If there's one thing I look forward to every week it's Sunday morning and our Kindergarten class. We have quite a few regulars and every week brings in a few unknowns. Sometimes the unknowns can be a challenge. Like today on of the children was "slightly" autistic. I'm not sure what slightly means and truthfully, I wasn't at all sure what to expect from autistic. He cried at first and we had to get the main guy to handle it, but he wound up working in and doing fine.
We have this regular named Hannah. She comes every week with her Dad, though I did note she mentioned her mom bringing cupcakes to her class for her birthday. I'm not sure if the mom lives separate or just doesn't come to church. Regardless, I'm always worrying about her to a degree. She comes in in sandles when it's raining...just little things like that. Nothing major and her Dad seems super nice. She does however have a speech impediment of some sort. Truthfully it makes her even more adorable but today, two of the other "regular" girls (who are usually really nice) were teasing her about the way she talked. Hannah had come up to me with tears in her eyes and told me. I walked her over to the two other girls and told them "sometimes when we're in groups like this, it seems fun to talk about someone else and giggle and laugh, but when you do this, it can really hurt someone's feelings." Then went on to have them apologize to Hannah etc. They were of course mortified but I noticed Hannah was extra quiet and when Paul asked her to say the memory verse she just shook her head. (he didn't know the story yet). Such a little thing in the scheme of things, but it broke my heart none the less. I wound up telling her dad about it when he picked her up, just so he'd know why she was quiet and upset in case she didn't share with him. Maybe she would have, but I couldn't bear it for her. What I really wanted to do was question the dad about whether he considered some type of speech therapist.
At the end of the day, between the two and the out of control wildness (there were 20 kids and I had a color/cut/paste project going like an idiot) of the class, I decided I might need a degree in child psychology as well as special needs kids. Pray for Hannah for me. Love, Danae
I can soooo relate to your concern for Hannah story. When I worked for the school, I constantly had kids that just broke my heart. I remember Amanda especially. She too was being raised by her father (not that we know for sure Hannah is) and he was a GREAT christian dad. He was just clueless. He was VERY receptive when I suggested and told him things I thought he needed to know. VERY RECEPTIVE and quite frankly thankful. It took me awhile to work up the guts.....just a thought.....
ReplyDeleteAutism runs on a spectrum, you can be very slightly autistic, all the way up to profoundly autistic. Profoundly autistic generally means the person either can not talk at all, or at best can converse at the level of a small child. Autistic people have a personality that for whatever reason is "locked" inside of them and never comes out. Some people are so slightly autistic that you might not even know there was an actual presence of autism... Bill Gates for example is sometimes said to be slightly autistic. Usually someone who is considered to be extremely "dorky" or "nerdy" is actually either very slightly autistic or has aspergers syndrome, which is sort of a milder type of autism.
ReplyDelete(John clears his throat and steps down from the podium.)