My son has language processing issues and despite being 13 years old, he communicates more like a typical 8 or 9 year old. I’m not complaining, because the first half of life was spent yelling. Yelling, accompanied by tantrums, as a result of not being able to express his thoughts and emotions.
While I’m perfectly fine with the 4th grade potty humor that now comes with my son’s slow development (reading the Captain Underpants series is a big source of chuckles in my home these days) I am frustrated with how it affects his school and social life.
This year, my boy started junior high – a difficult transition for any child, but a bit more so for the kid whose hero is a chapter book character who runs around in his briefs (for those of you keeping score at home: NOT my husband). Most 7th graders talk about iTunes and texting, my boy drones on about Pokemon and elevator companies. While his speech is filled with syntax errors and quirks (his sister doesn’t curl her hair, she “makes curves” in it), he manages to relate his passions to anyone who will listen. There aren’t many who do.
Academically, speech deficit makes it nearly impossible to keep up with the educational standards put forth by the state. The school’s speech pathologist is fully aware of my son’s shortcomings, like how he struggles to understand word endings (ing, ed, etc.) that establish time (past/present/future), but the science curriculum this month has him memorizing vocabulary terms for cells and how they function (endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, etc.). Riiiiiight. Any of you neurologically typical grownups use lysosomes or Golgi bodies in a conversation lately?
My one true goal as a parent is to prepare my hatchlings to enter the world as functioning members of society once they leave my nest. On the one hand, I feel like I’m doing an okay job – but the other hand? I feel like I’m slapping away bugs that weren’t invited to this picnic.
Still, my boy may turn out okay after all. The teacher told me that one test they use in class involves having the kids recite back information given to them. While my brown-eyed boy failed at this, he did so fabulously. When the teacher gave him this sentence to repeat back: “Joe draws cartoons. He shared his dinosaur drawing with the class and they laughed.” My son looked her right in the eye and replied. “If he would learn to draw better, nobody would laugh at him.”