This Is The Crux.

The boys are too smart.

If my kids were not smart, it would be so easy to get help for them.  They could go to special classes or special schools and even ride a special bus maybe.  Labels like “mentally challenged” mean that people expect nothing from them.

Kids who are mentally challenged don’t have to go to college.  No one expects them to do that.

I spent much of this holiday weekend with my sister-in-law, Barbara, a 57-year-old woman with the mentality of an 8-year-old.  She spends most of her time mimicking what she hears, often very well, but she doesn’t have the capacity to think.

Barbara and I were driving in my car recently and she said she was hot.  She asked me to put down her window.

I thought about my toddlers opening their own windows.

“You can open your own window,” I said.  “There’s a button right on your door.”  Our car has two buttons on the door – one for the window and one to lock/unlock the door.

She looked at her door.  Then she locked it.  She unlocked it.  She locked the door again.  She unlocked it again.

“Huh,” she said, completely befuddled.

“Try the other button,” I said.

She pushed the other button.  It has to be kind of pulled back, rather than pushed down, to get the window to go down.  She pushed it hard.  Then she picked at the button.  She pushed it harder.

“Try to move it a different way,” I said, which is what I said to Shane when he was two.  But she couldn’t figure out a different way.  She tried to take the button off the door.  She pushed it gently.  She pushed it hard again.  She simply couldn’t navigate a way to open that window.

“Huh,” she said again.

I opened the window for her.

Barbara took the special bus to a special school and went to special classes.

To be fair, I do not wish my kids could take a special bus to a special school.  I am glad that, so far, they don’t even need special classes.

But Dylan gets up from the table to put away his glass and instead ends up dancing a jig in the other room.  When reminded about what he’s supposed to do, he picks up his glass and spins around with it, all the way to the sink.  Sometimes it still ends up by the coffee maker instead of its intended destination.

Dylan can’t find, finish or turn in homework without incredible amounts of struggling.  And now that he’s on the second new medication, which supposedly takes another month to test, his grades are reflecting someone who can’t open his own window.

Yet Dylan can, actually, do anything.  This weekend, he started playing the piano, on key, along with the radio.  This morning at breakfast, he conceptualized an underwater village – with air supply – so that time could move slower (which it does in low-lying places) and people would live longer.

He’s so bright, most of the time I can’t keep up with him – and I certainly could never come up with, or do, most of the things he does.  I simply can’t.  He’s too smart.

So I expect that he can also find his homework.  He can’t.  I expect him to find his shoes.  He can’t.  I expect him to know when something is missing or incomplete.  He doesn’t.

Dylan can think.  He thinks very well.  He figures out some incredibly complex problems.  But he can’t get his glass to the sink, his paper to the teacher, or – often – his ideas onto paper.

He can think very, very well – but he can’t make his thoughts come to life without a ton of help.  This is the crux of the problem.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *