Schooled by 7-year-olds
First, a little background: At the age of 3, my son was diagnosed with anxiety, sensory processing disorder (SPD) and a developmental delay. The SPD and anxiety affect each other a lot. For example, if it’s too noisy, it can overwhelm him and his anxiety makes him respond emotionally: tears, screaming, an inability to quickly calm himself. Math is a huge anxiety trigger. He thinks it’s hard before he starts and he generally responds aggressively, like throwing objects and kicking over chairs. The first half of the school year was pure hell. He was sent to another classroom or the counselor’s office daily due to his meltdowns, so he was missing valuable class time. He was throwing books and scissors, crumpling classmates papers and screaming uncontrollably. When he got home to try and finish the math work he didn’t do in class, there were more tears and meltdowns. It was a never-ending emotional roller coaster for he and I both. His stress stressed me out. I was worried he would be labeled and discarded as a troubled kid. I was even more concerned he would hate school in first grade.
In December, he was moved to his current classroom (the one he always went to when he was kicked out of his original classroom) where the teacher has more experience with sensory kids and he has made a 180. He, of course, still has bad days (who doesn’t?), but the outbursts are few and far between and he’s much happier and doing much, much better. He’s dealing with math better, though it still raises his anxiety, but the teacher works very well with him and he can at least calm himself better and work through it. He’s also allowed stuff to help with his sensory issues: silly putty and play dough if his hands need to be kept busy, headphones to help cancel out the noise, a table away from the action if he needs to concentrate on work. So far, so good!
Fast forward to the day before yesterday. I pick him up from school and the teacher tells me he had a rough day and for some reason, he was yelling in kids’ faces and even kicked a classmate (not hard, but still). She said it’s clear he’s not doing it to be mean, but she still has no idea why he did it. Then she said something that really made me pause. The kids who he was being aggressive toward NEVER RETALIATED. She said he yelled in a kid’s face and the kid said nothing. If he melts down during math, the other kids try to help him despite his screaming and crying and carrying on. Yesterday during lunch, my son dropped a French fry on the floor. “Aw, come on!” My son exclaims. His buddy, however, wordlessly picked it up and threw it in the trash. It was almost instinctual how he did it. We both thanked him for doing such a nice thing.
When was the last time we as adults showed someone the same level of empathy and patience these kids have shown my son? If you saw a peer acting a complete fool, did you roll your eyes? Insult them? Confront them? Or did you try a little kindness? It’s something I need to work on and judging by the comments section of most news stories, many more do, too.
Sarah Silverman had a guy recently call her almost everything but a child of God on Twitter, yet she showed compassion and understanding. I’ll bet everything I own that guy was expecting to get a rise out of her, but she made him look like an idiot instead. It’s called being a bigger person. Yesterday, this group of little people really showed me how that works.
What happens to us that we lose that sense of compassion and makes us so quick to write people off? Jesus said to love your enemies. The Holy Quran says you can’t find Allah without having compassion for others. It’s funny how smart us grownups think we are until we’re schooled by children. It’s a lesson I won’t soon forget.
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