Beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing

"Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing, there is a field.  I'll meet you there."  -Rumi

Everybody is a genius.

"Everybody is a genius.  But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."  - Albert Einstein

Language can be far away

"At night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face into mine.
Breathe into me.

Close the language-door,
and open the love-window."
-Rumi

I notice sometimes intense play with jets or trains, can bring a child further from their language centers.  Asking them to answer a question might be hard for them.  Similar to if you ask me a question right when I wake up.  I'm far from language.  I have heard myself think, "Turn off...camera...noise."  But it was the alarm clock making the ruckus.  I've also done art and dancing for 3 hours silently, and found it hard to form a sentence at the end of it.  I think these kids are so embodied, that it may be language is far away for them most of the time.  The good news is love is conveyed without words.

It can be hard to tell

I am with a typically developing brother to pick up his special needs brother from a soccer camp.  Afterward there is pizza and punch in a standing cooler.  After the cups run out, the typically developing brother bends down and turns his head up under the spigit of the cooler.  Now, red punch is streaming down the front of his shirt.  Sometimes it's hard to tell which of us have the "special needs".  ; )  As one Mom said, "I have one with special needs, and two with constant needs."  : )

The Boys

On this journey, I feel I am Wendy, in the company of Peter Pan, and his band of Lost Boys.  Not on account of actually being lost, more on account of being a band of brothers on an island few can understand, and although they have each other, they kind of don't.  Each boy is on his own in an important way.  So it is with autistic children, their experience is all their own, and often they can't relate it to another.  I also love the innocence of these boys, and just the pure fun of it.

As an only child and a girl, this boy energy is very new to me, and something I'm learning a lot more about since more special needs kids are boys.  In my current classroom it's 8:1.   That also makes it feel like a band of brothers.  Typically, developing brothers are just as intriguing and will be mentioned here as well, and sisters when I meet them.  : )

Welcome, to the Land of the Lost Boys.  Not so lost, not so alone, and yet in the paradox that we all face, they are at once connected, interdependent, and alone in their experience of it.

All my love,
Wendy
(a.k.a.  Alisha ; )  )