Ian

Once a week Ian Brown can be found doing what he likes to do the most. That is slinging an 8-pound bowling ball down the lanes at Fire Lake Bowling Center in Shawnee.

The 24-year-old has only been bowling for two years, but in that time he’s won several Special Olympic medals and trophies in the sport. When Brown is at the bowling center, he is the one constantly encouraging others and displaying the excitement he has just to be out and about enjoying the game. 

Yet, it wasn’t too long ago that Ian and his mother Leah were at a much different point in their lives when this type of night out on the town seemed impossible.“There were many a day where Ian and I both were just crumpled together in a ball in the middle of his room. Both of us just crying and we didn't know what to do,” Leah said. “There were plenty of days when he was a young man that we didn't know if we were going to make it through each day, either of us. But the bond between us is inseparable. Between all of us.”

To see Ian now, it’s hard to imagine the tough road he has been on. Born with intellectual and physical disabilities, doctors didn’t think he would ever be able to take care of himself much less live a normal life. But that is exactly what Ian is currently doing. Living in a group home in Shawnee, he has a large room filled with bowling trophies, video games (His favorite is Call of Duty) and a John Grisham book in his private bathroom.

“It’s good. It’s nice,” Ian said. “This is a nice place. I’ve been here almost two years. It’s a pretty nice house. And I’ve had a job for almost two years.”

To say Ian’s development would all be owed to one factor would be a disservice. It took the work of his entire family, his community, social service programs and a medical cannabis card. “Everything about raising Ian has been kind of a group effort. I'm a recovering addict as well. So I really spent many years in the dark with addiction and alcoholism myself whilst trying to raise three kids in a string of kind of unhealthy relationships,” Leah said. “And cannabis has been what has helped me to overcome the addiction of the other drugs and alcohol. I don't know how I would've ever made it through raising Ian without cannabis as well. And had it been legal when he was young, we probably would've seen a lot better results with him as a youngster.”

Leah said they knew early on that something was going on with Ian. Right after he was born he was responding differently to normal stimulus.“We knew from birth that Ian had some problems. He was born a couple of weeks early, had to be intubated due to a collapsed lung, and stayed there at the hospital for a couple of weeks until he stabilized and then was hospitalized again for respiratory illness later in that year,” Leah said. “But we could tell that he was behind because he couldn't hold down food and stuff. He always had muscular problems.”

According to Leah, Ian was diagnosed with Global Development Delay, which is the umbrella term used when children are significantly delayed in their cognitive and physical development. Also referred to as global developmental disorder, doctors use the term for individuals under the age of five who exhibit clear signs of a developmental delay but cannot be evaluated for a more specific diagnosis due to their age.“Doctors were saying things like, ’Oh, he may never walk. He may never talk. We don't know how he's going to function.,” Leah recounted. “He couldn't even sit up on his own at that point. He was basically still a newborn at a year old. At that time with me having problems with drugs in my past, we didn't really know if it was just due to him being born early or if it was from maybe the substances. We really don't know what caused the things. It could have even been genetic for all we know.”

With Ian’s doctors unable to provide a cause for Ian’s condition, the focus shifted to providing him the help he needed to be able to function. Specialists were sent to the Jenkins’ home from SoonerStart, which is an intervention program designed to meet the needs of infants and toddlers with disabilities and developmental delays. They were able to help Leah identify problems and find ways to deal with them as a parent. That included enrolling him in public schools and finding a regular behavioral health therapist.

Despite the help from a variety of different resources, Leah felt overwhelmed and had already been questioning if her home was the right place for her middle child. She was still an addict and trying to raise a special needs child in that type of environment weighed on her. That intensified after she was arrested in front of her kids and they were placed into foster care for nine months while she was in rehab before she was able to get them back.

“It was tough. There were plenty of times that I didn't know if I was the right choice to be raising Ian,” Leah said. “So there were plenty of times that I talked to the therapist. But in Oklahoma in the early 2000s, we didn't have the greatest funding for children with disabilities. I felt like we were lucky to be getting the services we were. They encouraged me to try to take care of him in the home, and they did overlook a lot of my struggles as a parent. They worked with me even though they knew I was struggling with drug addiction at that time. I didn't move into alcoholism until quite a bit later in life. So that was hard going back and forth as a parent on, ‘Do I keep him here with me? Is this the right place to have him?’ And that's tough because you want to take care of your child, but you also want what is best for him. And obviously the state at that point felt like at the home with us, with his family was where he was best.”

