About Spencer

“How are you doing Spencer?”

Spencer is a 21-year-old young man (as of Jan 2022).  He can hear but does not talk and is intellectually disabled.  He loves to engage with people but he doesn’t always understand what they are talking about.

He likes hanging out with friends and being acknowledged by his amazing fans wherever he goes. He may look like he is avoiding you but it is just his way of not having to commit to a conversation although he would probably like to.

Spencer’s friends are great at not letting Spencer’s trademark “Na” get in the way of asking how he is doing, if he is having a good day or if he likes something.

Movie Man

• Any Lego movie
• Toy Story series
• Star Wars (except for the more violent theme ones)
• Kung-Fu Panda (any and all)
• How to Train a Dragon
• and countless others.  He will even act them out, scene by scene.  He is actually a very skilled pre-scene actor (the only one we know of).  He can act out every scene of a movie 5 seconds before it happens.  Its just kind of his thing.  He kind of reduces the suspension when it gets too high for him.

Chef?

Sure.  Spencer loves to cook.  Cooking is a step by step kind of activity so once he gets used to a recipe (cookies are a perfect example) he can be the best assistant in the kitchen.

Clean up after cooking?  No way.  He conveniently can leave that to others that have a higher desire to do such things.

What happened to his nose?

We love that kids ask questions.  Some of them stare, most of them ask good questions.  They just simply want to know why Spencer’s nose looks different than normal.  We typically go into a 13-second debriefing and the kid’s curiosity is answered and off they go.

Spencer was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate and is missing the tail of his 13th chromosome.  He is not identified with a syndrome since there are very few people with this same genetic mutation.

The young man has had over 21 surgeries to fix his nose, palate and a mixture of other concerns over his few years.  He has taught himself how to eat/chew over 10 different times because of how surgeries have moved things around inside.  He has battled through every one of them with enduring patience.

Resourceful

Just like recovering from a surgery Spencer finds a way.

Another example of his perseverance is once upon a time we think that he wanted a laptop just like each of his siblings.

One afternoon, after hearing some strange noises in the other room we came into the room to find that he had modified one of our desktop machines so the monitor could sit in his lap and he could watch a movie from a DVD like anyone else with a laptop.  Oh my.