Do Two Halves Equal a Whole?

One of the things that makes our situation of having two children with special needs unique is that “we’ve seen it all before.” Although Sarah Kate’s diagnosis is vastly different from Nathan’s, we already knew the drill when he came along – we’d navigated Early Intervention before, and we’d learned a lot about child development, as well.

I’ve joked before that if you put my two together you’d have one “normal” kid.

That may seem crass (heck, it may BE crass) but I don’t mean it in a my-kids-are-deficient way. It’s a reflection of the fact that their developmental strengths and weaknesses are polar opposites. Sarah Kate still isn’t truly able to run; Nathan runs all day long. Sarah Kate’s muscles are tight and contracted due to high tone; Nathan’s low tone makes him extremely flexible. Sarah Kate is in gifted education; Nathan is expected to have cognitive delays. Sarah Kate spoke early, often, and clear enough for even strangers to understand; Nathan is behind on the speech charts because of his inability to articulate well.

When Sarah Kate was the age Nathan is now, I was in freakout mode all the time.

Will she ever walk? … What if she doesn’t? … Should we be doing more therapy?… With Nathan, I’m much more laid back. He’s still on track with all of his developmental milestones with one exception – communication – and his weak area is limited to a single subset of communication – articulation. He knows what we’re telling him, he knows how to tell us things, and he does what he’s asked to do (if he wants to, that is, and if he doesn’t want to, we know that, too). He just doesn’t use clearly articulated sentences to do it.

You also can’t say that he’s non-verbal – he verbalizes constantly. He attempts words and sounds, but often misses the mark. He knows most of the alphabet by sight and you can tell from his attempts that he knows how each letter is supposed to sound. So while it concerns me that he isn’t quite typical, I’m not terribly worried yet.

Like Sarah Kate, he has plenty of time to master those emerging skills. He’ll just do it in his own time.

And of course the benefit to having children who are polar opposites is that each will learn from the other. Sarah Kate will try to chase Nathan around the yard, and he will try to imitate her nonstop chatter. They aren’t two separate “deficient” children – they’re a pair of kids who are made better by the presence of the other.