances.  Katie seemed increasing agitated and anxious. She seemed uncomfortable in her own skin.  Everything was loud, chaotic, and to overwhelming.  We began to withdrawal from our friends and most social gatherings because it was too difficult for Katie to handle.  We felt like we were living alone on an island.

Katie didn’t sleep through the night until she was almost 6 years old.  She would get up several times a night and come into our room.  The doctors insisted we establish good sleeping habits for Katie.  So one night we put a gate in front of her door to keep her in her room.  She proceeded to throw her toys and books into the hallway trying to get our attention. When that didn’t work, Katie ran through the gate tearing it off of its hinges.  The image of her standing on top the gate in the hallway paints a true picture of her spirit and personality.

Despite all the therapy, the gap between Katie and her peers was widening.  Katie began to realize she was different from the other kids.  I will never forget the one day out of the blue, Katie said “Daddy, I talk funny”.  It wasn’t a question, just a statement.  Katie cried almost everyday we dropped her off at daycare and her classmates cheered when we came to pick her up.

When we took Katie for her before-school Kindergarten check up, the pediatrician sent us to a neuropsychologist for testing.  After all the paperwork and tests, the doctor sat us down and proceeded to rock our world by telling us that Katie had PDD-NOS (Pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified).  He said Katie’s visual and auditory processing skills were so severely impaired that she probably would never go to college and might not even graduate high school.  We were devastated; and the hopes that we had for our daughter were shattered.

We asked what options we had for schooling and he suggested Summit Academy.    We Googled Summit Academy when we got home and, since I’m a finance man, what do you think was the first thing I looked at?  I found the tuition and fees page, saw the numbers on the screen and clicked off of Summit’s web page.  But my wife, who is smarter than me, set up a tour, telling me we needed a back up plan.

Then we walked through the front door of Summit Academy for our tour.  For years I have tried to think of the words to explain how I felt that morning.  The best I can come up with is that with each step I took, it felt like a little more weight was falling off my shoulders.  In the first classroom we visited, the kids were so excited to show us what they were learning and I noticed how happy the kids were.  Of course, this had to be a fake classroom.  It must have been the best kids who were promised ice cream if they smiled and acted happy for our tour.  But the next class room was the same and so was the next.  The classrooms were intimate, unique and only had a handful of children in each room.   Some kids were sitting sideways, some had special cushions to sit on and some were chewing gum, but they were all completely engaged in learning.  I looked over at Beth and saw the look in her eyes and I knew she was feeling what I was.  This was the place for Katie. The next week we enrolled Katie and never looked back.

This is now Katie’s third year at Summit Academy.  I do not know how the teachers at the Summit find the energy or patience to do what they do.  But they do it very well. They have guided us, been brutally honest with us, celebrated every hard-earned milestone with us, and taken the bad days in stride.   Academically, we have seen great improvements over the last couple of years.  Socially Katie has made great progress.  She is in a classroom with all boys and is actually quite the mother hen.  She smiles more now than ever before.  Summit Academy has helped Katie to have confidence in herself.  I believe Katie understands she is with other kids like her.  Beth and I have come to understand we are with other parents like us - parents who understand the struggles and isolation of raising a special needs kid.  Summit Academy is like family for us, and now we have hope for Katie’s future.

Beth and I constantly wonder about the decisions we have made for Katie over her young life.  We wonder – should we have been more aggressive with her healthcare?  Would we have been wiser or more knowledgeable if she had been our second child and not our first child?    But the one decision we have never questioned is our decision to send Katie to Summit Academy.   We would rather suffer the financial stress of paying her tuition, than suffer the agony of watching our child in social and academic isolation. 

There is something else I wonder, though.  What if there hadn’t been a Summit Academy for Katie?  And what about all the other children who will never have the opportunity to be helped there?  What happens to them?