Our New Adventure

After bringing my boys to regular Playgroup class this morning, I was beset with random thoughts and insights:

It's amazing how 4-year-olds can be so small their school bags are bigger than them and yet their vocabulary bank is so large it holds numerous words, sentences and ideas that they literally cannot contain within themselves they have to shout out with glee to their teacher in class. But what really leaves me in awe is not so much the shouting that leaves my ears literally ringing as it is their joy and enthusiasm that they exuberate in answering questions and in simply conversing with each other.

I hope their parents encourage this joy and energy to flourish. I hope their parents do have lengthy conversations with them regardless of whether their kids talk about how they played bubbles or finger painted or some other seemingly nonsensical things because for them, it isn't. For them, this is their way of knowing the world they live in. For them everyday holds so much value, beauty and wonder. I hope parents do take time to talk to them because language is such an intricate and complex process. This joy and exuberance in speaking may come naturally to these kids but it comes with a LOT of hard work, confusion and tears even with my own boys and for other kids on the spectrum.

Perhaps even as adults, we forget how to be simply happy by the very fact that we can express ourselves so clearly. We forget to appreciate what we do have. This has always been the life lesson my two boys teach me everyday. Gratitude and True Appreciation. These two are inseparable. There can be no real gratitude without the giving of value to what is already there.

This morning I looked at the twenty regular, neurotypical kids and they have taught me a very important life lesson too-- to never forget that joy comes to those who exercise it daily, to those who choose not to forget to always live in awe at the daily miracles life has endowed us with so generously. Miracles are everywhere. And we will only see them when we begin to live in this world with the joy and exuberance of 4-year-olds.


Post script: For a long time that I have been immersed in the environment of special needs, now that my son is slowly exploring the "regular" world in the regular kids' class, I feel as if I am exploring the normal world myself in the place of these neurotypical kids too. It's quite unsettling as it is exciting. An adventure for myself as it is for my little prince.

More posts about this new adventure of ours soon. :)