“Stop that nonsense!
I am Joris.
Please leave out “He can’t talk”
Everyone has experienced it. That you want to say something, but cannot find the right words. But what if you are very outgoing, a talkative soul, but have no words at all? That’s how it is with our Joris.
In recent years, Joris has taught us that you can very well be extroverted without saying a word. For a very long time – until he was almost 5 years old – he spoke only 2 words: mom and dad. To prevent people from asking him what his name was or how old he was, we often introduced him as: “This is Joris and he can’t talk.” At one point he was always ahead of us, by pointing us out to new people and saying “daddy, mom.” It took a while before we realized that he actually meant to say: “Stop that nonsense. I’m Joris. Please omit “He can’t talk.” Then it became: “This is Joris and do you know what he can do? Dutch with gestures! ” Much more positive and more fun for him of course.
Then we noticed that he approached non-talking frontally in all sorts of ways. On the first day at his new school, he used the tongue of the monster on his shirt to make contact with his new teacher. When nice girls were sitting at a table next to us in a restaurant, he used his entire vocabulary, namely “daddy, mom” as an opening sentence (many adolescents can still learn from this). To show that he was so happy to play with the son of friends, he grabbed his hand. And did not let go. There are countless examples where he proves that you can be an extrovert without talking.
His – more introverted – father was recently at a conference for a new job, where he knew no one. Arriving at the hotel the first thought was to go for a nice run to recover from the trip. Then he thought that in such a case Joris would go directly to the bar to get to know his new colleagues. No sooner said than done, with the result that father almost even won the network competition of the conference. Thanks to Joris, although of course he would have just finished first.
