Assembly on prize-giving day at a special needs school for children with severe disabilities. The hall is packed with 120 pupils and some parents have come to watch. A 75-year-old woman sits at the back.
The headmaster begins: ‘Mary, you have won a prize for holding a knife and fork for the first time.’ 14-year-old Mary is wheeled forward to collect her prize. As she does, John, a lad with Down’s syndrome stands at the back applauding her all the way to the front.
‘Peter’, says the headmaster, ‘you managed to walk in a straight line this week, come and collect your prize.’ As he walks forward, almost in a straight line, John applauds him all the way. This extraordinary celebration of human achievement continues. Prize after prize is given and each time John applauds the person.
Finally the headmaster says, ‘John, you did a good piece of artwork this week, come and collect your prize.’
With that John goes forward to collect his prize applauding himself! At this point, the old lady sitting at the back sits up straight with a broad smile and tears running down her face, points toward John and says, ‘That’s my grandson.’
We don’t know much about John but we do know he’s loved. He has many difficulties and will face many hurdles in life but one thing is clear – he know he’s loved and that will make all the difference.
Give your child that same demonstration of love – it will make all the difference.
The best thing about my kids is that they’re young, happy, free, good fun and say anything that comes into their mind, they just don’t care.
The worst thing about my kids is that they do very little around the house, they lie like couch potatoes and expect me to wait on them hand and foot, oh and I’m a taxi service for them.
I could go on listing things about my kids that drive me crazy forever more – why do they never pull the flush; why do they never change the toilet roll; why do they leave their washing in their baskets in their rooms instead of bringing it down for the washing machine; why do they never close doors behind them? The list is endless.
My kid’s classic line to me: Mum, you don’t understand, mum you haven’t been there, mum you don’t know what you’re talking about.
If I could change anything about my kids it would be for them to understand that I have been there, I have done that and let them understand I was young once as well.
The most important thing my kids tell me is that they love me. However many times they tell me, it’s never enough.
The best thing about my parents is that they’re always there for me, to give me advice whenever I need it, the way they always help me with school work or anything else I need help with.
The worst thing about them is when they hug in the kitchen – it’s known as wrinkly love in our house. It’s disgusting!
Mum does quite a lot of embarrassing things – like if she sees one of my friends when we’re driving in the car, she’ll wind down the window and talk to them even if they don’t know who she is. She also like singing a lot so does dad mind and he likes to talk to all my friends as well. He thinks he’s a babe magnet! So they’re quite embarrassing.
I wouldn’t want to change anything about my parents because I think I’ve got the best parents in the world and I couldn’t ask for any better and wouldn’t want any worse.
Whenever my parents tell me to do something, at the time I think it’s unfair but after I think about it, it does seem fair because they do know best.
The thing that makes my mum angry is when I say I’m going to do something then don’t do it – like earlier she asked me to put the kettle on and I didn’t do it – she wasn’t too happy! The thing that gets my dad angry is when mum is upset so if you upset mum, you upset dad!
The most important thing my parents tell me, I suppose, is that they love me because it means a lot to me and I hope it does when I say it to them as well.
The best thing about my kids is that they bounce back straight away. What ever happens one day, the following day they’re there again just like it never happened.
One of the worst things about my kids is their honesty. Wherever they are, whoever you’re with, they’ll just say it as it is.
One of the things that drive me crazy about my kids is that they never know when to shut up, whatever they want to say, they’ll just say it.
If I could change one thing, it would be that they would say: ‘Thanks dad’.
If I could pick one thing that was really important for my kids to say to me, it would be: ‘I love you’ or ‘Thanks Dad’
The best thing about my parents is probably the financial help they give when I’m in crisis and they give me support and they’re always there helping.
Some of the embarrassing stuff my parents do is shouting in shops saying: ‘What do you think of this?’ but apart from that, they’re pretty ok, they’re not bad parents.
If I could change one thing about my parents it would be the volume of their voices – just a bit loud.
The kind of things that get my parents angry are swearing and staying out late and general bad behaviour as well.
I think the most important thing my parents can tell me is general life advice and what to do when I get older – that’s an important part of life – getting old!
Here is a story from Philip Yancey’s book ‘What’s So Amazing About Grace?’ quoted in Paul Francis’ book ‘Teenagers: The Parents’ One Hour Survival Guide’.
A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents, a bit old fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts. They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. ‘I hate you!’ she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away.
She has visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play. Because the newspapers in Traverse City report in lurid detail the gangs, the drugs, and the violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that is probably the last place her parents will look for her. California, maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit.
Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest she’s ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, and arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she’s ever felt before. She was right all along she decides: her parents were keeping her from all the fun.
The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car – she calls him ‘Boss – teaches her a few things that men like. Since she is underage, men pay premium for her. She lives in a penthouse and orders room service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folks back home, but their lives now seem so boring and provincial that she can hardly believe she grew up there.
She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back on a milk carton with the headline ‘Have you seen this child?’ But by now she has blonde hair, and with all the make-up and body-piercing jewellery she wears, nobody would mistake her for a child. Besides most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals in Detroit.
After a year the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast her boss turns mean. ‘These days, we can’t mess around,’ he growls, and before she knows it she’s out on the streets without a penny to her name. She still turns a couple of tricks a night, but they don’t pay much, and all the money goes to support her habit. When the winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. ‘Sleeping’ is the wrong word – a teenage girl in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens.
One night as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden everything about her life looks different. She no longer feels a woman of the world. She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She begins to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she’s hungry. She needs a fix. She pulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspapers she’s piled atop her coat.
Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single image fills her mind: of May in Traverse City when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomy trees in chase of a tennis ball.
God why did I leave home, she says to herself, and pain stabs her heart. My dog at home eats better than I do now. She’s sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to go home.
Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine. She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she says, ‘Dad, Mom, it’s me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m catching a bus up your way, and I’ll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you’re not there, well, I guess I’ll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada.’
It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City, and during that time she realises the flaws in her plan. What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn’t she have waited another day or so until she could talk to them? And even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. She should have given them some time to overcome the shock.
Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father. ‘Dad, I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. It’s not your fault; it’s all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?’ She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as rehearses them she hasn’t apologised to anyone in years.
The bus has been driving with the lights on since Bay City. Tiny snowflakes hit the pavement rubbed worn by thousands of tires, and the asphalt steams. She’s forgotten how dark it gets at night out here. A deer darts across the road and the bus swerves. Every so often, a billboard. A sign posting the mileage to Traverse City. Oh God.
When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air breaks hissing in protest, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, ‘Fifteen minutes, folks. That’s all we have here.’ Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She checks herself in a compact mirror, smoothes her hair, and licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wonders if her parents will notice. If they’re there.
She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect. Not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepares her for what she sees. There in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of forty brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot. They’re all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise-makers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads ‘Welcome home!’
Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her Dad. She stares out through the tears quivering from her eyes like hot mercury and begins the memorised speech, ‘Dad, I’m sorry, I know…’
He interrupts her. ‘Hush, child. We’ve got no time for that. No time for apologies. You’ll be late for the party. A banquet’s waiting for you at home.’
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