I Know Nothing

I am the wisest being alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing. Socrates in Plato’s Apology.

 
I am as part of a team of two people attempting to raise two children. Both are gifted and both are flawed. My guess is that these qualities make them somewhat like their mother and myself. No I am not implying we are smarter than anyone else but we did have our moments in our youth.


Both of our lads have always scored highly on standardized testing. The youngest was among the top 200 scorers in his age bracket on the ACT one year in our state. The oldest is the kind of kid where teachers and administrators pull you aside and say in a sotto voce whisper “He is really smart”. His ACT scores were solid but he has issues with testing. For ASD kids it is one and done and they don’t want to go back or to play to a teacher’s view of how things should be done. But when you talk to him you get it, he knows shit. The younger one never stops talking and if you parse out the Kerouac like stream of consciousness ranting you will see he knows shit too. Each knows different stuff. But they have a wealth of stuff inside those very different heads of theirs.


The child for whom the whispers come is on the Autism Spectrum. The child for whom the top end of the test scores come so easily is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. A gaze into their respective eyes reveals chaos and quiet, one has an impenetrable, inscrutable soul and the other a histrionic and hyperbolic persona. Exemplary of the challenges with these two distinct persons is that in each case messages from the school that are to come home to us are lost. In one case they are buried in the deep locker of the mind and in the other case they fly away tied to the legs of birds of fire circling in the air until all elements of the message are consumed in the fire and the light.


What was there that ever prepared me for this? My parents were old and their style of parenting was tired and laissez faire. In rural 1960s America this was probably okay. The risks then were beer, pot, baby making and blowing shit up. Today the risks are neural, viral and environmental. Harder nastier drugs abound. TV shows images of sex constantly and they knew by 6th grade what a hummer was.


I think that maybe I am too old to be raising even a normal teenager in today’s world let alone two very high needs boys. At various times I have been told one child has abused his computer privileges on the scale that the head of the school’s IT department has noticed and the other has melted down in class lying on the floor refusing to move. Ah the joys of youth. Give me the “I caught him drinking beer out behind the barn with those other punks” any old day.


Robert Thurman has said, “Wisdom and compassion are ultimately inseparable, wisdom being the complete knowledge of ultimate selflessness and compassion being the selfless commitment to the happiness of others.” Cleary I am not a wise being, I am fallible, I am confused and I am selfish. But I have been presented with diverse charges and in some senses challenging adversaries. But I care so much for my children. I really get the second part the “selfless commitment to the happiness of others.” Don’t most parents? I promise to live this day with my eyes open watching them take on the world I failed to conquer. Oh how little I know about what to do next.