This autistic boy’s classmates had never heard him speak. What he finally said at graduation blew them away.

[tao]

People who know Sef Scott know he doesn’t normally speak. The 17-year-old from Plano, Tex., has autism, and other than quoting lines from favorite movies, he is mostly nonverbal.

 

So the members of the Plano Senior High School Class of 2018 — along with Sef’s relatives and even his father — were stunned June 9 when he took the mic and addressed his fellow graduates.

 

“I would imagine that to the seniors that know who I am that it is entirely unexpected that I would be standing here giving a speech,” he said. “Just by my being here speaking to all of you — me — that alone is unexpected.” Explaining that his mother and his brother Sim, a brain tumor survivor, helped him write the text, he added, “Knowing that I want to be heard — I imagine that is unexpected.”

 

While many students had seen Sef in the halls, he was largely in special-needs classes and most didn’t know him, his mother, Vicki Scott, said. She doesn’t know quite why, but when she saw a notice inviting seniors to audition a speech for graduation, she had an inkling that he’d want to do it.

 

She ran the idea by him, and “he jumped up out of his bed with a full-body shiver and giggle, and he said, ‘Yes!’ ”

 

His response took even his mother by surprise. “He’s not a demonstrative individual at all, and to have him shaking with excitement, with a huge smile, making eye contact, looking at me straight in the eye and firmly saying yes, it was great.”

 

The speech took seven weeks of writing and editing, helped by Sim, 15, who has given many speeches about having had a brain tumor. “He was excited to do what his brother does,” Scott said. “He knows that Sim does it for the benefit of others and he knows that people come away happy after hearing him talk.”

 

When Sef started elementary school, his parents worried he’d be a target for bullying. Instead, they saw his classmates holding his hand and leading him to where he needed to go. They decided that they could never move away from the place where other kids knew him and cared for him.

 

But to get onto the graduation-day podium, Sef had to audition the speech before a panel of judges who did not know him. His mother and brother did not tell anyone else about the plan, and even after he was selected, his father and other relatives had no idea it was coming.

 

As they sat in the audience, Sef stepped up to the podium.

 

“Unexpected,” he began. “This is what I want you to remember. Unexpected.”

 

The speech wasn’t just about Sef. The burly, affable teenager also had advice for the other graduates: to follow their own hopes and goals and not just blindly tread a path that doesn’t feel true to them.

 

“Don’t follow someone else’s dreams. Don’t waste time on something you never wanted. Do the unexpected. It’s your life that you are living, not anyone else’s, so do what fulfills you. Don’t fear the future, don’t fear the unknown. Will it be unexpected? Yes. Yes it will. But that does not make it wrong.”

 

(Please do see the video at top of the article < here >.)

 

< Here >

[luisam]

There is the misbelief that "autistic" kids are retarded and it has been proved in countless cases that they are not. Autistics find empathising and conversing difficult but they are by no means mentally impaired. Also, autism is not related to age; there are many autistic adults. Some autistic people want to be cured, and that's fine if it's what they really want. However, there are plenty of autistic people who would rather not expose themselves to conform to society's narrow defintion of "normal" and they are HAPPY the way they are. Guess, they feel that they are the normal and the rest of the society is nuts! Ok, this is just my own guess!

The case of this boy is probably one who had the willpower and the intelligence to ovarcome his condition.

[shrinivas]

On 6/19/2018 at 4:42 AM, luisam said:

There is the misbelief that "autistic" kids are retarded and it has been proved in countless cases that they are not. Autistics find empathising and conversing difficult but they are by no means mentally impaired. Also, autism is not related to age; there are many autistic adults. Some autistic people want to be cured, and that's fine if it's what they really want. However, there are plenty of autistic people who would rather not expose themselves to conform to society's narrow defintion of "normal" and they are HAPPY the way they are. Guess, they feel that they are the normal and the rest of the society is nuts! Ok, this is just my own guess!

The case of this boy is probably one who had the willpower and the intelligence to ovarcome his condition.

So very true !

[Archanus]

I am so nostalgic right now !!