My great uncle lives with my grandma and their mother (101yo this year). He has been deaf since birth, so this isn't new to him. While he spent some time living on his own it wasn't very long and he needed a lot of help. He has lived with my great grandma for decades,, more than I've been alive. While my great grandma won't admit it, we are pretty sure there are cognitive issues as well as the deafness-- from my own experiences with children on the spectrum, I suspect possibly autism, as well as a form of a learning disability. He never learned braille because he didn't want to and my great grandma didn't make him. He is mute as he can't speak any words, never has, only grunt or moan. He also takes a long time to learn new things. Until a few years ago he liked tv and books, as well as video games and puzzles. Now he has gone almost entirely blind as well-- magnifying glasses and extremely large print were useful a few years ago but no longer. The only activity he does now is puzzles, by feeling the edges. The last puzzle he did however he was unable to complete and just gave up. We told my grandma to check and see if it was one of those puzzles where pieces fit the same, but idk if she ever checked. My grandmother is out of ideas to help him. He sits around doing nothing all day every day. He is slowly learning for us to sign into his hand, but it is slow going and I don't know how much he can really take in due to the unknown learning disability. We want to give him Legos but my great grandmother feels that's too childish (and unfortunately, that probably won't be doable until she is no longer staying with them). While we can teach him to do new things it is very difficult because of his learning disability (whatever it may be) so nothing too complicated (i.e. we considered the Rubix cubes with textures but it is too difficult and he will give up).
Please help find things to improve his quality of life!!!
I would like to add that anything with ANY form of hearing is out of the question. As for sight, he seems to be about entirely blind at this point, he has been using magnifying glasses and technology the last few years but now it is to no avail.
