He’s Bright but Confusing – Sound familiar?

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

The library is abuzz. My childhood librarian is probably spinning in her grave. Back in her heyday, if you breathed heavy, her dagger filled look pinned you up next to the moose head above the library door as a warning for other heavy breathers.

Upon spying the pinned specimens, whisperers were known to blanch and run back out the way they came. O.k. Not really, but you know what I mean. My, how times have changed.

Just behind me sits a young man and his tutor. The timbre of his voice signals he’s only recently beyond the great divide and into the land of razors and girlfriends. I don’t have to look at him to know what’s happening.

His tutor’s first words said it all. “I’m so disappointed in you,” was quickly followed by a muttered sermon about wasting their time. I can tell he’s slouching under her disdain.

The topic at hand is math as it relates to circles. It’s just how every young man bursting with pubescent energy wants to spend his Friday afternoon and early evening.

I sigh deeply and fight my inner homeschooler. I want to turn around and interfere. I want to rescue him. Thankfully, they find a bit of common ground before I have to pack up and leave to keep from embarrassing myself.

I look out the window. The clouds contain, per the weatherman, a forty percent chance of snow. Their voices lull me to once upon a time, long ago and far away.

A little boy, all decked out like a train engineer, was toddling around the waiting room. I was thankful they had a lull because it meant he could wander around without invoking the doctor’s-waiting-room-wrath-of-Kahn.

He was a wanderer, that one. If you tried to pen him up, energy built up as if he was a living breathing static charge that had to seek release. He made up for it with white blonde hair, blue eyes, and rosy lips that melted onlookers when they parted to smile.

He toddled over to the other waiting room captive and worked his magic. Not quite two, his language skills were emerging at a logic defying pace. He grinned and began to talk.

I smiled smugly to myself about all the days I read to him in utero. Within hours of his birth, I was already reading chunky board books to him. (Insert Barney Fife of Mayberry satisfied snort.) Yep, yep, yep. Parent of the year. That was me.

The lady looked over at me and smiled that smile I secretly lusted for. It was a nonverbal signal meant to convey that, as a parent, I simply rocked.

“He’s so smart! He’s gonna be his teachers’ favorite.”

My heart froze. “Really? Do you think? Thank you. I’m not so sure. I think . . . “ my words trailed off as the nurse called her name freeing her from our mutual waiting box.

Not long after, I confessed my fears to my husband, “He’s really smart and engaging. But, there’s something I can’t put my finger on. I think . . . I think he is not going to be able to put down on paper what the teacher wants the way she wants it. I think he is going to be the bane of her existence. I’m afraid.”

My little train engineer was not quite three when his Sunday School teacher met me at the door of his class. She had inherited the ‘problem child’ from the nursery.

He was the one whose cries for his mom only quieted when they could distract him with car lights. Specifically, brake lights. Meaning he was never distracted during daylight.

“He’s amazing!” Her exclamation melted the icy fear that flash froze my heart every time I reached the nursery door. We’ve already cleaned up, but you should have seen the creation he made with Tinker Toys. If you don’t have them, you need to get him some.

We chatted for another moment or two. She said enough to tell me that she saw my conundrum. My son was amazing, articulate, and intelligent. And yet, there was something . . . something confusing . . . going on.

He was above ninety percent in his height and weight percentiles, potty trained at eighteen months, and spoke like a five or
six-year-old. I told myself the confusion hinged on folks forgetting he was only three when he acted like a three-year-old.

Courtesy B. Creasy - 2010

It would be three more years of watching, waiting, and searching before that ‘something confusing’ had a name. 

For the link to part 1:
click here

Psalm 139: 16 The Message

Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you,The days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day.