I have a terrible cold and am not in the mood for surfing and linking, so let me just tell you some stories about my kids.
For the past couple of years, we’ve struggled to get our youngest son to talk. Most kids say their first words by the 12 months. Ian did say a few words at that age, but then stalled. His vocabulary only expanded beyond a handful of words at age three. He’s almost five now. His speech is much improved, but still is pretty limited. He can answer simple questions, but questions that involve more than one word answers still stump him. He can’t tell me what he did at school that morning. He’ll initiate conversations to tell me what he wants or what he’s thinking about. He’ll ask “where” questions. “Where’s Jonah? Where my train?” But he almost never asks why, something that three year olds normally do. He needs many more years of speech therapy.
While Ian may be two years behind other kids in the speech department, he’s unusually good at other things. He taught himself how to read. At 24 months, he knew his alphabet and numbers. Shortly after that, he started reading logos. He would flip over videoes and read all the logos on the back of the case: Sony Home Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, Nick Jr. His favorite parts of videos are the beginning when the logos flash up and the credits. He often fast forwards through his DVDs to the credits. The credits have music and moving words. He’ll study the words and sound them out trying to figure out what they say. I never taught him phoenics.
Yesterday, when I picked him up from daycare, his aide said that the teacher distributed a poem about April to the class. The kids were asked to pick out words that they knew. If they knew a word, the teacher underlined it. The smartest kids had three words underlined. Ian’s entire poem was underlined.
A little boy in the class came up to me and asked, “how does Ian know how to read?” I don’t know, I answered. It’s probably for the same reason that he’s never asked me a “how” question.
Ian is both disabled and gifted. He reads better than some seven year olds, but his speech is less developed than some three year olds. It could be worse. There are many other tics and whirrs in the brains of other little kids like Ian. Luckily, Ian seems to have escaped those problems.
We’re going to place him in a regular Kindergarten next year. When he’s around other kids, he does much better. He’ll need an aide to shadow him, to keep him on task, to help him with his worksheets. Hopefully, he’ll make another leap in the next year.
Still, these gifts and disabilities don’t define my kid. He’s much more than all that. He’s my little guy who crawls into my bed in the morning for a snuggle. He’s the kid who worships his older brother following him around and imitating his every move. When I pick him up from daycare, he leaps up from the lap of his aide. “Mama! Mama! Great big, happy hug.” There is something fantastic about a kid whose face lights up when he sees me and is made so content by the great big, happy hug.
Apt. 11d 
I love how this could have been a story I told about youngest — how others see her as the sum of her abilities and disabilities, but I see a loving whole. Thanks for reminding us to look beyond the problems and prodigious behaviour!
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This is true for all of our children, isn’t it? We need to see our children as the loving whole they are, and not the sum of their abilities and disabilities.
I fight an odd little battle against the remarks of the folks who tell my daughter that something she does is “amazing”, because I don’t want her worth to be measured by her accomplishments. She has many talents, but the trick is to celebrate those talents without making her existence about them. Dweck’s work, which Laura cited in her previous entry, speaks to this for children at all points in the spectrum of abilities (though with another ultimate goal in mind). My goal is my child’s happiness, and I can see that if her happiness depends on other’s summing up of her assets, the world will, at some point, turn into an unhappy place.
Good wishes on navigating the educational system for Ian.
bj
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This is a great entry.
My friend’s son is in second grade and reads on the level of a high schooler. He is doing university science and math. Yet he has dysgraphia ( I may be misspelling that) and doesn’t write as well as my 4 year old. At the gifted school he attends they give him a laptop and the kid types all his lessons. To talk to him, he seems like a typical 8 year old, telling knock-knock joke and making farts with his arm. He like Ian, like all of us, is a great example of the whole child- and not pieces and parts.
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Ian sounds like a great kid! I’ve been lurking for a long time and following your story but haven’t posted much at all. ‘Twice exceptional’ is the term that is used for kids like Ian.
I’ve got my own kiddo that’s twice exceptional. He’s got an IQ at the 99% percentile, but he’s also diagnosed with Aspergers and has significant trouble reading social cues. He’ll tell you all about the universe expanding and contracting and whip through a high level chapter book in no time. At other times he’ll quack like a duck and act supremely silly when he’s introduced to new folks.
He is who he is and in our family he is not defined by the Aspergers.
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My nephew — an early reader and a late talker — was diagnosed with Asperger’s in kindergarten. Genius IQ, weak on social interaction, nerdy sense of humor. He got a lot of special ed help in elementary school, was in a special Aspie’s class in middle school and then totally mainstreamed in high school. He’s now a college sophomore doing a computer science/game design major. I think he’s happy to be who he is.
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Thanks, Joanne. I love to hear those stories.
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This is the first story I have read that is describes my son. He has been dx. with asperger’s by two different dr’s. he just started kindergarten last week and they said he reads on a 2nd grade level but is having difficulty with basic concepts. He started with movie openings, cd cases, stores, and restaurants. Now he can read whole books without any help. How is your son doing?
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Yep. 2nd grade level for reading, too. He just started kindergarten that is aimed at kids like ours and is making HUGE progress. His biggest problem right now is just sitting still and participating in group settings. It is only week two, so I’m hoping for bigger gains by the end of the year.
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