My Noah

Noah's never been normal. He's always done things his own way and in his own time. He's lived through things that should have killed him and he's met milestones that the experts said he would never meet, but he's just never been normal.

We often hear from people things like "How can he _____________? He can't even _________________!" Often times the comments are ignorant, things like "He can speak, so he should've been able to hear me." or "He saw that, so he should be able to see this." and in that case somebody needs a bit of an education. But sometimes you just have to admit that as little sense as it makes, Noah's strenths and weaknesses are what they are.

Noah is reading at about a 1st or 2nd grade level, but most of my friends' 1 year olds have surpassed Noah in feeding skills. How is that possible? Well, chewing and reading just really aren't all that related. Although most kids can chew before they can read, there's not any direct link between those 2 things.

But sometimes the skills ARE related and Noah can do a complex skill, but not the seemingly easier one. For instance, Noah is able to repeat back a long sentence, but has difficulty with a shorter string of words. How is that possible? After much confusion we've figured out that Noah can recall the sentence because he's using his comprehension skills, but with just the list he can't bring that strength into play.

Or how about this... In AV therapy this week we were having to guess a hidden animal by asking questions about it. When it was my turn to guess Noah was able to answer all of the open ended questions about his animal correctly (where does it live, what does it eat, what color, etc.) but if I asked a yes/no question he got stuck every time. So for instance if I asked him "Where does the animal live?" He could correctly tell me "the jungle". But if I asked "Does the animal live in the ocean?" he couldn't tell me "no". Even when we ask those questions back to back, it goes something like this...

Where does the animal live? the jungle
Does he live in the ocean? yes
I thought you said he lived in the jungle? yes
Which one? Does he live in the jungle or the ocean? The jungle!

Sigh.

Maybe sometime I'll understand all his little quirks and why he is the way he is. In the meantime he just is what he is: my Noah.