This Adopted 4-Year-Old Could Barely Speak 1 Year Ago. Now His Words of Thanks To His Parents Are Going Viral.

[2025/11/11] By Rachel Paula Abrahamson / Today

October marked one year since Samantha and Kayla Stewart officially adopted their 4-year-old son, Jayden. In that time, he has changed in ways that seem almost immeasurable.

Once timid and withdrawn, he now laughs easily, his confidence deepening with each passing month. Surrounded by stability and care, Jayden has come so far since moving in with his moms, a testament to what love, patience and persistence can make possible.

That growth is perhaps most visible in a viral Facebook video of the Stewart family stringing Christmas lights in their cozy Ohio kitchen. “I love doing this,” Jayden says suddenly. “This is the best life.” Kayla, standing on a ladder, breaks into a wide smile and glances at her wife as if to say, “Can you believe this?” Neither of them makes a big show of it. They just keep decorating, the quiet joy of the moment speaking for itself.

Later that night, when Samantha and Kayla asked him about that burst of happiness, he grinned and said simply, “That was just my feelings.”

“He opens up to us a lot now, almost every single day, and that’s pretty huge,” Kayla tells TODAY.com. Jayden also gives and accepts hugs freely, something that once felt impossible. Even gentle touch once made him recoil; he’d push their hands away or turn from comfort. Now, he’s the first to reach out.

In a joint interview with TODAY.com, the Stewarts explain that for most of his early life, Jayden lived with chaos and trauma. When he first came to Samantha and Kayla, he was easily startled by noise, touch, or strong emotion. So over time, they learned that the best way to help him feel safe was to meet moments of joy the same way they meet moments of fear: with steadiness and warmth, not intensity.

As an infant, Jayden suffered cardiac arrest brought on by malnutrition, an event that left him with developmental challenges he continues to overcome.

“There was a lot of rewiring of the brain, getting him to trust that we weren’t going to hurt him,” Samantha tells TODAY.

In a relatively short time, Jayden has begun eating solid foods and no longer relies on a bottle. His vocabulary, once almost nonexistent, now expands by the day.

“When he first came to us, he only knew a few words, and The only ones he could pronounce were curse words,” Kayla says. “He barely spoke at all. Now we can talk about everything. We’ll be walking down the street, holding hands, — we call ourselves the Wolf Pack — and out of nowhere he’ll say, ‘I’m so glad for my two moms,’ or ‘I’m so glad you adopted me.’”

News from: Today