“Okay,” he told me smiling back.
Thorin loved having a book read aloud to him, but reading a book with me was now intimidating. I knew he could do it but I had to figure out how to convince him he could.
“Thorin should we write a story?” I asked excitedly.
“Yeah!”
“Okay, let’s come up with some characters. Who should be in it?”
“Cow! And horse!” he yelled.
“Awesome! What do they do? What’s one thing they do?”
“Eat cake!”
“Big surprise.” I smiled. “Okay, where’s the cake?
“In kitchen. Cow and horse take it!”
“I like it! A cake caper!” I applauded.
“Should we have pictures in the story?”
“Yeah!”
Thorin had always drawn and painted. He had an easel since he was three years old and could paint for an hour at a time. He made beautiful, expressive drawings. I had never thought to exploit that passion until now.
I found the online program Art Hub for Kids, which featured videos of a father who taught his children how to draw. Thorin and I both learned how to draw a cake, a cow, and a horse that day.
One of the things Ward and I lamented was that Thorin never once told us what he had done at school. This went back to preschool. One of us would ask, “What did you do today? When he was younger, he would shake his head no. Later, the answer was always “don’t know.” We never stopped asking. In the past, we had asked for the specifics of Thorin’s day when talking with the teacher or Ed Tech. We used those details to tease out a response from Thorin. It didn’t matter. He never offered anything about his day.
The day we wrote our first story together, Ward asked Thorin, as he had every night for years, “What did you do today, Thorin?”
“Make story and draw!”
Ward and I looked at each. He did it!
“Thorin, that sounds great! Show me!”
Ward and I hugged each other close that night after Thorin had gone to sleep.
“He did it, Ward! He told you about his day.”
“I know. Best night, ever. We’re on the right track, Kari.”
“I know.”
By December, Thorin’s reading went from the bag of laminated sight words from Ms. Alice to sight words in sentences to Bob Books to Dick and Jane. His math skills grew to counting to 100 and beginning addition. His learning increased more in those four months than during his entire public school education. He was half of an inch taller. And, he started taking photographs again.
I also discovered what Thorin and I were doing was a hybrid of unschooling and homeschooling. Unschooling is child directed and geared around the child’s interests. Homeschooling is more curriculum based. We used curriculum for math and some language skills, and everything else I created based on Thorin’s interests through daily living.
Not only did I start to see Thorin mature academically but also emotionally. Our dog Walt was fifteen years old—very old for a German shepherd—and he had serious health issues. Ward and I had talked about what would eventually happen to Walt. And, Thorin had started to notice Walt wasn’t able to do the same things. The forts he built for the two of them now had a cushy bed for Walt. He told Walt it was “okay on floor” when he stopped jumping on his bed at night.
In January, Walt fell down on a walk. He wouldn’t let me pick him up; instead he crawled back to the house. Once home, Thorin sat and petted Walt’s head, telling him over and over, “Okay, Walty, okay.” A week later, we had to put Walt to sleep.
“Where Walt now?” Thorin asked me.
“He’s in heaven.” To help explain, I made a rudimentary drawing complete with Walt’s ascending soul.
The next day at breakfast, I saw Thorin was wearing his backpack.
“What’s that for?”
“For Asgard,” he explained.
“You’re going to Asgard?” I asked.
“Yes. To see Walty.”
I realized I must have made heaven sound a lot like Thor’s birthplace.
“Honey, Walt’s not in Asgard.”
“Yes. I go now.” Thorin sounded adamant.
A few days later, Thorin had a dream about Walt.
Thorin told me, “Walt happy!”
“I know, Thorin. I know.”
He started dancing around the room singing, “Walty alive at night in our dreams!”
Thorin had pulled out all the stops for his best friend, voicing a sentence that expressed all his thoughts.
I learned part of our education at home was reprogramming the previous, narrow opinions heaped on Thorin.
One day, I said to Thorin after he read a new book, “You are so smart! I’m proud of you!”
“No,” he said, tears welled in his eyes.
“You are. Believe that. Okay?”
Some days, homeschooling became an exercise in how often my heart could break.
A few days later, Thorin wanted me to leave the room while he read.
“Say the words out loud though, okay?”
“Yes.”
I said I was going to do the dishes but instead I tucked myself on the other side of the door to listen to him. He was doing great, then silence. When I stole a quick look, I found him staring back at me. He looked sad.
“Hey, I want this, okay?” he told me.
“Okay,” I said.
I understood Thorin was as invested as I was in his learning.
Over time, I figured out at school Thorin was seen as a boy with limitations and at home I saw only his potential. Thorin’s guesstimates and his trying to distract me with what he knew to be interests of mine were savvy tactics that might be used by anyone who is uncertain of himself. His long pauses that led to understanding can be applied to many of us, and not necessarily just those of us with a diagnosis. Thorin’s absence of faith in himself is relatable to anyone who has ever been judged. His preferred nakedness was well within the bounds of boyhood.
At school, Thorin was perceived different from his peers in every way. Down syndrome was the single overarching principle used to understand Thorin. That restricted picture resulted in other children treating him
