Presuming Competence

bonitaharman7
Jan 30
4 min read

There are countless moments I look back on now and realize my son was reading, understanding, and taking in far more than anyone believed.

My son was diagnosed with “classic autism,” and years later I learned he had also been labeled with “global developmental delay.” In other words, he was considered intellectually disabled. Knowing what I know now, I am horrified by how low our expectations were for him—or perhaps more accurately, how quickly society gives up on autistic individuals who cannot communicate.

Honestly, I sometimes think people have higher expectations for their dogs.

“Sometimes I think people have higher expectations for their dogs.”

When Expectations Shrink

When did I start to believe he didn’t understand me?

I accepted the diagnosis, yet I still believed he was smart. But as the years went on, I slowly lost hope that he was truly taking things in.

I developed unwritten rules. I repeated myself constantly, often saying everything twice, because it seemed like he paid more attention the second time.

I don’t think I baby-talked him, but I know I avoided conversations about memories, ideas, or world events. I assumed he wouldn’t remember or comprehend.

I didn’t speak to him at an age-appropriate level.

“Listening Doesn’t Have a Look”

Imagine fully understanding everything around you, yet being unable to get your body to cooperate enough to show it.

As they say in Spelling: “Listening doesn’t have a look.”

Imagine being asked to do something simple—like closing a door—and only sometimes being able to make your body respond.

To make it worse, imagine people assuming you don’t even know what a door is.

These are the devastatingly low expectations placed on so many autistic individuals.

When Apraxia Finally Made Sense

Everything changed when I learned that apraxia can affect the entire body—not just speech.

For the first time, I had an explanation that matched what I had been seeing for years: how my son could sometimes demonstrate understanding and other times appear completely disconnected.

This is apraxia—consistently inconsistent movement.

Suddenly, things I had never been able to explain began to make sense.

My son pressed “hurry up” and “let’s go” on his iPad—two separate buttons I had never taught him. These buttons were buried in his Proloquo app under another phrases button.

I didn’t celebrate at the time because I didn’t know what to do with this information.

Two different support workers told me he used these buttons with them.

I had chosen those phrases because they fit his personality. He hates waiting and becomes anxious when things are moving slowly. I never showed him where the buttons were or when to use them.

So how did he know?

Did this mean he could read?

Another moment stands out.

He went with his dad to Taste of Saskatchewan by the river and became fixated on a food booth, refusing to move. It wasn’t a familiar chain like KFC or McDonald’s—but it was the only booth advertising chicken nuggets, his favorite food.

Was he reading the sign?

There were too many moments like this—too many cracks in the story I had been told.

His supposed intellectual disability did not match what I was seeing, yet my expectations were so low I didn’t even consider that he understood words.

How did I miss this?

The Shift

When I finally understood that apraxia affects the whole body, not just speech, my belief system shifted almost instantly.

Within hours, the idea that my son was intellectually disabled no longer made sense to me. Perhaps I never fully believed it—I had just been worn down by years of professional certainty.

When I read about teenagers like my son in the book Spellers, I knew we were starting a new journey—one toward true communication.

“Within hours, everything I believed about my son changed.”

Presuming Competence in Practice

We began working with an S2C practitioner in Edmonton, and I started using the letterboard with Blake daily at home.

The first times I watched him independently reach for letters and spell words I didn’t even know he understood, I could hardly hold it together.

I choked back tears again and again.

Blake had never willingly worked with me like this before. This time was different—because I was presuming competence.

There were hard moments, of course.

Sometimes he walked away and needed coaxing back. Seizures and medication changes have created the most intense emotional roller coasters of my life.

But he keeps working.

And the progress he has made is something no one who knew him before would believe without witnessing it firsthand.

Autism and its comorbidities don’t disappear—but the door to genuine communication is opening wider every day.

The Moments That Change Everything

There were moments during lessons that left me stunned.

I would ask a question—often one labeled as “prior knowledge”—and think, How on earth does he know this?

One answer was Boris Yeltsin. We were using the three letterboards, giving him a one-in-eight chance to get the right letter, yet he spelled the name quickly and smoothly.

Then came another prior knowledge question about Taylor Swift and her cats.

He spelled that she has three cats and named one as Meredith—on the full 26-letter board.

Don’t even get me started on the math—square roots, decimals—things I never imagined possible.

Why I Share This

I should be shouting this from the rooftops.

At first, I was.

But people don’t always grasp how monumental this is, and I don’t want to share something this beautiful with disbelief.

Why don’t I try harder to prove it?

Blake hates cameras and attention. The moment a camera appears, he removes it. The pressure to “prove it” changes everything—it affects his ability to spell.

Either you believe this—or you don’t.

Maybe this doesn’t feel like a miracle to Blake, because his abilities were always there.

The miracle is that I finally understood.

“The miracle isn’t that he can spell. The miracle is that I finally understood.”

I share our story not to convince skeptics, but in the hope that another parent, caregiver, or nonspeaker might be given the same opportunity.

If you presume competence, you may finally discover what your person has been saying all along—just waiting for a way to be heard.

“Presuming competence changed everything.”