As Ian grew older, the challenges didn’t lessen as much as they just changed. He was diagnosed with ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) and an IQ score in the 60s, He was also prone to what his mother calls meltdowns.

“Ian didn't walk until he was three. He wasn't able to talk. It was still very hard for him to eat and stuff like that,” Leah said. “But boy, he was a joyous child. He never let anything dim his spirits. He was always smiling and happy. But on the other hand, he would have tremendous meltdowns. When we went through the police coming to our house and I had to go to jail and all that, they got removed. It was very traumatic on him. As a child he had meltdowns. He was self-harming. He would punch himself in the face and in other sensitive parts. He had problems such as putting dirt and foul things in his mouth and then spitting things like food out. He didn't like loud noises or certain touches.”

When Ian turned 15, Leah believed he needed to be around his father, who was living in Nebraska. Despite his other difficulties, he was still growing into a young man. “At that point, I had DHS (Department of Human Services) kind of becoming involved because he was a boy and his self-care and me being a woman when it came to things like him being in the shower and such,” Leah said. “So at that point, I kind of felt it was better for him to go and live with his dad for a couple of years to help get through that puberty stage. We just felt it would be better. He moved to Nebraska at that point with his dad when he was about 15 years old. About puberty is when we really started seeing great improvements in him.”

According to Leah, the improvement came almost by accident. This was the first time Ian’s father had been around him for long periods of time and saw up close how much of a handful his son could be. “Around the time he was 16 years old, his dad did introduce him to his first little bits of cannabis when he was having emotional meltdowns,’ Leah said. “That would kind of be their dad/son way of bonding. “That had been the way his dad had coped when he was having problems because he was also in recovery as well. And so that helped him because having Ian just brought into your life is not easy. It took me, his brothers, his teachers, and the whole Shawnee school system were incredible. So then his dad having to take that on, I think it was a bit of a shell shock too for both of them. So, they had to find a way to get along together and cannabis was that bridge that helped them connect.”

While Leah was concerned about the legalities since cannabis wasn’t legal in Nebraska, she always felt that it would be beneficial for him because of what it had done to help her in her battle against addiction.“Even during the times of it not being legal, it had helped me with my own struggles,” Leah said. “And of course, genetically, we pass things down to our kids and their learned behaviors. So a lot of the time we know what works for me, worked for his dad. We're like, geez, this would probably really be great for him. But at the time, there wasn't much education. It was all very, you could get in trouble, get your kid taken. We didn't want to get Ian taken from us, of course.” However, according to Leah, Cannabis didn’t become a normal part of Ian’s daily routine until he moved back to Oklahoma two years ago.

“When he came back here, one of the first things he asked was if he could get a medical card because he'd experienced cannabis and he loved the way it was helping him cope,” Leah said. “Because even as an adult, he's calmed down drastically, but he still has these outbursts and he gets where he wants to punch things. He's broken his television, and his phone. So we brought in cannabis rather than stacking on another pharmaceutical since he already takes one pretty heavy pharmaceutical for ADHD. He has an understanding of what pharmaceuticals are and the side effects they give him. He came to us, approached us with us, and so we agreed to get him the medical card at that point.”

Ian started out taking gummies and using a vape. But they thought the vape was becoming a crutch when they would take it away from him. So now he just takes one gummy at night before bed. They plan to introduce a tincture to use during the day with low-dose THC to avoid meltdowns at work.

Despite that, when Leah looks back on where Ian is now and the life he is living, it’s something 
she could never have imagined. “We always had hopes and we always encouraged, Ian you can do what you set your mind out to do,” Leah said. “So we always encouraged him to have a normal life. But never did I expect  him to not have to live with family. I never expected there to be a suitable place for him to reside  where we would feel comfortable as his family leaving him there to reside full-time. And then for 
him to also have a job that he goes to not just one day a week, which is what the norm for special needs people. But to have a five-day-a-week job where he's doing things such as delivery driver assistant, no, we never expected that for Ian, honestly.”

Yet, it may be Ian’s passion for bowling that is the biggest surprise. Doctors once believed he may never walk or even hold himself upright. Now he is jumping for joy and when he knocks down every pin with thunderous velocity. “I like to throw strikes and spares,” Ian said smiling.