Curb Currents

Carlos, from Milwaukee, has faced a lot of adversity in his life at the ripe age of 9 years old. 

Carlos didn’t talk until he was 6, and he had trouble fitting in at school. One day, he came home from school with a ripped jacket, and that was one of the many instances that motivated his mom, Adela, to decide it was time to home-school him. 

Carlos was diagnosed with autism around 2020, which gave Adela some clarity, but she was also faced with obstacles to get Carlos the care he needed. 

Battling language differences, Adela had to navigate getting appropriate care for Carlos. This inspired her to start working for Autism United of Wisconsin. Adela believed the system failed her and Carlos, which motivated her to improve her English and try to improve the system of autism care from within. 

“I don’t know how to explain it, but if you find that opportunity or the courage to make a difference, I think having a son with a disability, that makes you be better for them,” Adela says. 

Although Carlos believes he is his mom’s biggest challenge, now that he’s settled in home schooling, Carlos is living life like a 9-year-old boy is supposed to. He really enjoyed Halloween this year, as he got to enjoy the sights and sounds of the Spirit Halloween store. He dressed up as a clown and already thinks he wants to dress as Baby Saja from Netflix’s hit movie “KPop Demon Hunters” next year. 

Variety — the Children’s Charity of Wisconsin, supports children with disabilities and helped connect Carlos with some of Wisconsin’s best entertainment. He’s enjoyed time at the Milwaukee County Zoo, a performance of “The Nutcracker” and Milwaukee Brewers games. 

Julián is a formidably talkative almost 3-year-old from the Madison suburb of Monona, who mainly speaks Spanish at home and at his daycare.

“Ninguna de mis compañeros en la escuela hablan inglés,” he says, insisting neither he nor any of his classmates at his bilingual school have ever spoken English, even when his mother points out he’s said English words in the past.

One of Julián’s favorite hobbies is hitting and throwing objects around the house. He seems to express an early interest in baseball, often asking his family members or friends to throw a ball to him so he can hit it into space. 

He also enjoys borrowing his 6-month-old brother Daniel’s drum sets and making music like his father, who works in construction but plays the drums as a hobby. Daniel — or, more accurately, his mother — is gracious in allowing Julián to frequently borrow the drum set, and Julián in turn makes him smile by running up to him and then running away.

Julián fears the large garbage trucks that come by his daycare and the loud noises they make. 

“¡Ay, ay, ay, camión de la basura, no hagas tanto ruido!” He’ll tell them, meaning, “Oh no no no, don’t make so much noise, garbage truck!” 

Luckily, he says he can run to his teachers for safety whenever they come by. 

No matter what challenges the day may bring, Julián knows he can at least look forward to his father serving him oatmeal with peanut butter the next morning, and every morning after that.

Jaedyn has an older sister who’s already in college, who she says has taught her “a little bit” about life. As she makes her way through elementary school, Jaedyn has figured out what she enjoys doing and sharing with the world around her. She likes listening to music and enjoys making artwork — art is her favorite subject at school, and she recently painted an axolotl, a kind of salamander.

“I like creating lots of new things and hanging it on my walls,” Jaedyn says.

She is most passionate, however, about gymnastics. She participates on a competitive travel team that performs in competitions mostly around Madison, but she’s had to travel up to two hours for a competition before.

“I really like competing with my friends and just like flipping and stuff like that,” Jaedyn says. 

She wants to be a professional gymnast when she grows up, aiming to compete in the Olympics like her favorite gymnast, Simone Biles. 

While she can flip and twist when doing gymnastics, there is one thing that scares her: “Um, spiders,” Jaedyn says. “No spiders.”

Korrine-elliot, who is 11, and Aurora-jean, who is 9, live in Ripon, near Oshkosh. The sisters share a home with more than 10 other family members: Two parents, two older siblings and a cacophony of pets fill their lives with love — and nuisance. 

“The dogs — both of them — will come into my room at night and sleep with me, but it’s really cute and they keep me warm,” Korrine-elliot says. “The birds, they both scream as loud as they can at night. [So] I don’t get a lot of sleep sometimes.”

The sisters’ mother is the school librarian and computer teacher at their school. Their school is small, but they love being there. 

Outside of class, the sisters are both Junior Girl Scouts in a troop headed by their mother. They are currently completing their detective badge, dusting for fingerprints and playing games where they accuse or defend others of made-up crimes.

“One of the crimes was murdering someone with farting and kissing … another crime my other friend had was eating too many hamburgers at the restaurant and not paying,” Korrine-elliot says. 

Her friends were found guilty in their trials.

When they are older, Korrine-elliot wants to be an Egyptologist and visit the Grand Egyptian Museum, while Aurora-jean is considering becoming a video game creator and having a dog named after the Addams family character, Pugsley.

