Bob Cornelius, a father of an autistic boy in Rockaway, New Jersey, recently published this letter on Facebook which immediately went viral. Read his heartfelt post bellow.
“For those of you who don’t know, my youngest son, Christopher, is on the autistic spectrum. I went to his back to school night on Thursday and took a picture of one of his projects displayed on the wall, one of many cute little cards that all the kids in his class had filled out. It asked him to list his favorite foods, sport, TV shows etc.
I took the picture hurriedly, and didn’t notice all the answers he had filled out at that time. It was only after I got home that something stood out upon closer review.
Do you guys remember, a couple of weeks ago, the massive amount of press that the Florida State Football player got when he sat down at the lunch table with an autistic boy that was eating alone? That player didn’t know the boy was on the autistic spectrum when he sat down with him…he just saw a boy eating lunch all by himself and decided to join him. A teacher snapped a picture of the moment and it went viral. That’s what made the story great….it wasn’t staged…it was just a real moment of human kindness.
The follow up to that story was that the boy no longer ate alone; that the other kids NOW were sitting with him and patting him on the back. That boy now had “friends”,B and everything was right with the world.
Something that wasn’t right was fixed, and tied up neatly with a pretty little bow of kindness and understanding.
But in my head, I asked “Where were those kids prior to this child being thrust into the spotlight? We know where they were: they’re in the picture: sitting at other tables, ignoring him.
If that football player had not sat down next to that child, and if it hadn’t become a national news story, that kid would still be sitting by himself today.
And it’s not their fault…. that’s the saddest part. They were clearly not taught to embrace and accept the differences of others. Not by their teachers, which would have been nice, had they thought to do so, but by their parents. I don’t mean to imply that parents that don’t have this conversation with their kids are bad people, but only that somewhere in between working, soccer practice, and homework, it never occurred to them to have this particular conversation. I’m sure that if Christopher were typical (that’s the word we use instead of “normal” in our world of ‘Holland’, for our developmentally delayed children), I would have not had this conversation with him either.
Christopher’s brothers have had many, many sleepovers over the years, obviously, in front of him, and it has not gone unnoticed.
“Can I have sleepover?” Christopher has asked.
“Sure, buddy….with whom?” As a response, he would flap his arms and stim instead of answeting. He didn’t have an answer because he didn’t have a name.
Because he didn’t have a friend.
He’s never had a “real” friend.
Ever.
He just turned eleven.
And because he’s had no friends….there was no one to invite.
And I don’t have a solution. I don’t have an answer. The reality is that…
