Trying To Do Better

The absolutely most challenging listening I do every day is not with the people Someone To Tell It To serves. 

The absolutely most challenging listening I do every day is with my son Matthew. 

He doesn’t speak. He’s never uttered a word in his life. He has profound intellectual disability and autism. The listening I do for him is so different from how I listen to anyone else.

But, let me tell you, he can communicate profoundly forcefully!

Yet, there is no question that he is the most challenging person to listen to in my entire life. Even though he can’t talk. Especially because he can’t talk.

To try to know him, understand him, and respond to him in ways that he needs means I have to truly notice him, watch him, pay close attention to him. It’s the countless nuances in his demeanor that I have to look for. And there are many of them.

Listening is more than hearing, especially with him. It’s observing, sensing, and deeply knowing all that I can about him, even without him ever uttering a word. Here are just a few of the ways I get to try to know what’s on his mind:

By his grunts and growls and gnashing of his teeth. That means he’s not happy. But I don’t always know what he’s not happy about. 

By exuberant laughter and heart-melting smiles and clapping his hands. That means he is happy. But oftentimes it happens randomly and I don’t know what he is happy about. 

By grabbing my hand with the strength of a weight lifter and pulling me toward the refrigerator and lifting my hand to a cupboard that has something in it that he wants. That means he’s thirsty or hungry. But I don't always know what he’s hungry or thirsty for.

By the twinkling in his eyes and glances toward the direction he wants me to push him in his wheelchair and slamming down his left foot to stop his wheelchair when I'm going the wrong direction, in his mind. That means he has a purpose. But so often I don’t know what that purpose is. 

After 38 years of living with him, there is still so much about him that I don’t know. Sure, I know that when he sees chocolate, he’s going to want to eat it right away. Milo’s iced sweet tea is currently his favorite drink, and he’ll pick it every time when he’s given a choice. 

Bright yellow shirts will nearly always be his choice for what he wants to wear every morning. He’s got several but they don’t always match the rest of his outfit.

If he can throw anything that will make a lot of noise when it hits the floor, he’ll want to do it. So, we have to keep anything breakable out of his reach. 

When he’s had enough to eat, he’ll be done at the table. He pushes himself away without notice or warning. There is no desire to sit around for any of the rest of us to have a conversation. 

He’d ride in a car all day if he could. All we have to do is mention it and he lights up and wheels himself to the front door. Taking him for rides is our go-to solution when he seems restless and out-of-reasonable control.

He recognizes the number 7:00 on a digital clock, and he comes to me at night and lays his head on me to indicate it’s time to go to bed. It’s a sweet gesture that melts my heart. That one’s a very easy one to understand.

He’ll sit for hours by the ocean in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, for a week in the summer because he loves the crashing of waves on the sand. The delight he expresses for going to the beach - loud, cackling, exuberant, joyful, peals of laughter - will continue much of the four-hour drive there when we tell him where we’re going. “Beach” is a word I know he fully understands.

 A birthday cake with candles will always make him squirm and squeal with absolute delight. We think he thinks that each time, no matter when, it’s his birthday, no matter who it’s really for. He loves the singing, the flames, and the cake, the more icing the better. 

But no matter how forcefully he’ll communicate that there is something he needs or wants, or doesn’t need or want, I don't always understand what it is. So often his glances are so nebulous or his change in posture or facial expressions so noticeable, yet so non-specific, that it’s a huge mystery to try to guess or determine what it is that he wants. 

I’m always trying to learn to read him, to understand him, to know him better. I’m always trying to be better at meeting his needs and helping to make his very limited life (in relation to most other people’s lives) as meaningful and enjoyable as is possible for him. He can’t do much on his own. So, caring well for him means doing the best I can to meet the needs that he has.

That challenge makes me a better listener, not only for him, but for everyone else in my life and work, too. 

Listening well and intentionally means reading between the lines. Whether the person we’re listening to is verbal or not. 

It’s reading the inflections, the volume, the glances, the gestures, the body language, the mood, the aura. It’s remembering what you hear and also what you see, what you feel from a person, and what patterns you observe about them. 

And then readjusting every time - and they are inevitable - when a new pattern develops. A new gesture emerges, a new preference is shown, and a mind has changed. 

A lot of this can certainly be relatable for those who don’t live with a pronounced disability. We’re human, after all. We’re complicated, imperfect, contradictory, at times. Lots of times. 

And that’s where my son Matthew is like everyone else. He’s just harder to read and to know because he can’t talk and he can’t express himself like most of the rest of us do. But he has needs and wants and hopes like all the rest of us. He does his best - in his limited ways - to express them. I do my best to decipher them. So many times, I don’t get it right. 

But I hope I'm learning to do it better every day. 

I hope in your own listening each day, you are trying to learn how to do it better, too.