My husband's brother is 30. He has a learning and speech disability. From what I can understand he's had this from birth. This means that he struggles to communicate amongst other things.
I want to be clear that I'm interested in helping him because I care for him and I know DH worries about him and that is why I'm posting here.
BIL was educated at what his family call a 'specialist school' as a weekly boarder from age 7-18. This helped with his speech apparently but I would say that when I met him 6 years ago he only said about a dozen words.
He lives with his parents, holds down a quite simple manual part time job, drives on L plates and can take care of himself pretty well.
Often his family seem to think he doesn't understand some things- but I'm not sure as he always seems to give a correct yes / no / maybe answer. I realise that it must sound ridiculous that a relative newcomer to his family (ie me) thinks that his own birth family underestimate him. I feel uncomfortable about it, really I do.
It's clear he has a learning disability as well as his speech difficulties, but I do feel that he is able to communicate and understand more than he is given credit for. Over the past two years he has definitely used more words and chosen to try more communication. Even his own family have commented on this. He loves social media and texting using simple words (which he copies and pastes) and emojis and it's led me to thinking that maybe that is a possible way to communicate more with him.
He is a routine based person, steady and reliable. Possible partly due to his personality and possibly because he lives with two routine based older people. He has one passion (I won't be specific as I don't want to out us), but other than that he has few interests. He never seems very happy. We really don't know what if anything would make him happy (other than a wife, he has made that clear). I wonder if we could make him more content if he could communicate his thoughts somehow?
I ran the idea of exploring tools that use emoji type symbols past DH. He is worried about upsetting his mum by implying she's not doing her best. That is absolutely not my intention- I'm not sure if she's aware that such things exist as she's not very tech savvy.
DH also worries that his DB might communicate to his mum about things that are tough to 'hear' and stir up a can of worms. Apparently once DH and I became engaged MIL found it very hard as BIL made it clear he would also like a partner.
I can see how deeply MIL worries about BIL's future. We will care for him when she is gone of course, but she still worries that we won't look out for him. If I interfere it could cause huge issues, but I can't help wanting to see if I can help. Is that patronising to MIL who has devoted so much to doing the best for her son?