Lessons from special kids

My wife works at a school for children with alternative learning styles (I love that description). Some days the stories she comes home with are funny, some days they are sad and some days they are inspirational.

A lot of the kids she works with are very concrete thinkers and are honest to a fault. Sometimes their honesty can make you cringe but I wonder if that is just because as adults we have become so conditioned by half truths and outright lies. We could learn something from these kids.

Take grief for example. Most adults dance around the issue. They don't really want to hear the bad stuff so they avoid the difficult questions. Not the kids. A few weeks ago at the Connor's House book fair one of the students picked a book about heaven. When asked why he answered simply 'because that was where Connor was'. Today a different student walked into Deb's office and asked 'Are you sad all the time?' and then followed up with 'Do you cry a lot?'.

They don't always have the best timing, maybe that is OK. We could learn something from them about asking honest questions. We could learn to ignore everything else that is going on once in awhile, be less worried about appropriateness, and be more concerned about how the people around us are really doing with life. That's just one thing these kids could teach us!