Little Lessons

A couple of weeks ago my littlest sister was playing with chalk in the front yard. After a while we heard her  yelling. We watched out the window to see if she was just having fun or if there was a problem. It was a problem. As we watched we discovered that there were three little boys across the street teasing her. She doesn't take tease very well because she is Autistic. We quickly brought her inside to calm her down.

It didn't take us very long to get her to calm down, but she still wanted to play outside. We tried to convince her to play in the back yard, but she insisted on playing in the front because she wanted to finish her drawing. We finally agreed to allow her to play in the front yard again on the condition that she ignore the boys across the street. My other sister and I decided that we would go out and play with her to make sure that there wasn't anymore trouble.

As we played the boys shouted things across the street obviously looking for a reaction. Every once in a while I would have to remind my littlest sister to ignore them. She would take a deep breath and then go back to her playing (which is very impressive for an autistic child). The more we ignored the the ruder their comments became. Finally I could hear them talking about coming into our yard. At that point I stopped coloring and started watching. Soon after one of the boys was making his way across the street. At that point I knew that ignoring them was not longer an option, so a yelled "If you come into this yard I will call the police." I knew that I actually wouldn't but I also knew that it would stop him from actually coming into our yard.

At that point he  stood in the street yelling at me. He told me that his dad could beat me up. After about a minute of this a asked Aly if she was  ready to come inside. She said yes and we started cleaning up. At this point my dad was on the porch watching. Once we were inside my dad told the boys that they needed to learned some manners. My dad can be very intimidating when he want to be and I'm sure that right then he was, but it didn't phase the boys. The one in the street told my dad that he wasn't afraid of him. At this point our dog Sparky escaped from the house and ran toward the little boy in the street (anyone who knows Sparky knows that he is harmless). The little boy screamed proving that he wasn't as tough as he looked. Sparky was then brought inside. We all hoped that we would never see those boys again, but we did.

About a week later I took Aly and My brother out to dinner. We got McDonalds and brought it home. As I pulled into the drive way I realized that the boys were back. I thought we will just go inside and not even deal with them. As I we were going inside Aly turned to the little boys smiled, waved, and said "Hi!" I motioned her inside. Once inside I said "Aly, those were the boys that were mean to you last week, why did you say hi?" Her answer amazed me. She told me "I want them to know that I am nice."

I learned an amazing lesson that day in forgiveness, humility, and Chirst like love. I have a greater understanding of what is meant when we  are asked to become like children. I hope that one day my little sister will be able to look up to me like I look up to her.