How Special Needs Kids Teach Us We ALL Count
“EVERY CRAYON COUNTS”
INTRODUCTION A (A BLUE BlogBOX Entry)
Early thoughts while watching my beautiful son … STACKING CRAYONS … around 2014
In the last 10 cycles, besides sleeping, I have spent more time watching our son stack Crayons than any other activity. In the hours I might have wanted to spend listening to him, talking with him, instead I watch him relate to the Crayons in his hand. And I imagine ...
I imagine a day when we might talk together.
And then I imagine that we are talking together. And the Crayons are helping.
I imagine what he sees in the Crayons as they move around in his hands.
I see his eyes light up and I imagine what he’s thinking.
He brings the Crayons close to his cheek or less than an inch from his eye.
And I imagine what the Crayon might be saying to him.
The dozens of Crayons in his hand become more than a hundRED.
And I imagine what this growing Community of Crayons is saying to each other.
How do the ones on top feel?
How about the ones on the bottom?
Perhaps a silly thought. Perhaps not.
And then he picks up a broken Crayon.
And tries to fit it back into the stack.
Which he never used to do.
Broken Crayons used to be outcasts.
But no longer it seems.
No. Now, the broken Crayon is accepted into the community.
And I imagine that my son. My dear son.
My dear sweet son is showing me.
The he has a support system a lot like that.
That just accepts him in.
They way he is.
Just the way he is.
Am I still imagining? Or is that exactly what we are doing? Together.
Building a support system like that for him.
And, if I watch carefully enough.
Even before I can imagine how to do that. Exactly. Precisely.
He shows me.
In a way, he doesn’t really need my help to build a support system.
He's doing that all the time on his own.
As long as I don't get in the way.
Or try too hard to take over.
He may actually know more about building a support system than I do.
And maybe I can learn more from him than he can from me.
He does it with the Crayons.
And he does it with human beings.
Builds a system of support.
In his way, my little engineer understands how systems work far better than I do.
And as I watch each pyramid of Crayons growing.
I imagine that today. I will take the time.
To watch. To listen. And to learn.
From him. And his friends.
A caring community of Crayons.
Later thoughts while watching my beautiful son … STACKING CRAYONS … around 2017
It was like watching a sculptor at work. Only I didn’t know he was a sculptor. And I didn’t know sculptors could use Crayons as their medium.
Like most children, his fascination with Crayons began before he could talk. Unlike most kids, his fascination with Crayons developed while his speech did not.
Before we really knew what Autism was, he was giving us hints. And his relationship with Crayons was one of those hints. When he plays with Crayons, paper is never a part of the process. It’s a tactile exploration. He touches them. He sniffs them. He caresses them.
Before he was two he was lining up the Big Crayons from the BOX of 8 in his tiny hand. Starting with his palm and moving toward his toddler fingers, he could line up 6 of those Big Crayons in one hand. And then he would slowly turn his wrist so that all 6 Crayons were almost perfectly perpendicular to the floor. Not quite a 90 degree angle, but close.
Pretty soon it was 10 regular Crayons in his hand. Then it was no longer just one line of Crayons. He was starting to stack them. Many, many times a day.
Now he nestles a BOX of 24 so easily into his hand that it seems like far fewer. With a small handful of Crayons you can’t see the pyramid forming yet. It’s just a cluster of Crayons buried in his long, tapeRED fingers.
It takes him only a few seconds to add in a BOX of 64, however, although he often rearranges the Crayons for another 30 minutes or more. Each successive row of Crayons has precisely one more Crayon in it than the one just below it. The distribution and groupings of colors seems to be very important. He will observe his inverted pyramid from a number of different perspectives, twisting his wrist almost 360 degrees to get many different vantage points. Often he will open up his hand more broadly, almost flat and then narrow his fingers again into a tight “V” shape. The Crayons remain symmetrical, although they roll and shift as his hand moves.
The bottom row of an inverted pyramid is usually 4 Crayons, but it might be 3. The top row is almost always 11 Crayons long. If he’s in a hurry it’s 10. On a rare occasion his longest row is 12 Crayons, but that stretches his pinkie and thumb so tightly that it restricts his ability to twist his wrist. And seeing his sculpture from all sides seems to add to his satisfaction. If he’s motivated, he can usually build an inverted pyramid of 60 Crayons in less than 60 seconds.
4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 = 4*15 = 60
When he’s really adventurous he’ll open up another BOX of 48. That’s 136 Crayons, if you are doing the math. And now he’s building a pyramid on top of his inverted pyramid. It takes at least 100 Crayons to do both.
4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 10 + 9 + 8 + 7 + 6 + 5 + 4 = 109
And that huge mound of Crayons isn’t quite impressive against his pre-teen, ten-cycle-old face as it was when he was a chubby cheeked five-cycle-old. But the subtlety of his skills has increased with age and maturity. And as with all systems, the more practice he gets, the less conscious attention the exercise requires. He really is relating to the Crayons in a growing relationship, with all of its sophistications, joys and challenges.
He rarely uses more than 109 Crayons any more. When it takes him mere seconds to build a whole community of dozens, larger numbers are a whole lot more work.
That’s something I think we all need to learn about communities.
Bigger isn’t always better.
In fact, the bigger we get, the more complicated our math becomes. Very rarely he decides to build that diamond ship with a dozen Crayons in the middle row. And it’s impressive. But it’s unwieldy. These are the rare moments when he seems to be building differently because he’s aware I’m watching. He’s building more to my specifications than his own. The telltale clue? When the diamond rises all the way to a point, with one lone Crayon on top. That’s 138 Crayons in total. And I think that’s his maximum.
12 + 2(11) + 2(10) + 2(9) + 2(8) + 2(7) + 2(6) + 2(5) + 2(4) + 3 + 2 + 1 = 138
He may find a way to stack even more Crayons, especially if his hand gets bigger.
But a bigger and bigger stack? That seems to be more my issue than his.
If the stack gets so big it’s hard for me to count,
then I find an ever more sophisticated method of keeping track.
But maybe, just maybe, he understands ADDITION far better than I do.
ADDITION is more about paying attention to every Crayon.
Noticing. Touching. Caressing. Sniffing. Holding. Valuing.
I want to be able to answer the question that everybody seems to ask me …
WOW, how MANY Crayons is THAT??
But it’s a question he’s never stopped to consider.
With the thousands of Crayons he’s held in his precious hands …
He’s never once counted the Crayons.
He uses different senses entirely to measure his satisfaction in the process.
His satisfaction with his system of stacking … or restacking Crayons.
And the more I watch. The more I wonder.
Do I really have anything important to teach my son about building support systems?
Do I really need to teach him how to count the Crayons?
Or is my autistic son …
Is my Special Needs child …
Really teaching ME about what is REALLY important about math:
That. Every. Crayon.
Counts!
Of course he is.
And in my wisest moments.
I remember to pay attention.
