I have three nannies. They all give great care to Addison, but each one is different. One nanny is like a grandma, one is like an aunt, and another is much younger and more like Addison’s big sister. She also accompanies him to school. She takes a lot of pride in what Addison learns. She fiercely defends Addison as one of the most normal, if not more than normal human beings on the planet.

Do kids really know what we are saying? When speech is not mimicked back, it can be harder to find out if a child is comprehending what we adults say. However, Addison can hear a song once and repeat it. Not in words, but in the hand signals and motions. He nods his head to the beat and knows exactly what line is coming up. In his class one day, a teacher was teaching the kids yoga. You know that one where you sit cross-legged, pinch your fingers together and humm? With a prompt from his nanny, Addison was doing yoga. He pinched his pudgy little fingers together, looked up to the sky, and hummed. Is there any chance at all this kid gets it?

The question is one posed by Jill Bolte Taylor - the singing scientist who had a stroke and became her own best experiment. She lost the ability of her left brain. She couldn’t speak or create labels. Life had to be learned from the ground up; the left brain life that is. On the other hand, her right brain was there, being all-encompassing, passionate, present, and flowing with the great life force of the Universe. At least, that’s how she explained it. In her book, My Stroke of Insight, she explains that we need to “step to the right of our left hemisphere.” Bring our presence to each other - not our labels; not our egos.

Addison understands this left brain language. And he is teaching me how to communicate, this time without that part of my brain (which Dr. Bolte Taylor explains is the size of a peanut. A peanut!!) driving me insane with a crazy crop of voices in my head always in charge. Down Syndrome kids, or any child or person with so-called “brain deficiencies,” can easily be tossed aside as not “getting it.” I am afraid this kid gets more than I may ever know.