He says 'you' when he means 'I'

Ben reverses his pronouns. When he says "you did it!" he means "I did it — hooray for me!" When he says "you're hungry," he means he's hungry. When he asks "are you going to be okay?" he's asking about himself.

His mother knows this. She's known it for 38 years. It's so deeply embedded in how she communicates with him that she doesn't even notice it anymore. But every new person in Ben's life — every new carer, every new therapist, every stranger in a shop — hears something confusing. They hear an accusation when Ben is celebrating. They hear a question about them when Ben is talking about himself.

This one pattern — a simple pronoun reversal — can be the difference between a carer who connects and one who feels lost. It's not anybody's fault. It's just that this kind of knowledge takes time to develop, and most carers don't have the luxury of time.

It's not just pronouns. Ben has a phrase: "the real Ryan." Or "the real John." Or "the real Adam." A new carer once heard this and joked, "I threw away all the phony ones — only the real one is coming." It was a kind joke. But it missed the point entirely. When Ben asks about "the real Ryan," he means: when will I be physically in the same room with this person? It's about presence. It's about the thing that matters to him more than anything — being with the people he cares about.

Then there's his body language. Ben sometimes puts his hands up by his head and looks down closely at something — a surface, a texture, a detail. To someone who doesn't know him, this might look like distress. Like he's overwhelmed, or shutting down, or needs to be redirected. His mother will tell you it's joy. Pure, focused joy. He's examining something that fascinates him.

And there's the wall. Ben was once being interviewed in a formal setting. Within two minutes, the interviewer walked out and said he wouldn't continue — Ben was facing the wall, not engaging. His mother explained: he's listening to every breath you take. He hears everything. He's paying more attention than anyone in the room. He just doesn't show it the way you expect.

The interviewer didn't continue. It wasn't malice — it was a misreading of behaviour that, without context, looked like refusal. With context, it was the opposite.

Each of these examples — the pronouns, "the real Ryan," the hands by the head, the wall — is a piece of knowledge that took years to develop. Not through study, but through daily life with someone whose inner world is rich, complex, and expressed in ways that don't match what most people expect. His mother didn't read about these patterns in a textbook. She lived them, decoded them, and learned to translate for him.

Right now, that translation lives in one person's head. She won't always be there to explain. And the next carer — no matter how skilled, no matter how well-intentioned — will need time to learn what she spent decades discovering. The question is whether we can shorten that learning curve. Whether some of what she knows can be there waiting for them on day one.

This is what Next of Kin is exploring. Whether we can preserve something of that translation guide — the one a parent builds over decades — and make it available to the carers who follow. We can't replace 38 years of lived experience. But we might be able to pass along some of its most important lessons, so the next person starts a little closer to understanding.