Lunch at the Special Ed Table

People always talk about how mean children can be to each other. They can. I certainly have vivid memories of the kids who forced me to change bus stops in fifth grade, and I'm sure there have been times when I made other kids' lives unnecessarily difficult too. (Though I don't think on such a continual basis...but it's funny how easy it is to forget that side of things.)

Since I've been subbing I've spent time in a number of different special ed classes, from kindergarten to high school. Working with kids who are "different," often visibly so, you might expect me to have seen my share of this childhood cruelty. But I haven't. Not at all, really.

Today I spent lunch period with an autistic boy named Ricky. He could get his lunch and eat on his own, but needed help with things like opening his ketchup packet. Other special ed students of various abilities trickled in and sat at Ricky's table, to which I assume they were all assigned. I watched a high-functioning boy across the table from me help the slightly less high-functioning boy next to him open his milk, and eagerly ask if there was anything else he could do. The rest of the kids sat and ate lunch and talked like, well, normal kids.

Of course, maybe it's easy to be accepting of difference and diversity when you're in a group set aside and defined by just that. And in a way, what a gift that is--though not a gift that most of us would probably ever register for! But I've also been in mainstream classrooms offering extra support to certain kids with special needs, and for the most part, I've seen the same thing there--their mainstream peers want to help, not to exclude or make fun or even ignore. Kids are great.

I've often compared the Kingdom of God to sitting around the lunch table at the adult day care where I used to work, seeing all the faces of people of such different ages and mental and physical abilities, and realizing that despite or because of it all, we were a family. Sometimes, in the school cafeteria or around the reading rug, I see it again.