My friend Katie R. shared this quote on her Facebook page a bit ago:
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.” - Albert Einstein
I was thinking about it a lot today as I got a revised version of Z's IEP (Individualized Education Program) in the mail and was reviewing it to see what I should put on my radar for skills to really pay attention to. For a little while I was feeling so overwhelmed by all of the "deficiencies." However, later I was comparing some of the goals to typical developmental milestones for 3-4 year olds and I started seeing how many he's met and surpassed.
Y'all, he's just himself. He's got areas he struggles in and areas he excels in. He's a human, just like every other human. We have all of these societal standards and such that bring down pressure to conform and fit in, and while I recognize the value for our society to have structure, I also am continuously finding the joyful freedom of understanding how little so many of these "standards" truly matter.
I finally got to see the entirety of The Imitation Game. Granted, I watched it over 5 or 6 broken up moments that my kids were either sleeping or watching TV, but I saw the whole thing! No one will remember that this was the movie that Joe and I went to see on our date day when we played hooky from work and sent Z to daycare, only to have daycare call in the middle of the movie to say that Z was running a temperature and I needed to come get him. Hence, I had never seen the second half.
The story itself is both inspiring and heartbreaking, but I'm only mentioning it now because of how differently this second viewing struck me. When I saw it the first time, it was before anyone had ever mentioned that maybe Z was "different" to us. I remember feeling sad for Turing's struggles to connect with other people and the bullying he received for being, as his mother called it, "an odd duck." But this time, after over a year now of throwing myself into learning about Autism Spectrum Disorders, I watched the scenes showing his need to separate his peas and carrots, his difficulty deciphering social cues and maintaining eye contact, and thought, "Huh, Alan Turing was probably autistic." Of course, autism wasn't a thing back then, so he was just, "an odd duck." Maybe he had moments that he wished things were easier for himself, that he could be like "everyone else,"* but like the character Joan says in the film, where would we all be if he had been anyone other than his unique self? How many more people would have died in World War II? Where would modern computing and the ideas of AI be?
Now, Z may not be the next Alan Turing, who has impacted every one of our lives whether we know it or not. But, he could be. He's got more challenges then the average kid, sure, but he's also got some really special gifts. Most of all, he is a unique, loved, perfect creation that was shaped in exactly the way that he is by a loving Creator that knew he was what the world needed on a snowy day in April 3.5 years ago.
*I hate that idea because there's really no such thing as "everyone else," only our perception that we're all alone in whatever thing it is that is making life difficult. I continually discover that if I name the struggle there is always someone out there who yells back, "ME TOO!"
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