Respect.

I said to my son, “It’s amazing how respectful all of your classmates are to the special needs kids.” He said, “Yeah, a kid was bullying a special needs kid and Josh tackled him and said, ‘Stop, leave him alone!’ Now it’s popular to be nice to the special needs kids.”

Josh is the sixth grade alpha male.
I’ve heard about him all year.
I always assumed he was reasonably low level.
Likely, a bully.

I was chaperoning my son’s sixth grade trip. Three days and two nights in Northern Minnesota.
So many things happened on that trip.
It was special.

One of the special ed teachers was sick.
So that left some space.
Space for me.
For something I didn’t see.

Our first full day there, we went cross country skiing.
This is my jam.
My wheel house.
I was taking bindings on and off and carrying kids.
Basically, doing whatever I could to help.

There were two special needs kids in our group.
Oden and Awad.
Awad and I were attached at the hip.
Literally, he was holding on to me and I was holding on to him.
He was screaming, “Let’s do this!”
“I can’t wait to tell my dad!”
“Mr. Tim, let me go!”
Then he’d fall.
After I’d pick him up, he’d jubilantly scream again, “Let’s do this!”
It was awesome. He was awesome.

About an hour into our adventure, the other special needs kid, Oden, was done skiing. He was laying in the snow like a log. Literally, he was like a huge block of hard wood.
Dense, thick, and heavy.
For a sixth grader, this kid is big.
Who am I kidding, he’d be big for a high-school senior.
Without thinking I said, “Oden, do you want a piggy back ride up the hill?”
Immediately, he was up off the ground.
It was like a three ring circus getting that kid on my back, but we did it.
He was screaming gleefully, “I feel like a little kid!”
Half way up the hill I understood this wasn’t going to be easy.
Each step my legs would tremble a bit more.
Originally, I thought I’d carry him further…but,
The top of the hill was it!
Wow!

After our skiing adventure, these kids and I were connected.

So here is were the magic comes in.
His friends take notice.
They notice that I’m taking care of these kids.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, this is important to them.

My son and I have been having a very hard time.
He lives in two households.
Two different sets of obligations and expectations.
His mom’s house is light and easy.
He takes advantage of it.
He has for years.
That leaves us with playing catch up.
Figuring out what assignments are behind.
Figuring out what responsibilities he hasn’t told us about.
That sort of thing.
He hates it.
Unfortunately for us, I don’t feel like I have a choice.
I want to teach him integrity.
So the hard work falls on our shoulders.

When we get home from camp, I see my son start to soften.
He says, “Papa, your popular.”
“People think you’re Hercules and Superman in disguise.”
“The first day back on the bus, Josh talked to me. He said, ‘Your dad is awesome. I wish he could work at the school.'”

This was the source of the switch.
It was threw the eyes of his peers that he saw me differently.
I felt like I was losing him.
We were struggling with our situation.
I didn’t know how to get him back.
He was filled with so much disdain.
I would have never guessed this would play out this way.
I would have never guessed it would be through his piers’ appreciation of me, that our wounds would start to heal.

He too has been struggling.
The group of popular kids is called, “The Squad”.
His concern is that some of his friends don’t want to talk with him when The Squad is around.
Classic adolescent posturing.
The reality is, as we all know, all too well, the pressures of adolescence are real.
He pulled a real stupid stunt trying to impress Josh a month ago.
Josh is the “leader” of The Squad.
It didn’t work.
He didn’t get in.

It’s worth mentioning, in fifth grade he was one of two kids to volunteer to work with special needs kids on all of his class field trips.
I didn’t find out about this until three months after he first volunteered.

I was told some of his classmates taunted him for doing this.
He stood up to the peer pressure.
He did this all on his own.
He did it because it moved him.
He was proud of himself, and most impressively, not boastful.
It was his teacher that told me all of this.

This is the full circle lesson.
He didn’t need to pull the stupid stunt.
His natural concern for special needs kids is the path.
His true nature will deliver what he desires.
He saw this on this trip.

I’m sure this isn’t the end of this road.
But he did see something.
He saw his nature as special.
He saw how special he was.