Lemme Tell Ya Bout E

In the last post, I talked about how easy it is to misunderstand what’s really going on with kids like Eli.

How what looks like behavior… is often something else entirely.
How much of his hardest work is invisible.
But here’s the part I don’t ever want to get lost in all of that — that’s not who Eli is.

Because if you only focus on what’s hard for him… you miss everything that makes him him.

Eli is curious — like really curious.
The kind of kid who asks a question… and then another one… and then five more, just to make sure he actually understands what’s going on.
Not just what is happening — but why.

Like one day, he was standing in the kitchen watching the radar on his tablet.
“It’s gonna rain soon,” he said — completely matter-of-fact.

I looked outside. Blue sky. Not a cloud in sight.
“It doesn’t look like it,” I told him.

He didn’t even look up.
“It will,” he said.

And sure enough… about 30 minutes later, the sky shifted and the rain rolled in.

He didn’t say “I told you so.”
He just smiled — like he had quietly figured something out.

That’s kind of how his brain works.
He doesn’t just notice things — he studies them… well, things that interest him…

He looks for patterns… in the weather, in routines, in people.
Things other people miss… he picks up on.

He’s persistent in a way that’s hard to explain unless you’ve seen it.
Things don’t always come easily to him — but he keeps going anyway.

Over and over and over again… until it clicks.

And when it does?
It’s like watching a light turn on.
And you realize just how hard he worked to get there.

He’s funny, too — just not always in the obvious way.
Sometimes it’s a perfectly timed comment.
Sometimes it’s the way he says something completely serious… that ends up being hilarious because it’s so honest.

You realize pretty quickly — he’s been paying attention the whole time.
Just in his own way.

And he’s kind.
It’s not loud.
It’s not showy.
But it’s always there.

The diagnoses explain some of his challenges.
But they don’t define the size of his world.

They don’t define how curious he is. Or how hard he works. Or how he sees things that other people miss.
It just helps us understand how to support him better while he figures out how to move through the world in his own way. 

And if you ask me… that’s the part of him I hope the world never overlooks.

🪙 Nickel from the Jar: A diagnosis might explain part of the story — but it’s never the whole story.

Susan