JONAH “When you get a whole ton of work piled up or there’s a lot of things coming in at once from different teachers, it just gets significantly harder to keep everything organized and prioritized.

“I tend to pick things up, like souvenirs, cards, pins. I just keep them on my desk, so if I am bored or I’m just, like, grumbling around my desk, I can find stuff and I’m, like, ‘Oh, this was when blah, blah, blah.’ I mean, I don’t pick stuff up off the street or anything but, like, me and my dad, we once took a sign off of a sign post, and we still have it in the back. It’s the one that says, ‘Let’s go eat sushi and not pay.’

“My mom and I argue about forgetting to do stuff that we should be doing weekly or we shouldn’t be reminded of, like changing the litter of the cats, feeding them, washing clothes, things like that. It’s kind of like my mom wants me to do something and I tell her, ‘I know I have to do it today,’ but then she’s like, ‘I want it done now.’

“Sometimes I don’t agree with the family, but part of it is that it doesn’t really matter because I don’t have a say myself, because, you know, we’re kids. Kids don’t always have correct opinions or don’t think logically sometimes. I just find it a little strange that Eli is still sleeping in my mom’s bed at this age, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t still sleeping in my mom’s bed at his age. Or when it came to adopting Mebrat, I mean, I didn’t like it at first because I was, like, you know, we already have a lot of kids here, but on the other hand, it turned out to be nice after all.”

MAY “Jonah was born unorganized. I don’t know how to help him. They’re like, ‘Go through his notebook; make sure he writes things on his planner.’ I’m like, ‘This boy is 14 years old, I can tell him to write it in his planner; I can’t make him write it in his planner.’ But this is the story of his life. He’s the kid that lost 10 lunch bags in a matter of two months. He’s lost every single umbrella he’s owned; he goes to school without his school bag.

“With Jonah, it’s never easy. With Noah, it’s never easy.

“If he fails, I’ll kill him. He has the capability of doing well, and he’s a real bright boy. If Noah fails, I have to deal with it differently, and Jonah is very accepting of that. He’ll never say, ‘Well, you didn’t yell at Noah or throw his laptop,’ because he knows Noah has issues that he can’t control.

“This past semester, he had to take a health class, and they had to present — and Noah can’t present. He stopped going to class for two weeks. I discovered he would leave for school and sit in the train station and wait until it was time for the next class. He was honest. He goes, ‘I sat in the train station.’ I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ He goes, ‘Because I didn’t know how to tell you.’ ‘Why didn’t you tell your teacher?’ He goes, ‘How am I going to tell my teacher? I’m supposed to present.’ He had all his work done; he just didn’t want to present. It’s pretty severe.