I have heard many times that Albert Einstein didn’t speak in his early years, so went to fact check it. Turns out it is not true, but I learned a fun fact that is hard to not share:
When he was two years old, his parents made him excited that he would get a little sister to play with. When she was born and he got to meet her, he was slightly confused and asked about the baby: “Where are its wheels?”
It’s always tragic to hear about a woman born without wheels :(
I don’t get it. Why did he think a baby would have wheels??
Apparently, when they said “to play with” he imagined some sort of of toy. :D
Temple grandin
I believe Oliver Sacks was non verbal as a child until 5 or 6 and hated music until his teens, where he took an interest in medicine and became a remarkable neuroscientist.
Helen Keller
That might be a hard list to create. While I understand the spirit of the message, I think it would be difficult to objectively define “non-verbal”, then create a list of people that meet that criteria since they would have to publicly self-disclosed. I imagine we would mostly see this with autistic people that are advocates for the autistic community.
Me. I talked using sing language in my early years.
When did you become verbal?
I don’t fully remember but around 4-6 years old.
That’s fantastic.
Are there any notable individuals who began life nonverbal …
Literally everyone.
I think you mean something more like "… still nonverbal at the age of 5+ … "
To that, I don’t know of any. But I’d bet there are at least a few. The world is a big place, and betting against the existence of an extreme outlier is usually a bad bet.
I’m going to assume you clicked and replied without reading what community you’re in?
This is an autism community.
Your comment essentially says “lol everyone starts out that way” then “other than that, idk”, which is not helpful when the OP is asking for examples in regards to autism/ND individuals.
You’re absolutely right about being “not helpful when the OP is asking for examples in regards to autism/ND individuals.”
However it is helpful to point out when someone phrases their question poorly.
Especially in a place known for people being quite literal minded.I’m going to assume you clicked and replied, without understanding what community you’re in?
This is an Autism community.
EDIT: To be clear, the previous two lines were a bit of a joke. Using most of your same words back to you, to make a very similar point that you may have missed, while you thought I may have missed something.
At least I thought it was funny anyway.
I gotchu. I read it literally the way you say at first.
This is exactly the kind of joke I make all the time which is what prompted my friend to ask if I was autistic.
However it is helpful to point out when someone phrases their question poorly.
Mate… the reason I specifically pointed out the community is because when you see a post asking “Who has the record for the fastest completion time in 2022?”, you might look at the community name, see that it’s a Mario 64 speedrun community, and infer the context. Oh! The fastest Mario 64 speeding completion time!
If someone goes in and comments something like “There’s many records for fastest times of things like running, biking, cars, etc. Maybe you should phrase that better to get an actual answer?”, people might say “Hey, you know this is a speedrun community, right?” because it’d be very clear what they were asking if you looked at the community you were commenting on.
tl;dr: OP did not post a poorly-phrased question. You simply misunderstood the context of their question. I had assumed your misunderstanding came from you not looking at what community you were in.
Inferring from context is hard for many of us, which I think is the point Steve wanted to make.
It’s surprising how often people think they need to explain very simple concepts to me, while I’m talking about things that already require understanding what they’re explaining, and several other things as well.
tl;dr: Whoosh!
😆 Re-re-reading it, i think it can be seen both ways: either that you didn’t get OP’s context, or others didn’t get your irony. (I shall assume it was).
For anyone who still wonders: the “literally” in Steve’s first answer gives it away – “This is an autistic place but OP’s question assumes that everyone is aware of the context, so let me make a point by taking the question as literal while disregarding the context, and answer accordingly.” – Quite an ND joke.
Answering this way was my first Impulse too since it is correct after all. Not taking things literally takes extra effort for me. And for some people it’s close to impossible.
Whoosh.
