Leonardo’s family had never heard him speak. Since his childhood, his parents waited for him to say a word but all his efforts were in vain. For this reason, when he was four years old, they took him to a language school thinking that he could be deaf and dumb.
The tests that were carried out on him determined that he did not have any physical problem that prevented him from speaking, so his desperate family took him to the San Juan de Dios Hospital, located in Santiago de Chile. No one could hide their surprise when, in the middle of a session with the doctors, Leonardo began to speak in English.
His mother, Susana Quinteros, told Chilevisión that Leonardo “was shown a lot of toys and they asked him the color of some wooden cubes, and he answered ‘green’ and ‘yellow’.”
“I swear I cried in the office, I had never heard his voice,” Susana recalled emotionally on the program. Since then, Leonardo began to communicate verbally but only in English, something that no one could explain since his parents did not know the language and the boy had never left the country.
“I don’t know what it is, I can’t explain it to myself. In fact, doctors don’t explain it to me. Time passed and he had to learn to speak Spanish,” said Susana.
Although learning English without intending it may seem like an advantage, for Leonardo it caused problems at school. In language classes, the boy had trouble when the teachers asked him to pronounce words in Spanish.
“They taught him the syllables with their palms and, for example, they asked him to say ‘a-zul’ but my son said ‘blue’ in English. So, they sent for me so that I would not teach him English and I would tell them that I never taught him, ”his mother said.
This year, Leonardo’s education was made even more difficult when his father fell seriously ill with covid-19. His family could not send him to school and despite the fact that Susana asked to be allowed to return to face-to-face classes, the institution did not agree.
“I go to school again, I told him this and I thought they would be happy (…) but the principal told me ‘you know what, in this school we speak Spanish and not English, so I don’t know these little kids and I need them to come To classes’. Again I tried to explain, but there was no solution, no welcome or any gesture of kindness. So I took it with me,” Susana explained.
In his house, posters with phrases in English and Spanish adorn the walls to facilitate communication between Leonardo and his family. The boy also entertains himself with books in English.
The psychologist and doctor in Special Education, María Paz Gómez, believes that Leonardo can be found on the autism spectrum and High Capacity, a scenario with “innately enhanced intellectual abilities, in this case, his incredible development in the English language.”
According to the expert, although his family did not speak English, the boy grew up watching videos and playing video games in this language, and that could have been his approach to the language.
“In the case of Leo, and what makes it very particular, is that it happens in English, since he comes from a family that is not bilingual, far from it. This hyperfocus of the brain is in its infancy, surely in everything that has to do with tablets, programs, television or video games”, added Gómez.
Susana Quinteros asks the Chilean authorities to make her son’s case visible and to accept him in a bilingual school so that he can learn both languages.
(YO)
Source: Eluniverso
Paul is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment and general news. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established herself as a respected voice in the industry.
