Let me tell you about Paul. He’s such a cool kid; I could talk about him a lot. He has cerebral palsy and he is very much motor-impaired–he can’t move without difficulty. I would say that he is minimally verbal. However, he understands a lot of what’s going on around him.
What’s it like to be minimally verbal?
Typically, because he can only make a few sounds, the way that we interact with him in my classroom is to ask a bunch of yes/no questions. We’ll say, “Hi Paul. How are you? Are you good?” and he’ll say, “Ha” which means yes. We’ll say, “What did you eat last night? Spaghetti?” and he’ll say, “Uh-uh” which means no
Then we’ll ask, “Stroganoff?”
“Uh-uh.” Then we keep going. Sometimes it can take a while to find the correct answer to the question!
On this particular day
One day he came to school and he kept urgently saying, “Uhhh.” I knew that he wanted to tell me something, or in other words, that he wanted me to guess things until he could say, “Ha!”–That’s it!
So I started with the usual suspects: “OK, Paul, what is it that you want to tell me? Is Papik (grandpa) picking you up today?”
“Uh-uh”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“Uh-uh.”
Meanwhile, I’m helping students unpack their backpacks, putting away the clean dishes from yesterday, setting out materials for later, trying to sort out at least a few papers from the three huge stacks on my desk, firing up the projector, and so on.
“Is it something about someone at home or school? At home?”
“Ha!”
“OK, now we’re getting somewhere. Is it about your mom?”
“Uh-uh.”
I proceeded to go through every family member I could think of. That took at least 5 minutes. Still wasn’t it. I put away some diapers a parent sent with their child. I filled out the lunch form. I got a fidget toy for a student who was wandering the room. Then I thought of the nanny.
“Is it about Maria?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Well, that’s the name of your nanny! What do you mean it’s not about Maria? Do you have a new nanny?”
“Ha!”
“Oh, you have a new nanny! Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“Ha!” He had the biggest smile on his face!
“Oh, I see! Well, thank you for letting me know!”
Confirmation
So just to confirm the information, I texted Paul’s mom and asked if they got a new nanny. She texted back, “Yes! We got a new nanny about a week ago. How did you know that?”
“Paul told me!”
“Wow! That’s so amazing!”
“I know!”
It warmed my heart so much that he wanted to tell me that. It also broke my heart because I wondered how many times he had something that he wanted to tell me and I just didn’t have time to ask literally 40 questions to figure it out. But I’m a public school teacher, and I am responsible for 8 to 10 children every year.
If you meet someone with a disability that has something to say, hopefully you will have time to patiently wait until they get it out in whatever way they can. And when you see that smile on their face, it will be worth it!
🤔💭 Tell me what you think.
Have you met someone with communication difficulties? What was it like talking with them?