Tomorrow is the real deal. For the past three days it’s all very dandy with eager daddies and mummies lending many hands to the two brave teachers of fourteen puckish little children. Tomorrow the journey in a mainstream preschool begins.
And little jolly Amos is going to be on his own.
We’ll be sending him off in a school bus and that would be it. He has only his brother to look up to in the twenty-minute ride and he’d be in the company of teachers and classmates for the next three hours—the longest he’s ever been away from us.
Over the three days of orientation we’ve seen him losing toys to the more assertive kids. We’ve seen him bungling through crowds and losing himself in the act of hand-washing and staunchly and tearfully planting himself on the lawn when he didn’t understand why he had to leave the playground and rejoin the class.
When tomorrow comes we won’t be there to remind him of the stuff he has to do.
We won’t be there to protect him from falls, from grazes, from unfairness, from meanness.
He has to take charge and he has to learn; to process all that his guileless, beautiful mind could manage. He has to make sense of things, all on his own.
Then again, who doesn’t?
Special needs or not it is the path that every children must take once the decision is made to plug them into society. We’ve tread it and so must our children. We take turns. Inch by inch we try to forge a more caring and inclusive society. Amos is contributing to this, and so does the school for having accepted him. And for that we’re grateful.
Amos now attends special school from 8AM and mainstream preschool at 11AM. We’re entering the next phase of our journey and there’re going to be some challenging changes to our lives. We have to make the schedules and finances work. His elder brother, Joel, now takes on a new responsibility of looking out for him in the hours of our absence.
Yet in the recent days we’ve seen such tremendous milestones.
Amos is responding to the teachers’ instructions.
He is stringing up words into sentences.
He is feeding himself.
He is physically and emotionally charged to attempt challenges and overcome his fears.
He is delighted at the company and is benefiting from it.
There is so much coming our way and we could only pray for the strength and love to take them on. We are apprehensive but we are nonetheless grateful—for the rare opportunity to experience the resilience of the human spirit, the wonders of God’s creation, and very possibly, the unveiling of miracles.
Meanwhile…way to go Amos!