People called my son names. One of them was stupid.
I am not going to dress that up. It happened, more than once, and some of it came from people who would describe themselves as well meaning.
He was not stupid. He was hard to understand
At the time, my son’s speech was slow and his articulation made him difficult to follow. That is the entire content of what those people were reacting to. They heard effortful speech and concluded there was nothing much behind it.
Neurodivergent children are not stupid. Many are extremely bright. All of them have thoughts and feelings whether or not those are currently reaching you in a form you find easy to receive.
If you want the clearest demonstration of this, look at what happens when a child who cannot speak reliably is given a communication method that works for them. Augmentative and alternative communication covers a range of these, from speech-generating devices to picture systems to independent typing, and the goal in all of them is independent access. The consistent finding is that there was a person in there the whole time, thinking and noticing and forming opinions, waiting for a route out.
Speech is one channel. It is not the same thing as thought, and treating fluency as a proxy for intelligence is a mistake people make constantly and confidently.
Your child is listening
This is worth saying plainly, because it is easy to forget in the moment.
Children who are difficult to understand are frequently understanding you perfectly. If a conversation like this happens in front of your child, assume they are following it. It is the safer assumption and it is usually the correct one, and what they take from it is not the argument but who spoke up.
Where this leaves you
You do not owe anyone a defence of your child’s intelligence, and you are not obliged to educate every person who says something careless. It is exhausting and it is not your job.
You are allowed to say that a word is not used about your child, and leave it there. Closing the subject is usually more useful than winning it, particularly in front of your child.
My son is now completely intelligible in conversation. The people who decided years ago what he was capable of were wrong then. They just could not hear him yet.
