Archive: September 17th, 2008

Kids are amazing

After many weeks of not blogging, I finally have a night with both inspiration and time on my hands. I actually have a lot I want to write about, but first i'm just going to combine a few kid stories...
So I've started, in my plethora of free time, to volunteer with a tutoring club in South Phoenix. It's a really cool program and I wish I was able to committ more time and energy to it, but for now I'm just going a couple of times a month for less than an hour. Anyway, it takes place in a Habitat for Humanity neighborhood, so all of the kids live close. On Monday, my roommate Amanda and I went to walk a little girl home - I think she's 9. We asked a guy to go with us for safety, and he came along but said the neighborhood wasn't anything to worry about. To which the little girl very nonchalantly answered, "There are drive-bys sometimes." She went on to tell us that the last time there was a drive-by, she got sick and had to stay home from school. Turns out she was so scared from the experience that she threw up. The part that really broke my heart though was what followed. She said, "usually when there's drive-bys, I sleep through them." No little girl should be able to start a sentence with that preface - "usually when there's drive-bys." And she didn't say anything in a way that invited pity or attention - she was very matter-of-fact about the whole thing and seems to be a happy, well-adjusted little girl despite the terror that regularly plagues her neighborhood.
Another awesome kid: one of my music therapy kids. This kid is 12 years old and has autism. You'd never know it to see him, talk to him, etc. - I only believe the diagnosis based on reports from his parents. Anyway, he is one of the coolest kids i know. He's got all sorts of interests and seems to really care about people. Case in point: He just told me today that he's come up with a fundraising idea for his local YMCA, where he spends hours on end volunteering each week. His idea is a basketball shoot-a-thon, and he wants to invite other kids with autism to participate. It is so rare for any 12-year-old kid to take this kind of initiative in helping other people, and his placement on the autism spectrum only points to the fact that the autism spectrum is full of kids who are wrongly stereotyped all the time.
My third kid story deals with several different kids but more so with my thought processes. It may not seem like a kid story at first, but wait for it...Ok, so I've gotten caught up in the personal lives of politicians these last few weeks, along with many other millions of Americans I'm sure. And I'll admit to having googled Trig Palin, Sarah's youngest son, who has Down Syndrome. And in this process, I saw a link to an article that claimed that 90 to 95% of pregnancies in the U.S. with a Down Syndrome diagnosis are aborted. My heart breaks over so many lives lost. It also breaks because of the huge number of families that have missed out on a blessing. I'm not even going to begin to suggest that parenting a child with Down Syndrome would be easy - it would be full of challenges to be sure. But I've experienced such profound joy in my interactions with kids with DS. Challenges, yes, but so much joy. And that sickening statistic has made me so much more thankful for the 6 kids with DS that I get to make music with every week, whose parents either were ignorant of their diagnosis or were willing to let their baby live despite it.
Today 2 of those kids in particular made me smile. My 3-year-old ran up to me (she couldn't walk at all when I first met her!) and hugged me with a huge smile on her face before we'd even gotten started. Partway through the session, she made a game out of this, walking away, then quickly walk-running back for a hug, repeatedly. She's talking up a storm these days, which is so exciting, and you should see her with a microphone! We sang our hearts out together for 10 minutes straight.
My 9-year-old has been a big challenge for several months. If she doesn't want to make music, she will make that perfectly clear, and she has stumped me more than once. But today, we had this terrific momentum that just didn't stop for the whole hour. We danced, we sang, we played, we laughed...and after I'd sung goodbye to her, she promptly turned my keyboard back on, grabbed the microphone, and sang another verse.
These kids are amazing too - and by the grace of God, they're alive! I find myself amazed afresh today at the beauty and grace of these little lives.