Episode 44 | His Mouth Stutters. His Brain Doesn’t.
Episode 44: From Autism Diagnosis to College Freshman
His Mouth Stutters. His Brain Doesn’t.
These archival conversations were recorded while I was writing Raising Superman.
As Ricky II approached the end of high school and prepared for college and young adulthood, the interview process gave us space to have candid conversations about his experiences growing up on the autism spectrum and my experiences parenting a child on the autism spectrum.
When Ricky II was a teenager, he told me something about himself that has stayed with me:
His mouth stutters. His brain doesn’t.
That distinction is important.
During the Explorer Phase of Parenting in the Village Engagement Matrix™, I spent years studying Ricky II.
I watched his behavior.
I listened to his communication.
I paid attention to his interests, skills, needs, preferences, and responses to the world around him.
But when his verbal communication was still developing, I could only know what his communication allowed me to access.
I could see what Ricky II did.
I could hear what he was able to tell me.
But I could not see the speed or complexity of the thinking happening inside his mind.
And one of my favorite childhood stories eventually gave me evidence of just how much I couldn’t see.
For years, I understood something that happened when Ricky II was six years old exactly as he had explained it to me at the time.
More than a decade later, he told me what had actually been happening inside his head.
And I learned that six-year-old Ricky II had been reading my emotional response, anticipating consequences, thinking quickly on his feet, problem-solving, and figuring out how to shift the emotional space around him.
His thinking had been fast.
His thinking had been strategic.
And none of that had been visible to me at the time.
That is one of the lessons I carry from the Explorer Phase:
What a child can express is not necessarily the full measure of what a child can understand, process, or think.
Our access may be limited.
Their thinking may not be.
So we observe.
We listen.
We remain curious.
And as children develop greater capacity to tell us about their experiences, we remain willing to learn something new about the child we thought we already knew.
Years later, Ricky II gave me the words for something that six-year-old Ricky II had already demonstrated:
His mouth stutters. His brain doesn’t.
❤️🌰🌱🌿🌳
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