What is the most innocent thing you’ve seen?
When my daughter was in kindergarten, and I would ask her about her day, she would sometimes mention a boy that she played with on the playground. She didn’t know his name, but every day, she pushed him on the swings and the only word he spoke was “hi”. She said he was always happy and giggled when she pushed him, and that made her feel good. I assumed he was an English Language Learner (ELL) and never thought much about it after that. A few months into the school year, we took an extended trip to visit family overseas, so my daughter missed two weeks of school. When she came back, he ran up to her and said “missed you.” I thought that was very sweet. My daughter has dyslexia, which we didn’t know at the time, but she was struggling with the basics of reading already, so I thought it was perfect that an ELL kid and my daughter had hit it off and could just hang out without the pressure of talking and to get a mental break from class time, which was challenging for them. The year went on and my daughter learned his name (she overheard a teacher say it) and when she had a hard day at school, she always said her favorite part of the day was pushing her friend on the swings. Kindergarten graduation came, and just out of curiosity, I wanted to spot her friend. He has a unique name and they were calling them all out, so I knew I would spot him. I was hoping to find his parents afterward and tell them how much I appreciated his friendship with my daughter. All four classrooms came out and they called out names and his wasn’t one of them. Then trailing slightly behind were a couple of kids from the special education room. We’re an autism inclusion school and also support other disabilities. Well, the last kid to come in was him! Just like my daughter described, he had a huge smile. He also had a lot of disabilities, physical and intellectual. He wasn’t ELL, rather he was mostly non-verbal. She found him after the ceremony and they said “hi”, but his aide walked him out and it didn’t seem as though his parents had made the ceremony. The next year in 1st grade, my daughter was sad that he wasn’t at recess with her anymore. She saw him occasionally across the play yard, but he had to take recess with the kindergarteners. I probed her a bit about him and asked if he was different then the other kids. She said, “yeah, he’s not very good at talking.” That was all she could come up with. To her, he was simply her friend. None of the rest mattered. I wish she could stay this innocent forever.
