Due to a rare brain condition, Tait Sherman lived in a silent world, but after finally getting help from a specialist speech school – and a children’s classic – he was able to tell his mum Reama exactly what he felt for her.

Tucking her son Tait into bed one night, for the very first time, his mum Reama Sherman heard the words she had been longing for all his life.

Her little seven-year-old boy gave her a big hug and whispered “I love you”. Most other mums would have heard those special words hundreds of times by the time their child had reached Tait’s age. But for Reama is was a heart-melting moment as until then little Tait had lived in a silent world.

Tait, now 10, suffers from a rare brain abnormality, Bilateral Perisylvain Polymicrogyria, which affects the part of his brain concerned with language.

It means Tait knows what he wants to say but his mouth and lips can’t make the sounds. The condition is so rare that there isn’t even an association to help sufferers and their families,

For years Reama, 40, fought to get a diagnosis for her son and the professional help he so desperately needed.

But when that help finally came the results were astounding – Tait finally found his voice after seven years of being unable to speak.

Reama says: “It was the most amazing moment. To not be able to communicate with someone that you love most in the world, and not be able to say those words that connect you is just heartbreaking.

“We would always use sign language to say ‘I love you’ but one day when I was putting Tait to bed, he pulled me in to hug him and said the words ‘uv you’. It was a heart-stopping moment.”

But incredibly, what had helped him say these three words was reading the best selling children’s book Guess How Much I Love You? in which a couple of hares, a father and son, use larger and larger measures to quantify how much they love each other. “It has been a much-loved book of ours so I would always try to think of a new measure of my love for Tait,” says Reama. “I would often include something that he had done that week such as ‘I love you a hundred lengths of the swimming pool.’

“We always used to sign the words but this was the first time Tait had been able to say them himself.”

It had been a long battle for Tait. At first he had seemed like any other baby and reached his developmental milestones like any other toddler – apart from his speech. He could barely say a few words and these could only be understood by people who knew him.

It was when he was three that he was finally referred to the NHS speech and language service.

However it took his parents Reama, a director at an educational think tank and husband Richard 48, a graphic designer, from Henley, another 18 months to get him the help he needed.

Reama, who has two other teenage children explains: “He was four and a half when we finally got a diagnosis. Before that they had diagnosed him as having oral dyspraxia – a condition where the child has difficulty in making and coordinating the movements to produce clear speech.

“Then he had an MRI scan that gave us the diagnosis of BPP. It was pretty gut-wrenching but it really good to have a label for it. Having a diagnosis means that you can actually access the help you need.”

Although in a mainstream primary school with some access to speech and language specialists, none of the other children knew sign language. Tait was still struggling and it wasn’t until Reama came across the children’s communication charity I Can and their specialist language school in Meath 30 miles away in Ottershaw, Surrey, that, after a legal battle with her local council, she finally got the support she and Tait needed.

Reama explains: “He was a frustrated, lonely little boy whose confidence had been damaged by his previous experience at school. Tait is cognitively age appropriate so putting him in a school where nobody had the same needs was wrong. After he got a place at Meath aged six, the improvements to his life were immediate.”

The Heath School staff gave him techniques to help him make sounds by moving his mouth and lips into certain shapes, and there are speech and language therapists in every class.

Pupils are put into class groups according to language comprehension rather than year group enabling all pupils to access the curriculum, and work is differentiated to gain the optimal learning from each pupil.

Teachers use lots of visual support such as pictures, symbols, spellings and signs to make the words “live” and last longer so that the children can retain them.

Four years on the difference is almost miraculous. Tait constructs long sentences, has conversations and can usually be understood when buying something in a shop or when answering the phone.

Reama says: “He started to make progress straight away, there was a difference in him. He was able to belong somewhere, he was with other pupils that were like him, so they find a way to connect that doesn’t always need words.

“Previously he was in a mainstream school with a language unit and he felt isolated. The staff weren’t trained well enough to really understand his needs. It just was a horrendous time.”

Just 18 months later Tait finally said those three words that meant so much to him and his mum. Now three years after his mum first heard his voice, he can finally make himself understood.

“He can speak in sentences, some words are tricky to understand, but he can get by, people can understand him,” says Reama. “He will always struggle to be able to make words sound normal, but he is the most determined child.

“The difference that I Can and Meath have made to our lives, I can’t even explain how amazing it has been. Hearing your child tell you they love you is priceless.”

Reama is supporting I Can’s Adopt A Word campaign. For more information visit www.adoptaword.com