How to Understand Nathan

Have you ever heard someone with an intellectual disability described as having a level of understanding equivalent to a (fill in the blank)-year-old? A statement like that presumes that a person like Nathan follows the typical linear progression of development  but at some point development stops for a person with intellectual disability – they hit a plateau and that’s it.

In some ways, it’s true. Nathan learned to sit before crawling, crawled before standing, and walked before running, all in the typical order. His speech development is (more or less) progressing in the same way as his peers, but at a much slower rate. Eventually he’ll catch up, although his anatomy makes it likely that he’ll always struggle with certain sounds and may never speak perfectly clearly. His fine motor skills also continue to improve, but the lower-than-normal tone in his muscles make it harder for him to control a pencil, or a fork, or a toothbrush.

But the brain is a funny thing.

I had a meeting with Nathan’s teachers last week to go over some recent testing. It covered a lot of areas – speech, behavior, academics, etc. – and one of those is essentially an IQ test. I have always hated these meetings because the whole point of them is to talk about all the ways in which your child isn’t able to do what typical kids can do. The testing showed exactly what I expected it to show – that Nathan falls in the mild intellectual disability range – and I expected to walk out of the meeting discouraged, but this time was different.

The nitty-gritty details on the pages told the story of a third grader who is reading on a second grade level (not terrible) but whose math skills are surpassed by most kindergarteners (pretty bad). But the truth of who Nathan is and what he is capable of doing was found in the discussion with the teachers and staff sitting around the table. He’s not good at math – that’s not in dispute – but the question of just how bad he is remains unanswered. Nathan loves school and loves to learn, but he loves those things because he wants every minute of life to be F-U-N fun. He’ll go along with a test or a lesson for awhile, but eventually he’s ready for the F-U-N fun, so it’s hard to tell the difference between when he stops understanding a concept and when he stops caring about it.

We all are willing to spend a lot more time doing or learning about things that interests us, and we tend to procrastinate or ignore things we don’t like. Nathan is no different in that respect, but the arc of his commitment pendulum swings wider than most. He is obsessed with trucks and machinery – with a special love for Monster Jam – so he’s verging on savant status when it comes to recognizing and differentiating an excavator from a backhoe or a bucket truck from a derrick. He also remembers where he has seen the aforementioned equipment around town. Recently, as he was riding past Mr. Andi’s old office, he pointed to the building and said “Bucket truck!” – Mr. Andi left that job in the summer of 2015 and as far as any of us can remember, Nathan hasn’t been there since.

His brain just doesn’t work the way typical brains work.

He can name the days of the week but has no real concept of what differentiates one day from the next other than “school day” or “church day” or “Chick-fil-A day” (we eat it nearly every Saturday morning for breakfast) or what order they go in. But by contrast, despite being short and sitting in the back seat his entire life, it’s been a running joke in our house for a couple of years that once Sarah Kate got her license she’d have to take her brother everywhere she went so she wouldn’t get lost. He recognizes landmarks and can give us turn-by-turn directions just as well as Siri when we’re on the way to any of our routine stops, while Sarah Kate doesn’t the have the first clue whether the nearest town is to the north, south, east, or west. Last Saturday all we had to do was not turn to the left or right once we passed a certain road (the one that goes to Chick-fil-A and/or the practice pool) and he instinctively knew we were headed toward the Interstate despite it still being a few miles away and not at all visible. The interstate is where big trucks are, of course.

Figuring out exactly what Nathan understands is also a challenge, as is understanding what he’s trying to say – in part because of his speech issues, but also because of his unconventional way of thinking. Recently, his classroom teacher had him read a book to the class, and I envision the experience being like watching Minion Kevin’s speech (“gibberish gibberish TRUCK gibberish gibberish”). But she had an idea. The next time he wanted to read his book to the class, she projected the pages onto the smart board so the kids could follow along…and the kids were stunned at how well Nathan could read. Because all they heard was gibberish, they assumed gibberish was what he was saying, but seeing the words as he spoke them opened their eyes to the fact that the problem wasn’t how well he reads, but how well he speaks. Sometimes Nathan’s abilities are simply hidden from view.

But Nathan’s real gift is in his ability to touch people.

I don’t mean that people are inspired by his tenacity or entertained by his antics. I mean that he has a knack for recognizing a need in someone and reaching out to fill it. I could never keep track of the number of times someone – sometimes a friend, but often a stranger – has said to me, “I needed that today!” in response to a hug or a smile or laughter that Nathan gave them. Not long ago, we were in a room with a number of strangers and he chose to sit next to one particular individual. I worried that he might annoy her or get into her personal space, but she assured me he was fine. After a few minutes he quietly started holding her hand, and although I hadn’t realized she was tense before, I saw her visibly relax. I don’t know what was bothering her that day, but Nathan made it better.

A part of me will always worry about people underestimating Nathan, dismissing him, or (worse) treating him poorly, simply because they don’t understand him and don’t bother to try. But what I’ve come to appreciate over the years is that some people will try to understand him, and they will be the people who will stay in his orbit and enjoy the sunshine that he brings.