What happened at the park…

I want to share with you today a story of an experience with a local family at our local park. This was a vent shared on Facebook that comes with a lesson for all of us.
The names are changed, but the message is clear.

I realize there is little chance that the intended audience will see this post, but I’m going to post this regardless with hopes that it may change the way someone else reacts to a similar situation one day.

To the woman at the park,

Today you met my son John. He’s two, loves the park, and less importantly is autistic. He tends to do one of two things on the playground, either make piles of mulch and tear them down for as long as we’ll let him, or climb up and down one particular slide until his little body just can’t anymore (or we take him off, whichever comes first).

So today when he bumped into you while playing on the slide you could blame it on autism, or just on being a normal two year old boy. Take your pick, either way it was an accident.

His grandmother intervened quickly, and overheard your reaction to the boy we assume is your son. You sneered and told him something to the effect that you could tell something was “wrong” with John. What was wrong with him? I looked him over a few times, but I can’t find what it was you were referring to. Surely you didn’t mean that because he was playing different than your child meant that something was “wrong” with him. Or was it that he only babbles? Or didn’t look at anyone directly?

The only person who was wrong today was you.

You missed out on a wonderful opportunity to teach your son a lesson of kindness. You could’ve responded with love and patience, and if there were questions about John, his Grandmother would have been thrilled to answer because the more people who understand about autism the easier our life will be. Our life with John has special challenges, but in no way do we believe there is something wrong with him.

He is just as God intended him to be: blessed.