In May, 8-year-old Delilah Ortega confidently stood with others from her school in front of an audience gathered at Highland Presbyterian Church and sang the song “Big, Big Dreams” as a soloist.
Delilah’s always loved music, her mother Crystal Ortega said.
Like most mothers, Ortega has numerous videos saved to her phone of her daughter, one of which shows a 1-year-old Delilah cooing, clapping and bopping to a children’s song.
“She’s mimicking the noise, not the words,” Ortega pointed out.
Ortega said that during the first couple of years, she noticed developmental delays in Delilah, with one of the biggest being that she still wasn’t speaking by age 2.
Ortega took Delilah to a speech therapist who revealed what the problem was.
“The speech therapist said, ‘Your daughter doesn’t have a speech problem. Your daughter has a hearing problem. Your daughter’s deaf. … That’s why she can’t talk,'” Ortega said.
Delilah eventually learned to talk, but still has difficulty hearing and speaking certain words correctly and goes to speech therapy, her mother said.