Tolerance

I think God uses special people to help our areas of weakness. I know by the son that He has given me that I needed to grow in the areas of patience and tolerance.

Patience is a long lesson, built like a strong wall, brick upon brick upon brick. I get it. I get opportunities to learn patience almost daily. Brick upon patient brick.

I did not know I was not tolerant. I guess the opposite of tolerant would be critical, condescending, judgmental. I suppose I am and/or have been all of those things to some degree, because God is sure using my son to teach me about tolerance--from the other side, from the side of being criticized and judged, on account of my son.

He's such a special kid. He is exuberant and enthusiastic, full of life and energy, intellegent. But he has a blindspot for social things. He has never had a sense of personal space, first of all. I don't know if this is because of his vision or because something in his brain is wired differently. (I hesitate to say "wrong", because I believe that God knew what He was doing when He made K the way he is.) And so I find myself constantly reminding him that people like to have an armslength between them, when talking and such.

Another social area that we work on continually is reading body language and facial expressions and listening to words other people are saying. It's so hard when he sees other kids wrestling and such and he wants to get in on it, but he doesn't understand how to be gentle at the same time, and he doesn't realize how much bigger he is than other kids. When does "no" really mean "no"? He doesn't pick up on the subtle clues that differentiate "no" from "no". Are they smiling when they say it, or are they turning away and frowning? The subtle nuances that you and I take for granted, he does not see.

Last year, a parent called him a "bully" because of this. I suspect, now that the parent has known him for a year and through other sports and such, that he would not call K a bully now. But that was, nevertheless, his first impression. I can feel parents this year criticizing me because of my son's lack of social "comprehension", because they don't know him, and they don't know me, and they don't know us.

And it hurts. And there is nowhere to go with it. When I was raising my "other" child, I was the condescending, critical one--if not overtly, at least on the inside. So I guess, in my old age, and because I am on the other side of the coin now, I will think before I have a critical, condescending, judgmental heart. We are not all wired the same (thankfully!). It isn't necessarily lack of good parenting that makes a child blurt out what comes to his mind or play too rough or too long. It isn't a matter of 'us' and 'them', but it is 'we'. How can we help each other and encougage each other, rather than criticzing and judging each other?

Growing into the people God wants us to be sure is painful sometimes....