There's a young lady, just a bit younger than I am, who is in my spinning class. I say "my" but she's been in the class much longer than I have. When I first met her, I assumed that she was hearing impaired; her speech and conversational patterns fit with that - slightly mumbly speech and conversational leaps that didn't quite make sense. As I got to know her better, I learned that she is instead moderately developmentally delayed. Until about a year ago, she lived with her Dad; then she moved to a group home, which was a tough transition for her and a lot of us in the class did a lot of reassuring and making suggestions to her when there were conflicts that clearly resulted from communications breakdowns between her and the staff.
Last week, as she and I talked about how she was not going to get to use her new headphones because she didn't have time to work out on the cardio machines before her bus came to take her to work, I had a realization.
She has the emotional maturity of a five year old.
She was so upset about the headphone thing, and she couldn't let it go. She would hear my suggestions that she could use them on Thursday but then 10 seconds later be back to lamenting that she hand't gotten to use them. It really was just like talking and listening to TRex.
And I thought, wow. How hard is it to have a five year old brain in a 30-something body? How hard will it be when she's 50? Or 60? What's she going to do when her Dad and step-mom are gone?
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