Like a lioness with her cub....

Zac and I enjoyed some sunshine at the park last week.

I don’t often take him to the park, although I should try to more regularly, as I get anxious about other kids.

Today, there was a small group of kids there around the ages of 5 and up.

Zac did what he always does and ran up to them, automatically thinking they would want to play with him. He told them his name was Zac and then went round and asked each kid their name, point at them as he did.

I stood and watched like a lioness over her cubs. It’s what I always do because I know that kids don't get him.

My greatest concern was realised when I saw a young girl, maybe 7 or 8 ask the others with a slight giggle in her voice, “What’s wrong with him?” Granted, all he did was talk and it would have been difficult to understand (I even have trouble sometimes!) and he would have only talked about what was important to him, which can leave other kids out in the cold because they have no idea!

I decided to let it go and see how it went and watched closely from a distance. They followed Zac around kind of including him and letting him talk away . It was when I heard them mimicking him, (something which happened to me a lot in school because of the way I talked) that my skin started to crawl. Zac is not disabled, not physically challenged, nor has any other physical impediment to make his “disability” noticeable. Because he communicates differently, this girls assumption that "something was wrong" or that he was challenged,  meant he was different and possibly worthy of ridicule.

You can hear it in their voice.

Zac ran off to play with something else and some kid followed asking if he was a chatterbox. He would have been about 5. How did this kid know what a chatterbox was? Like Zac would know or even care so he just kept playing.

It was interesting to notice that Zac played in his own way as his brain and interests dictated. If he wanted to be on the digger, he was, if he wanted to run across the bridge, he did, thinking that by the kids just being around and near him, they were playing with him and wanted to be with him. I doubt he wanted to be "included", but wanted to be friends just the same.

When he went off to run down the hill, some kid decided to get a dirty, empty bottle and filled it with sand. He then (right in front of me) tried to shove it in my son’s face, forcing him to drink from it.

Zac simply ignored it and ran off, but they followed, laughing like a pack of Hyenas. When they came back up the hill, the boy was still trying to give Zac the bottle and was getting all up in his face, Zac mimicked that it was yukky and that he didn’t want it and kept on.

When the boy tried to grab his face/head to “make” Zac drink from the bottle, I  stepped in.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Watch yourself, kid.” I scowled in the angriest face I could muster without picking the kid up and slapping him.

Taking Zac away was difficult.

“I want to play with my friends.”

“They are not your friends.”

“Yes they are, they love me”

“No Zac, any kid that wants to make you drink sand, is not your friend.”

Later, I tried in vain to teach Zac that not every kid is your friend.

Looking back, a few days on, I can’t say I blame these kids. They are the product of their upbringing. They are not significantly taught about tolerance in school. If they are not brought up with “different” kids around them, then anything that is obviously different is difficult to understand.

I don’t want my kid to be viewed as “strange”. But I don’t think I can help that.

We need to teach our kids about tolerance. Not all disabilities can be seen, tolerance for everything different is the key to kids learning and understanding that its OK to be different, disabled, or challenged. How much of bullying is simply intolerance?

What are you doing to teach your child about tolerance?

You know what? I know Zac will be OK, even if our hearts break. My son knows love! He knows a deep and passionate love. We do all we can to tell him every day. We hug him and kiss him and even when he doesn’t want a bar of it. We are raising him IN love so that he will know HOW to love others.

He will fight hate with love and he wont even realise he’s doing it.