Cranston, Rhode Island
Meeting Street's Bright Futures

Three-year-old Kaleigh Pedroso captures the heart of everyone she meets. She attends Meeting Street's Bright Futures Early Learning Center and is a very special child.

From the day she was born, Kaleigh struggled just to survive. She was in and out of the hospital much of the first year of her life. The doctors didn't know exactly what was wrong with her. She was labeled "failure to thrive," her mother, Kerry Pedroso, recalled in a recent interview. "She simply didn't know that she had to eat to survive."

She was fed through a tube. That only helped with one of her challenges. While Kaleigh was born in January, unfortunately she didn't begin to see until April. She also had a hole in her heart. Finally, when she was eight months old, a blood test revealed the diagnosis, Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome, a genetic disorder that results from the deletion of part of a chromosome.

The disorder is rare - only one in fifty thousand births - and the information that Kaleigh's parents, Elias and Kerry, found on the Internet was not encouraging. However, Kaleigh's physician, Dr. Singer, gave her parents hope and they took that hope and turned it into their marching orders. We said, "OK, this is it. Let's work with it," Kerry said.

That philosophy led them to Meeting Street where upon touring Bright Futures, Kerry realized they had found the "only place I can leave Kaleigh where they can do more for her than I can. The teachers didn't even know her but they talked to her as an individual."

Since Kaleigh came to Meeting Street, she has made huge gains. When she first arrived, she showed little interest in talking or walking. She started using a walker with a sling seat and needed to have her torso supported in order to move about. Now, just a year later, she pushes a standing walker with ease on her own and is on the verge of letting go of the fingers she insists on holding onto, more for security than balance, when taking a few steps without her walker. She loves playing with her classmates and coming to school.

Kaleigh's mom says that she is so happy that the other children accept her daughter. "I love that Bright Futures is an inclusive environment. The kids don't treat her differently than any other kid. They treat her like a total peer. That's what she needs," said Kerry.

Kaleigh could only utter a few sounds and an occasional fleeting word or two before she came to Meeting Street. Now if you ask her if she wants something, she understands, and if she wants it, she exclaims, "Yes!" and excitedly claps her hands.

At home, she plays with her six-year-old typically developing sister, Keara, and Kaleigh almost always has a smile on her face.

"Meeting Street has been magical for Kaleigh. She has been through so much pain in her young life that the sight of her becoming a little person with friends and a life to look forward to is truly a remarkable and wonderful thing," Kerry concluded.