I have the privileged to work with children who have many disabilities. My favorite children to work with are those with autism. They are so smart and I have to continually stay one step ahead of them.
A few weeks back I was working with my afternoon kindergarten boys and I was letting one draw while the other one finished his work. The child drew a stick figure of himself and his mom. Then I heard, "This is my mom. She is big and fat." As I was trying not to laugh, the other boy looked up and said, "I wouldn't say that about your mom! She might get mad. Unless, she is going to have a baby." The artist never missed a beat, "Oh, this was before I was born."
Yesterday, I went down to kindergarten to get my little "artist." The kids were eating a banana for snack, but I noticed my little guy didn't have one and I had seen him eating a banana the day before, so I knew he liked them. As we were walking in the hall I asked him why he didn't have a banana. "Oh, they have seeds." "Really? I watched you eat one yesterday." "Yes, but it didn't have seeds." I said that bananas don't have seeds and this is the reply. "Well, you have to put seeds in the ground to grow a banana, so they have to have seeds." What could I say. "So you don't like foods with seeds, you must like vegetables." "Oh no. They have seeds too," he told me. I said, "Carrots and celery don't have seeds." "How do they plant them?" he asked. At this point I gave up the conversation because he was right.
Today, we were writing words and the word was pit. He wrote the word and then said, "There are lots of these in the graveyard." I about fell out of my chair. I calmly looked up and said, "Yes, but the other word for pit is hole and it is a much nicer word." "Oh, I wasn't talking about pit. I see lots of "t's" in the graveyard." It dawned on me what he was talking about. I said, "Some people call those crosses." "Yeah, there are lots of those in the graveyard across the street. I have one on my grave." As I am processing, trying not to laugh, and taking a deep breath I say, "You have a grave?" "Oh no, there is a cross in my graveyard." I have to say that I ended the conversation and tried not to just start laughing. As I was walking him back to class, we worked on walking down the right-hand side of the hallway. When he got to the 3rd grade door he hopped. I said, "How come you hopped right there." He said, "There was a door stop in the way and I'm supposed to be walking on this side of the hall." Again, he outsmarted me!
Forty-five minutes later I was sitting in the Kindergarten classroom helping out like I do every day. Some kids were sitting on the floor reading to the teacher, some kids were sitting at the tables doing work, and others were in the back with the AmeriCorps person. The ones with the AmeriCorps person were planting flower seeds to put in the garden that our school will be building. My little guy comes back to me and tells me that he has planted a seed and is now growing a flower. I reminded him that the flower has not started growing quite yet because it had just been planted. He looked at me and said, "We watered it and when it grows I will take it home." I knew we were in trouble. First, the plant is for the garden. Second, all the "pots" look the same and no names were placed on them. So I said, "Did you write your name on the pot so you know which one is yours?" He looked at me and said, "There weren't any pencils on the table, so I couldn't write my name. I took my finger and poked it into the dirt to make a hole, so I know which one is mine!" I immediately looked at the teacher and told her we had an "i-s-s-u-e." I proceeded to spell out what I had been told. She looked at me with complete horror. I have a feeling one of the pots might not end up in the garden after all. Although, it seemed that maybe we will plant flowers for Mother's Day and then take them home.
