Thank you, Mrs. Leonberger

Tucked away somewhere in the basement of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, is a precious collection of small metal cylinders that literally define the mass of everything in the United States: the kilogram.

The kilogram currently has one very simple definition: It is the mass of a chunk of platinum-iridium alloy that’s been housed at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Sèrves, France since 1889! It’s called the International Prototype Kilogram (a.k.a. Big K, or Le Grand K), and it has many copies around the world, including seven at NIST Gaithersburg. They represent the world standard for the kilogram and all other kilo measurements around the world must be compared and calibrated to this one prototype, ensuring the world is on one system of measurement .

There is no such standard for the human brain. You can Google away, but I promise you will not find a reference to one brain, pickled in a jar in the basement of some national archive, that represents the standard for all human brains. So, how do we determine whether any individual human brain is ‘normal’?

Psychiatrists have diagnostic manuals full of criteria for what is and is not normal behavior. But many would argue that the human brain itself is the most complicated two-and-a-half pounds of matter in the known universe.

What if a departure from the neurological norm isn’t a ‘disorder’ or a ‘syndrome’, but is instead a normal, natural variation in the human genome? This concept, known as ‘neurodiversity’, suggests that neurological differences like autism, ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, and others are simply variations of human wiring, and not a disease. In fact, many believe that people with neurological differences don’t need to be cured or fixed; they just need help and accommodations.

When I was very young, I was a bright, imaginative child, prone to making up and telling elaborate stories that took place in a world only I could see. My parents said I was smart and I believed them. When I was old enough, I went to school. From the very first day, I struggled with reading and writing. I felt like I couldn’t learn anything. I battled through my elementary years and my self-esteem plummeted.

My family moved when I was 10 years old. I grew up in a pre-technology world, and my new school didn’t have my records when I got there. So, a lovely woman named Mrs. Leonberger, who was actually a parent volunteer, sat across a desk from me and asked me questions – to spell specific words, solve math problems, explain sentence structures and punctuation – all designed to measure my level of understanding and intelligence. But, she also spent the better part of my first morning getting to know me and listening to my story.

Mrs. Leonberger asked my mother if I had ever been diagnosed with any kind of learning disability because I had scored VERY low in reading and comprehension but did not appear to have other “intellectual deficits”. As it happened, her son had dyslexia and she recognized similar characteristics in me.

It was the early 1970s, and students with special needs were rarely taught in a regular classroom, so the new school enrolled me in special education classes for my first two weeks. When they received the records from my old school, they moved me to “regular” classes, but the term ‘learning disability’ was never mentioned again.

Still, my mother, in her wisdom, asked Mrs. Leonberger to tutor me. She taught me techniques to help me focus and study better and helped me learn to master reading. I loved everything Sci-Fi back then, and she used my passion for Star Trek as a teaching tool to help me understand complex concepts, fostering what became a lifelong passion for technology. But, she gave me so much more than that. She introduced me to my true self, encouraged me to see the world through my own eyes, and gave me the courage to be perfectly imperfect.

In my adult life, I discovered I had a natural aptitude for problem-solving and developing ‘systems’ that can improve efficiency or otherwise fill a need. Over time, I discovered I had the ability ‘see’ a variety of possible scenarios and angles related to a system, that others appeared not to see. My confidence grew. For the first time since I was very young the world made sense to me, and I began entertaining the idea that I wasn’t broken, I just saw things in a very different way from “most” people. Neurodiversity.

Although there is a growing movement to focus on the person and their abilities, we still have a tendency to think of people in terms of diagnoses, disabilities, and disorders. The principal of neurodiversity suggests that neurological differences should be recognized and respected as any other human variation. To use a technology analogy, just because a PC isn’t running Windows doesn’t mean its broken. I encourage you to think of the people you support in terms of their neurodiversity. Maybe they are simply running a different operating system than most people. As a Direct Care Professional, you are in the unique position to be Mrs. Leonberger for someone. What could they do or be if encouraged to indulge in their own view of the world?