The sisters advise people to be kinder and more respectful of other people’s opinions, especially in parent-child relationships.

“Usually, parents buy you stuff that you really want, but sometimes they can be a little rude and yell at you,” Aurora-jean says. She says instead of yelling, parents should “send (their kids) up to their rooms when they’re being naughty.”

Imran has worn many faces in his life as a showman.

Born in Stevens Point, a city in the central part of the state, as the youngest child to a family of six (including their cat, Rumi), Imran, now 14, is surrounded by people who encourage him to pursue his passions. 

A simple gesture from a family member, he says, was what ended up kickstarting an illustrious musical theater career.

“I would sing and dance in the middle of an intermission of a show. It was so fun and what had happened (one day) was that my sister got a bouquet of flowers, and she gave them to me,” Imran says. “I thought someone gave me a bouquet of flowers, and I was so proud and I was so happy with myself!” 

Since then, Imran has played a variety of characters, from Plankton in “SpongeBob: The Musical” to Bruce Bogtrotter in “Matilda.” He describes the buzz he gets after performing as a “bubbly” feeling, like “a laugh (that) is about to come out but doesn’t come out yet.”

In addition to his musical theater projects, Imran is a member of the Forensics Public Speaking club at his middle school, and he runs track and swims. He tries his best to stay up to date on political elections, though he worries solutions are far off for problems such as racism, sexism, poverty, homelessness and climate change.

“I guess I’m in a state right now where I’m kind of waiting for this presidential term to be over,” Imran says. “I feel like there’s going to be a bill passed where there’s going to be something that’s going to make me not be able to do something I really like … But I don’t really know what that thing would be.”

Madison’s Maliha Nu’Man is becoming an adult at a time when pressure is placed on people her age to have a strong resume before they are even in college.

Before turning 18 this fall, Nu’Man was able to publish a series of books she described as songs that turned into spoken poetry, which helped her become Madison’s Youth Poet Laureate in June 2023.

Nu’Man says she has been molded by her mother, a Pakistani immigrant, and her father, who went to law school and is now a professor. They always encouraged her to believe she was capable of achieving anything she strived to do, she says.

One day, Nu’Man wants to become a lawyer and study forensic psychology. She is currently working toward becoming trilingual by eventually being proficient in English, Arabic and either Spanish or German.

Even at her young age, Nu’Man is no stranger to using her voice to speak up for what she believes in. This summer, she read poetry at an event in Madison advocating for gun reform at the request of state Rep. Shelia Stubbs, D-Madison.

She believes it’s important to listen to young voices, even if people, including herself, sometimes don’t do so. Nu’Man says adults, including young ones like herself, too often use the power they hold over children to disregard their opinions and feelings.

“Opinions across all ages should be critiqued and should be questioned. But I think that a lot of times we are quicker to critique children than we are adults,” Nu’Man says.

Protecting children in the broader sense is also one of Nu’Man’s top ideological concerns, particularly when it comes to determining her support of politicians or political ideologies.

A core political value for her currently is condemning the United States involvement in Israel’s war on Gaza, which a United Nations inquiry found to be a genocide. Reuters has reported that 69,000 Palestinians, a third of them children, have been killed by Israel since the start of the war, and Nu’Man says she can’t turn a blind eye to the tragedy.

“I cherish life very much,” Nu’Man says. “It’s very easy for collective responses to death to expose privilege in a way (where) I think people cherish certain lives more than others … I don’t like that. Every life matters, every single one, regardless of their ethnicity, race, gender or anything.”

James, a Wisconsin native who lives in the grassy flatlands near Chippewa Falls’ signature river, is also the youngest of three children, though his oldest brother is 15 years his senior.

The family includes a dog named Gucci, who once had a daughter named Emily. James says he “cried all day” when Emily died last August, and that Gucci has become more needy in the wake of her death.

“Sometimes I talk to Gucci just to make sure she’s OK,” James says. “I tell her and myself that Emily is in a better place.”

Some of James’ favorite hobbies are drawing stick-figure comic strips and cooking with his grandma on his mom’s side. The duo makes lefse, a Norwegian flatbread which they fill with potatoes, butter and brown sugar, and roll into mini tortillas.

“They’re really, really good,” James says. “Thanksgiving time is all about eating them until they’re gone.”

James dreams of going to college for animation, ideally somewhere like Minnesota, where he can be close to his family. Aside from pursuing his passions, he hopes college will be a time to expand his social horizons.

“I’m excited to be more outgoing, but that’s the nervous part — having the courage to go out and try new things,” James says.

For now though, James is sticking to the friends he has. He doesn’t think he can have better conversations with anyone than he does with Charlie, a boy he has known since kindergarten who he can speak with for hours about anything at all.