The Talk (These words are not my own ...)

Greetings, all.  These are not my words today.  I have stolen them to share with you.

My Daddy just sent this to me in an email. He wanted to share it with me and now I want to share it with you. In the opening letter, the sender says, "We have The Talk with each child at the start of every school year. Our approach changes, but the story doesn’t. The story is always about Adam. Chase knows Adam’s story by heart now, and that is the point. Please don’t forget to have The Talk. Below is how I do it, but like Rumi said, there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground. One way is to copy and paste this letter, change Chase to your kid’s name, and read it together. That’s what my girlfriends do. Totes fine with us." So, change "Chase" to your child's name, boy or girl, young or old. Remember to teach your child the important things in life.

Dear Chase,

Hey, baby.

Tomorrow is a big day. Third Grade – wow.

Chase – When I was in third grade, there was a little boy in my class named Adam.

Adam looked a little different and he wore funny clothes and sometimes he even smelled a little bit. Adam didn’t smile. He hung his head low and he never looked at anyone at all. Adam never did his homework. I don’t think his parents reminded him like yours do. The other kids teased Adam a lot. Whenever they did, his head hung lower and lower and lower. I never teased him, but I never told the other kids to stop, either.

And I never talked to Adam, not once. I never invited him to sit next to me at lunch, or to play with me at recess. Instead, he sat and played by himself. He must have been very lonely.

I still think about Adam every day. I wonder if Adam remembers me? Probably not. I bet if I’d asked him to play, just once, he’d still remember me.

I think that God puts people in our lives as gifts to us. The children in your class this year, they are some of God’s gifts to you.

So please treat each one like a gift from God. Every single one.

Baby, if you see a child being left out, or hurt, or teased, a part of your heart will hurt a little. Your daddy and I want you to trust that heart- ache. Your whole life, we want you to notice and trust your heart-ache. That heart ache is called compassion, and it is God’s signal to you to do something. It is God saying, Chase! Wake up! One of my babies is hurting! Do something to help! Whenever you feel compassion – be thrilled! It means God is speaking to you, and that is magic. It means He trusts you and needs you.

Sometimes the magic of compassion will make you step into the middle of a bad situation right away.

Compassion might lead you to tell a teaser to stop it and then ask the teased kid to play. You might invite a left-out kid to sit next to you at lunch. You might choose a kid for your team first who usually gets chosen last. These things will be hard to do, but you can do hard things.

Sometimes you will feel compassion but you won’t step in right away. That’s okay, too. You might choose instead to tell your teacher and then tell us. We are on your team – we are on your whole class’s team. Asking for help for someone who is hurting is not tattling, it is doing the right thing. If someone in your class needs help, please tell me, baby. We will make a plan to help together.

When God speaks to you by making your heart hurt for another, by giving you compassion, just do something. Please do not ignore God whispering to you. I so wish I had not ignored God when He spoke to me about Adam. I remember Him trying, I remember feeling compassion, but I chose fear over compassion. I wish I hadn’t. Adam could have used a friend and I could have, too.

Chase – We do not care if you are the smartest or fastest or coolest or funniest. There will be lots of contests at school, and we don’t care if you win a single one of them. We don’t care if you get straight As. We don’t care if the girls think you’re cute or whether you’re picked first or last for kickball at recess. We don’t care if you are your teacher’s favorite or not. We don’t care if you have the best clothes or most Pokemon cards or coolest gadgets. We just don’t care.

We don’t send you to school to become the best at anything at all. We already love you as much as we possibly could. You do not have to earn our love or pride and you can’t lose it. That’s done.

We send you to school to practice being brave and kind.

Kind people are brave people. Brave is not a feeling that you should wait for. It is a decision. It is a decision that compassion is more important than fear, than fitting in, than following the crowd.

Trust me, baby, it is. It is more important.

Don’t try to be the best this year, honey.

Just be grateful and kind and brave. That’s all you ever need to be.

Take care of those classmates of yours, and your teacher, too. You Belong to Each Other. You are one lucky boy . . . with all of these new gifts to unwrap this year.

I love you so much that my heart might explode.

Enjoy and cherish your gifts.

And thank you for being my favorite gift of all time.


Love,

Mama

Unglued

I started reading a new book today called Unglued: Making Wise Choices in the Midst of Raw Emotions by Lysa TerKeurst.  They've been talking about it and with the author on KLove this week and it sounded like something I've been needing to hear.  I'm only on the 2nd chapter right now, but it's already hitting home. 

L is starting Kindergarten this year, in thirteen days to be exact.  I'm nervous.  I'm scared.  I'm excited.  I'm anxious.  My biggest source of anxiety, however, comes from deciding whether or not to talk to her class about her Fragile X, about what makes her behave the way she does, talk the way she does, do anything the way she does.  It's something that I think should be done, but is it something I want to do? 

The answer was thrown at me full force today.  I realize I don't have a choice. 

When I went to pick L up from daycare today, the teacher in her room called me over.  This particular teacher is not the one that's normally in there.  L had her previously and she is K's teacher now, so she knows L well, loves her immensely, and thinks of L as her own.  This particular teacher understands L and wants to protect her.  And for that, today especially, I can not thank her enough.

It appears as though a little boy made L cry today.  I'm not 100% sure what the circumstances were or how it all started, but he began to make fun of L because she "still wears a diaper".  He proceeded to call her a baby, pointed at her, and laughed.  When she began to cry and say "I'm not a baby", he antagonized her even more. 

The teacher, upon hearing a commotion, approached them and found out what was happening.  She immediately reprimanded the boy and allowed L to go to her safe place to cry it out.  When the teacher explained to him that L had special needs and wasn't able to use the potty yet, he said, "She's stupid!" and started laughing. 

Thank goodness, when the teacher told the boy's dad about this, he was pissed and said, "Rest assured, I will take care of this!" 

In the meantime, I have a little girl whose feelings have been hurt and she was able to comprehend what was happening in that moment, enough to be brought to tears. 

I realized today that the choice has been made for me.  I must talk to L's class when she starts school in two weeks.  I've always been afraid, but as Lysa says in her book, "What kept me from making changes was the feeling that I wouldn't do it perfectly."  I know now that, while I may stumble through talking with her class and come unglued, I can't let fear prevent me from changing the way my daughter will be treated by her peers.  I must rely on faith to get me through it - faith in myself that the words will come, and faith in her peers that they will walk away with a better understanding of my little girl.

This will be a good year!  I just have to learn to not come unglued.