That Wild Child in the Grocery Store
I took Luke to Baseball registration yesterday. (A cool special needs program called CHALLENGER BASEBALL)
It was a practice/registration inside a gym.
All the other kids lined up and fielded grounders or played catch or at least sat quietly on the sidelines.
Luke ran in circles for twenty minutes, making laps around the gym. He ran through their drills, he ran behind the sign-up table, he ran and ran.
Over the course of it, he stole a baby’s IPad, ran into a coach’s elbow face first, ran into an off limits room with a door to the parking lot, and stole somebody’s baby bottle and started chugging.
We call this a ‘good night’.
Yes…most of the parents probably thought I was nuts. The dad letting their kid mostly terrorize practice like some Camden Yards drunk who jumps the rail in the 8th Inning.
(It’s a special needs baseball league…so I’d so all of these parents were totally cool, in fact, I just did my best to make sure Luke didn’t disrupt their own nights…and he didn’t)
But it was successful in that Luke was exposed to new people and new stuff and had fun and didn’t want to leave.
This is what we call — major success.
I could try to control him more. Physically hold him on the sidelines to ‘watch’. He doesn’t respond to threats. If you keep this up we’re ‘going home’ is a good thing. At home we can threaten to take away his IPad, here, he already doesn’t have one.
Next week, when the league starts it’ll be all about getting him to swing the bat one time. Or throw the ball once. And generally not disrupt everyone else’s fun. Baby-steps.
Luke loves to eat. He’s generally good at restaurants. But he gets excited, STIMS, he hops up and down saying things like — SODA! CHOCOLATE MILKSHAKE, or just keeps hopping.
When I take him to the Grocery store….he’s so excited he’ll just start saying RUN-RUN-RUN. And if I don’t hold his hand, he will…RUN…fast and far and aisle to aisle often leaving his slow stiff legged dad in the dust.
I say all of this to say, often times these visits are viewed by us as successes. We probably draw some looks — who are these parents letting their kid get away with such things!
I get that part. But the choice is often ‘don’t expose him to stuff’…leave him home, don’t give him the opportunity…or…well…let him check stuff out in his own way.
When you see a kid giving someone a hard-time in a supermarket or mall, just realize, it can take a lot of willpower/courage for a parent to take their special needs kid on the most mundane of trips. These kids ‘need’ these things…maybe more than most…
So instead of clicking your tongue, or writing a snarky Facebook message, it would be great if people might consider that the parent might not be ‘bad’, they might actually be making a bold/assertive move, and throwing their peace of mind and self-esteem to wind all in the name of parenting. They might be putting themselves out there, to give their child ‘typical’ experience.
It might be the beginning of a long arduous process.
A process where their kid might just be coaxed to swing a baseball bat one time in an entire season…and it’ll feel like they just won the World Series.
