I read once that people that live in the margins are able to break through our cultural norms and show us greater truths from beyond ourselves. I can’t find the quote and it was better worded and sounded more academic than my sorry paraphrasing, but you understand the point, right? There is beautiful truth in being counter-cultural.
I think this is something we all see. We see it when children share their perspectives in their fresh and unpracticed ways. My friend Erin recently told me that her son calls zebras “dirty horsies”. 3 year old Tess praises her parents when they use the potty. Isaac wishes himself Merry Christmas when he sees Christmas trees. “Merry Christmas, Isaac!” It funny and moving and beautiful in it’s own way.
The program Andrew is in has a very strong social skills focus. Andrew has not only been working on things like proper physical distance, gaining eye contact in conversation, greeting people when approaching them…he’s been studying them. Right now he is working on how to begin a conversation. It’s very common for him to launch into a topic as though you’ve been talking about it for hours. When people come to our home he often runs out to the hallway and as they walk up the stairs he starts right in. “Kirsten! The robot has a remote control and will light up when you press THIS button!” Meanwhile I yell from the kitchen, “Andrew! Say ‘Hello Kirsten!’” Andrew: “Hello Kirsten. Do you want to see my robot?!” It’s adorable and endearing and honestly, what good is a greeting anyway when you can get right to the heart of the matter? But, since he might find greetings useful someday, he’s begun this mini-unit.
Yesterday the teacher showed me her approach. She talks through with Andrew four aspects of starting a conversation. She types them up into a checklist, attaches it to a clipboard and sends him to eavesdrop and analyze conversations. He marks up the checklist and talks to the teacher about how the two conversationalists did. Then he shifts to analyzing his own conversation. Seem like a bit much? Not to Andrew. He eats it up. Taking a social-scientist’s approach to this makes perfect sense for him. It’s using what comes naturally to him to break down what does not.
Isaac is also learning greetings. When people say hello to him he often doesn’t respond. But yesterday when I dropped him off at school his teacher approached him and said “hello Isaac!” just like she does every morning. He turned away but said a quiet “hi.” She and I looked at each other surprised. “He just said hi!” she laughed. Last night, for the first time, Isaac spontaneously said good night to Dave and Andrew. I could hear him from the other room and yelled to Dave “did you tell him to do that?” “nope.” said Dave. He did it himself!
Working through these very basic things with my boys really makes me think about social skills from another level. Why is it important to greet Kirsten? Why is it important to make eye-contact? I think about it much, much more than I would if these things came naturally to them.
There are lots of ways my boys are counter-cultural. And because of that, there are lots of ways that they are showing me truths that I would not normally see. But I keep coming back to the fact that we are all counter-cultural in our own small ways. There are opportunities to see fresh perspectives everywhere. It’s something that I am really beginning to value in a whole new way.
At dinner last night, taking a much needed break from observing social norms, Andrew chattered on and on with numerical perspectives of my dinner rolls. “8 rolls means we all get two! Because 4×2 is 8! And since there are 8 we can divide them by 4 and then we’d all get 2! and I put them in 2 groups of 4 and 4+4 is 8!” and on and on and on. We started with 8 and ended with 3. To Andrew that means we did not all eat the same amount of rolls. To me that means I have some left over to pack in their lunches.
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