Across Florida, families like yours have discovered a supportive community through Help Me Grow Florida.
These stories reflect the shared experiences of parents who’ve found understanding, reassurance, and practical help to nurture their children’s development with confidence.
Lauren and Matt Merritt became parents to their two youngest children, Owen and Maya, through the gift of adoption. Owen and Maya had a rough start, with both of them being poly-substance-exposed in utero with no prenatal care.
Owen spent the first five days of life alone in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, with no parents, withdrawing from fentanyl and heroin.
18 months later, Maya was born and rushed to the hospital after an unplanned, unassisted home birth. Her 30-year veteran NICU nurse told us she was the worst opiate baby she’d ever seen.
Owen detoxed in the NICU for 23 days. Maya for 29 days.
The Merritt Family Story of HopeA personal story by Lauren and Matt Merritt of Escambia County
Today, Owen is 3 ½, and Maya will be 2 this month. They amaze us every day with their resilience, but their journeys have not been without the consequences of others’ decisions. We learned very early on that our kiddos needed extra support and were shocked by how difficult it would be to find that support.
Owen and Maya were delayed, but not delayed enough for the State’s early intervention program called Early Steps. Owen was tested twice. Maya was tested once. Both showed “delayed” but not by “two standard deviations.” What does that even mean anyway?
Owen was struggling so much with emotional dysregulation and executive function delays that we had to withdraw him from two different private preschools. Maya was almost 18 months old and not walking.
If you’ve heard anything about brain research, you know how critical early brain development is – especially from 0 to 3 years old. Here I have two opioid epidemic kids whose brains literally developed on fentanyl and heroin, but I’ve got red tape telling me, “We have to wait for them to fall further behind before we will help.” Talk about feeling powerless as a parent.
We had professionals telling us they’re not old enough for evaluations and diagnoses, but insurance companies telling us treatment isn’t covered without a diagnosis, which… the professionals say they’re too young to have.
As determined, educated parents with resources, I just could not believe how difficult it was to find help for our kids during such a critical time in their early learning development. Like a true millennial, I took to social media with disbelief and desperate pleas for help. And that’s when a friend told me about the Help Me Grow Escambia that was just getting off the ground in Pensacola.
We said “yes” before we even really knew what it was because we were desperate. Owen and Maya were 2 of the first 10 kiddos enrolled in the Help Me Grow developmental intervention services, and boy, has it been a blessing.
Right off the bat, we were overwhelmed with friendly faces saying, “We see you, and we want to help.” Owen and Maya got their own Infant Toddler Development Specialist to identify and target areas of delay, and we had the added support of a care coordinator to help us navigate additional resources, such as Child Find with the Public School system and the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Clinic that is a partnership of The Florida Center for Early Childhood and Arc Gateway’s Pearl Nelson Center.
We were invited to a weekly playgroup at the Pearl Nelson Center that really helped our son navigate a classroom environment with one-on-one support to help with safe peer interaction and self-regulation of emotions. We had circle time, snack time, and arts and crafts time. I bawled my eyes out when I finally got my first homemade Mother’s Day craft. For 1 hour a week, they got to be normal kids at “school.”
The Help Me Grow team felt that Owen might qualify for the public school PreK program for children with exceptional needs that can start at the age of three. However, since Owen is so bright, we were concerned that he would also not meet the eligibility requirements for this service.
For the next 4 months, the Help Me Grow team coached us, counseled us, and held a 2-hour meeting with 5 team members present to help prepare us for what to expect with the Child Find process because “not qualified” was not an option this time around. My background is in law, and it truly felt like we were preparing for a trial. My child was my client, and access to special education resources was the relief we were seeking.
When the day came for our Child Find eligibility meeting, we were more than ready. Due in large part to all the help we got from Help Me Grow, Owen qualified through the Child Find Program and has been enrolled with an IEP in the Exceptional Student Education (“ESE”) pre-k program at Myrtle Grove Elementary since October 2024. I cried that day, too! Today, Owen is a kid who gets to go to school like a regular kid- something I’ll never take for granted.
Help Me Grow has also connected us with a Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder clinic. This is a fairly recent partnership with Pearl Nelson Center and an organization called the Florida Center. Pearl Nelson Center provides the speech and occupational therapy evaluation components of these comprehensive evaluations that include a 3-week process.
Owen has an FASD diagnosis now, too, which helps us identify the best educational and behavioral approaches that make sense for how his brain functions. More doors have opened, and we’ve been connected with more resources and families who have children with that diagnosis.
Both children also received free Autism screenings, a resource we were so grateful to receive.
Owen has thrived and reached such full potential in his ESE pre-k program, that the administration has decided to enroll him in a mainstream kindergarten class beginning August 2026. With the continued support of his IEP, we know he will continue to learn and grow in all the ways that every kid should have the opportunity to.
Maya continues to receive developmental intervention with the Help Me Grow Escambia program. Maya is also thriving thanks to her supports and will begin a traditional pre-k program in August.
I could go on and on about the life-changing effects being in school has had for Owen and the progress we continue to make with Maya, but suffice it to say, Help Me Grow has been a bright light for two parents who felt completely lost in the dark trying to navigate a difficult system.
It’s a program making a big impact on little lives, and our family will be forever grateful to Arc Gateway for bringing this instrumental program to our community.
