The Friends My Child Will Make (Part 2)

Last month I shared the story of my autistic son’s experience with The Nora Project, which is an outreach program for special-needs students to develop friendships with typical peers in a buddy classroom at a school in their community. In that piece I spoke about how we got connected with it through other families at our son’s school, his various visits at his partner school, and the wonderful relationships he developed with the students. This month, I’d like to share what happened when we attended the celebration night for all of the students involved, the emotions we felt seeing the documentary that was made for him and shown that night, and what we came away with after the night and the project finished.

The celebration was on an unusually hot, humid and rainy night for the Chicago area. I had hurriedly made my way home from the school I teach at, and after hustling my wife, son and mother-in-law into our respective vehicles, we made our way to the school the celebration was being held, which was also the school where my son had his visits for the past two years. We pulled into the already filled parking lot, and while my wife drove around looking for a spot, I grabbed my son from the backseat and we booked our way to the overhang near the front day, narrowly missing a good drenching. Several of the ambassadors from my son’s classroom were standing right there as we got to dry safety, immediately engaging and greeting my son, specifically one tall, very outgoing fifth grade girl who had consistently been the most attentive to him for all of his visits. After waiting for the rest of our family crew to park, we finally made it into the hustle of the school building, where we encountered a packed hallway of parents and kids, special needs and typical, as well as the parents and volunteers who supported the project. The community that a project like this develops could not be overlooked, as I immediately recognized some familiar faces, including parents and kids from my son’s own school, but also a woman from our own church, whom we had been involved with a life group for a short time, whose kids also went to the school and whose own kids were also in my son’s Sunday school classroom. That was a moment of realization for me, that a project like this had effects far more reaching than just what we had experienced while visiting the school, that some of these connections actually extended into our faith community as well. I specifically went back to a moment just a couple of months ago, when my wife and me spoke to my son’s Sunday school class about our son’s disability, and shared things about him and how to best interact with him. Since the church we attend is in the same town as the school my son visited, i did ask the students if any of them attended that school, and some raised their hands and seemed to know about the project, some even communicating with their expressions that they had seen my son there.

Following about 15 minutes of greetings, pictures and mingling, we made our into the gymnasium for the group presentation prior to viewing the individual documentaries. The normally large space was packed from wall to wall with chairs and every one of them filled by parents or kids, the collective body heat raising the temperature on an already humid night to just tolerable. We sat in a row together, my wife and mother-in-law on one end and myself and our close family friend, my son’s “aunt” on the other, while my son bounced in between all of us, sitting precariously on my lap most of the time. We watched as the founder of the project, a teacher at the school who was inspired to start the project due to the experiences of a special needs family member, welcomed us all and went through the requisite thank yous, of which there were many notably staff and administrators at the school, volunteers and donors, one of the names mentioned very familiar as one of the parents from our son’s school we had seen upon walking in. We were treated to a video including many of the children and adults involved, explaining the project and how it has impacted lives, and then some kind words by the parent of the child whom the project is named after, and it was encouraging to hear from him not just the amount of donations that the project had raised, but also the fact it was now in 30 schools across our north suburban area.

After the presentation had concluded, it was time for families and kids to split up into their respective classrooms and go to view the documentaries that had been made, and this couldn’t have come soon enough, as we had now also sat through a power outage and my son’s wiggling. The student ambassadors, led by the tall outgoing girl, approached us and led us to the classroom, winding our way down brightly decorated hallways, highlighted by a papered “red carpet” and movie posters that the classrooms had created for each student documentary. As we walked among the mass of people that now hurried their way through, I had become separated from the rest of the family, but conveniently ran into a couple of my son’s therapists, one whom had worked with him for several years in the past that recognized me and I caught her up on how we got here, and then my son’s Special Olympics swim teacher, who looked somewhat unrecognizable in a suit jacket and not his usual wetsuit. In a few minutes we all collected in the classroom we had visited for the whole time of the project. The physical space set up quite differently, with seats lined up in rows and desks pushed to the sides to accommodate the audience, and the projector swing set up for viewing. Knowing my son’s challenges for sitting in one spot for any prolonged period of timed, I grabbed a seat in the front row near the door, aware of the fact that if he decided to meltdown we could slide out of the room without major disruption, and my family sat several rows back, and I signaled to my wife I was ok despite her gesturing. The classroom teacher welcomed us and explained that there were three documentaries planned, however one child was not able to make it so there would only be two shown, and ours was the second one. I was concerned my child may not sit through both of them, and as much as I hoped the videos and his handy Ipad may distract him, he was just hot and bored enough to elicit the necessary squirminess to make us take a quick bathroom/hall break during the first video, but just in time for ours. His sensory needs were now full blown, and I desperately tried to manage his physical state, he now biting down on his shirt and clapping intensely as he is apt to do when he is overstimulated, all the while I motioned to my family in the back I was OK, however it looked.

What proceeded for the next just over ten minutes was exactly what i had hoped for, and more, as we watched what was essentially a student made video project, with the several students who were responsible for creating it introduce themselves on screen, and then proceed to share about our son. In the previous post, I related the experience my family had being interviewed about our son and his challenges, and those were interspersed nicely throughout the video, with questions being posed to both his classroom buddies and us, and I personally amazed at how profound the understanding of his student buddies were. There were a variety of pictures and video clips from all of our visits with him, and a ton of memories from every visit began to flood my mind, from the spots I sat with him on my lap in the room and shared his favorite books or apps, to the games we played in and out of the classroom, and all of the running around. This experience of watching his video, while struggling to help maintain his body control long enough to finish the viewing, his voice now kicking in, uttering a whole cacophony of groaning and complaints at the top of his lungs, was the perfect microcosm of our lives together. The desire to get him included to feel included by his typical peers, and to have genuine empathy for him was being very well met, complemented by the struggle to have his body slow down and get quiet enough to take in how incredible of a gift this was, and so many typical parents and kids here to witness this dynamic. But the anxiety that I should have normally felt with my son’s behaviors on display for a whole room to see was quickly stopped by the realization that kept getting kicked into my head over and over by the video that was right in our faces, and those people in the room that night were the same ones responsible for that exact video of inclusion to take place.

When the video ended, I breathed a sigh of relief for my son, who could now actually get up and move, but also an intense feeling of emotion from what I had just watched, which was soon punctuated by the classroom teacher passing out small “Oscar” awards to the two stars that night, and the presentation of the movie poster that was hanging in the hall by the students who helped make his film. My wife quickly made her way from her seat in the back to come up and help get some pictures with poster and the kids, and my son, who was now near exhaustion, allowed us to prop him up with his new friends around him beaming with smiles. As the crowd began to get up from their seats and file towards the door, I was met by parents of the students who created his documentaries, one in particular, the mother of the tall outgoing girl who seemed to be his biggest cheerleader. She thanked me for allowing my son to be a part of it, and how much it meant to her daughter to be involved with the project and with him, and as they walked out the door I hugged the girl, knowing this may very well be the last time I, or my son would ever see her, still we left memories and lessons that both sides would take for years to come.

This was not just about the friends my child had made, but rather a template for the friends my child can make—the friends he will make.

My hope then, for all of these young people, again rings in the lines of Scripture from the Book of Matthew, as Jesus so eloquently describes it for us: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer him saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brothers, you did it to me.’”

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