Yep. Interesting discussion. Thanks, Jackie, Chris, et al.
Made me think of section of Greg Palmer's piece End of Cute. So, I'll steal a big snip,
from
www.fathersnetwork.org/page.php?page=633&SESSION=fb87ee7bd4ee88c0a4774a22a6704dab&s=0<<Ned has always been very gregarious. He can work a room like a Kennedy, and fifteen minutes after arriving some place can tell you the first name of everybody in the room, and something about them. When he was younger we encouraged him to do this; it was good for him, and good for the people around him too. An example: He and I usually go to a Memorial Day Service somewhere, and a few years ago there was a bigger-than-usual do at Evergreen/Washelli, the cemetery in North Seattle where most of the Northwest’s military dead are buried. That particular year they were re-dedicating a statue of a World War One doughboy that had been forgotten at the Seattle Center and moved to Washelli. When Ned and I arrived, rain was threatening, and we slipped into the covered VIP area. Shortly thereafter, Seattle Mayor Paul Schell arrived -- he was one of the speakers. He started working the VIPs, shaking hands, etc., saw and recognized me. He came up and said hello, I responded, and then said, "Mayor Schell, this is my son Ned; Ned, this is Mayor Paul Schell." The Mayor put on his biggest smile, leaned over and said very clearly, distinctly and slowly so fifteen-year-old Ned would understand, "Ned, how are you?" And Ned answered, "Fine, Paul, how are you?" The look on Paul’s face was worth the whole day’s trip.
He has the unshakable belief that everyone he meets is as interested in the Titanic and ghosts and Seattle history as he is, and if allowed would go on to strangers about these topics until his listeners fell over dead. I find myself now rescuing people from him far sooner than I used to. It’s all part of the end of cute. That’s not the only change that has come about with age. Some years ago I was one of the contributors to Don Meyer’s collection of essays by the fathers of DD kids, titled "Uncommon Fathers." When the book came out, I was surprised Don had chosen to order the essays by the chronological ages of the children being described. It seemed to me there might be other ways to do it, like by the degree of retardation, which can make so much difference in parenting. But now that Ned’s older, I can see Don had it right. The changes that happen -- to child and caregiver -- as the child grows to adulthood are profound, and sometimes profoundly disturbing.
If you look in the dictionary for the word, "retard," at least the first definition is ‘slow.’ Nothing more. So as the parent of a "retarded" child, especially a mild to moderate child, it’s possible to imagine that life is like the New York Marathon. There’s always that guy from Sierra Leone who finishes two hours ahead of everybody else, then there’s the pack of ten thousand runners, and finally, two days later, coming across the line is the guy who’s half dead and panting like a pack mule. He’s the "retarded" runner, the slow one. But he crosses the same finish line as all the others; it just takes him a little longer to get there. So it could be with intellectual development, slower going, but eventually achieving the same goals as everybody else.
That’s certainly the way it has been with Ned. We’ve read the same books to him that we read to his brother; we’ve just spent more time with each level of book. So Ira whipped through those godawful Curious George books, whereas it seemed like I was reading them to Ned for 60 years. But he has certainly advanced. Right now his mother and I alternate nights, so she’s reading the Hardy Boys mysteries, apparently every last one of them. And he and I are slogging through "The Lord of The Rings," which I think he understands better than I do, because he can remember all those needlessly complex and similar names and places.
Another example -- in the fifth grade Ned was the only nominee from his elementary school for the Mayor’s Reading Improvement Award. With 150 kids from other schools, he and I went to a big ceremony in town where he got a certificate and a book for being the most improved reader in his fifth grade class. Ned was two years older than any other winner in the room. But he got the award, and he deserved it. The fact that it took him longer to get to the same place was inconsequential -- to me, to his school, to him. He has advanced intellectually, heading for that same finish line.
But the time has come when I have to consider that he’s not going to make it; that his finish line isn’t the same one; that he’s hit a wall in his intellectual development that he can’t get past. Last year in high school he was, at our insistence, mainstreamed into The Academy, something all regular education first year people take at his school, combining history, literature, math and science. The homework was a lot tougher than anything he was used to, which is why we almost always did it together. But he got most of it, in large part because of his awesome memory. The same brain that can remember who wrote "Bye Bye Love" and what year the Everly Brothers recorded it can remember facts concerning the Revolutionary War.
One night we were working on a take home quiz, with one of the questions asking him to compare and contrast Tibetan Buddhism with Indian Buddhism. I must have spent 45 minutes going over the reading with him, listing the differences and similarities of the two, talking to him about it, until the time came to actually answer the question. I said, "Ned, do you understand what you have to do?" and he said "Dad, I haven’t a clue." It was the first time he ever told me he didn’t understand something in a way we both knew meant he would never understand it. No matter how much time we took, how may times we went over it, it would be beyond him. So I have to now accept the fact that there are some things he won’t understand, some analytical thinking he will never be able to do.
But that’s not giving up, even though, in one sense, his school seems ready to give up. One of our problems now with Ned in a public school is that the Special Education department turns distinctly and then exclusively vocational as DD kids become juniors and seniors. There is, as far as I can tell, not a single literature, history, language, math or science class especially meant for a junior or senior DD student in his high school. But there are lots of opportunities to learn how to clean tables in the lunch room, go to retirement homes and learn how to make beds, clean cages at the local veterinarian’s, etc. One vocational person at the school actually told us that the students who cleaned the tables in the lunchroom every day "clean each table twice, so they get twice the experience."
We’ve informed the school that we don’t send our child to high school to learn to wash cafeteria tables. We want Ned to have at least the chance to learn something that isn’t vocational scut work. For instance, this year he’s taking an American History class that is for English As A Second Language kids. It’s a bit harder on the teacher, because most of the homework she gives is language-comprehension based, and that’s not what Ned needs. So we have helped her devise home and class work that applies more to Ned. And we’re ready and able to do that until he graduates next year. We’re not only ready -- we insist on it.
...
I have an image of Ned’s life as an adult that gives me peace -- and in one sense he provided it. As I said, we read to him every night, and one of the things he and I have been reading for years is four or five poems a night. We have our favorites. Last year in his English class, one Friday the teacher gave her students the weekend assignment to find a poem that meant something to them, and memorize it to recite in class during the following week. Ned put his hand up, and the teacher started to tell him how he didn’t have to do the assignment if he didn’t want to. Ned said, "I’m ready now," and she, shocked but expecting something in the "Roses are red, violets are blue" vein, said "Go ahead." Ned stood and recited this, by Georgia Roberts Durston:
When the pale moon hides and the wild wind wails,
and over the tree-tops the nighthawk sails,
the gray wolf sits on the world’s far rim,
And howls; and it seems to comfort him.
The wolf is a lonely soul, you see,
No beast in the wood, nor bird in the tree,
But shuns his path. In the windy gloom
they give him plenty, and plenty of room.
So he sits with his long lean face to the sky
Watching the ragged clouds go by.
There in the night, alone, apart,
Singing the song of his lone, wild heart.
Far away, on the world’s dark rim
He howls, and it seems to comfort him.
I didn’t know Ned had memorized "The Wolf" until his teacher sent a note home telling us how astonished, and moved, she was by it. And I guess I don’t know why Ned likes it so much. I know I see it as something about him as an adult, maybe shunned, maybe alone, but comforted by his own sweet howl, by the singing in his own heart. >>
Second part of the snip isn't as relevant to this discussion as first part, but it's one of my favorite Ds snips.
Charlie doesn't howl, doesn't talk either, but he does a wide array of whistles, clicks, yells, calls, chirps, pops, etc. and can do one hell of a screech.
Cheers,
Bob