Setting an Example

I picked Morgan up this morning from her friend's house where she attended a birthday party/sleepover. She was busy telling me about all the fun things they did, and I listened happily, glad that she still tells me all of this, and hoping that Sydney will be able to do this some day. I haven't spent a lot of alone time with Morgan for quite a while, so I asked her if she wanted to go shopping with me and run some errands. She said yes, so off we went.

After stopping at a few places, we ended up at Target, and I remembered that the kids' Valentine's Day parties are next week, so I said we better go pick out some Valentine's for them to take to school. Of course the aisle with the kids' valentine's was really busy. As I tried to maneuver into the aisle, a girl, probably high school age, said something to me. I said what, and she said she was looking for pencils from toy story with Woody and Buzz, and I said I didn't know where those were. We went up the aisle with the valentine's, and the girl kept talking to me even though I had moved on. At that point I could tell that she was mentally disabled, and I could also feel the tension in the aisle from the other people/families not knowing what to do. Nobody would talk to her, and it broke my heart. While Morgan was looking at the cards, I decided that the best thing for me to do was to talk to this girl and show Morgan it was okay. It was amazing--like the minute I engaged in conversation with her, the tension in the aisle disappeared, like everybody thought "Oh phew she's talking to that lady so I don't have to talk to her." Sad.

The girl said she wanted to get something that said "Love Mom & Dad" and she pointed at the cards, so I showed her a few valentines that were for mom's and dad's and she asked me to read them to her. Then she said her dad really liked pictures and wanted me to show her some other valentine's with pictures on them. Then she told me about Special Olympics and how she was selling raffle tickets for a truck. So sweet. I kept wondering who brought her to the store and where were they? Pretty soon somebody was calling her name, and it was her mom looking for her. She yelled at the girl and said pick something out and let's go. They were yelling back and forth. I felt bad for her and was quick to judge the mom, and then I thought how hard their life must be raising a special needs child, and how patience probably wears thin pretty easily when in situations such as this. The girl left with the mom, and Morgan and I finished up our shopping.

What amazes me about this 'encounter' is that Morgan didn't even seem phased by it. She didn't ask me any questions about what was wrong with the girl, she didn't make fun of her, she just continued shopping and being with me. I thought maybe once we got to the truck she would ask me some questions, but that didn't happen either. I can't even describe how happily surprised I am by that. My hope is that Morgan is always like that.

I then remembered how Morgan told me the other day that she and a classmate of hers got to 'play' with Shay during school. Shay is a special needs child in Morgan's class, although she is not in their classroom much as she spends most of her time in special ed. But, the cool thing is that the school has the other children in her class take turns helping Shay during therapy and playing with her. I think that has taught them patience and understanding, and is the best thing the school can do for both the typical kids and non-typical kids. Morgan really likes it when she gets the chance to play with Shay.

After thinking about this, my 'setting an example' today was probably not that big of a deal to Morgan as she sets this kind of an example a lot at school. Maybe I need to watch my daughter and learn from her as well.