Magical Armor

Helping children gain understanding of the children with special needs, through interactions, and giving them knowledge on it, translated…

If you see Strong in the bookstore, you couldn’t know he’s a special needs child, but, as you’d, observed him for ten minutes, other than realizing that he’d shown some preferences toward various games, it would be, hard to miss that he’d not carried his back straight as he walked.

As the doctor told us he may be a vegetable, but he’d learned to walk after he was a year old, we’d, let go of our biggest worries, and watched him get active in the environment, and we’d, stopped, caring too much over his posture, and how he’d, always, tripped and fallen down, believed that so long as we give him enough time, taken him to physical therapy, increase the activities with him outdoors, he will, walk better by the day.

As he got to two, his tripping and falling down didn’t improve, we’d taken the physical therapist’s advice, stretched him, massaged him, and had the therapist made him a pair of soles for correcting his posture, to help soothe his overly tensed up left foot.  In six months, it seemed, that his left foot can now, touch the ground, but it’d also, made that slant as he walked around more visible too.

To make sure he can walk around freely, and we’d, worried that he might become, too reliant on his right foot, that it might make the atrophy on his left foot worse, we’d not only strengthened the use of his left, and filed for the handicap assistance, measured up his size, and, ordered the corrections padding for his shoes.

As we’d waited for the new soles, we’d walked out on our regular routes, there was a young girl of about five who saw Strong, and pointed to his feet, asked curiously, what that was?  And, something hit me, I’d told her, that it was, Strong’s magical armor, that he’s the only one who can wear it, that it’d, made him walk better.

The child didn’t say anything else, just kept staring at us, continually observed the shoepad that Strong had, until her parents took her away, she was, still looking.  We’d waved goodbye to her, felt that she was merely, curious, and glad, that her parents didn’t scream or said that Strong looked weird or something.

The curious but not overreactive reactions, it’d made us feel comforted.  Then, what of children who looked unlike the rest?  What would they face?  How do they, face being different from the rest?

The illustrated book, “We’re all, Wonder Boys” was rewrote from Wonder Boy by R.J. Palacio was about a boy with Treacher-Collins Syndrome, how he’d, faced up to how the outside world perceived him, how they’d, pointed at him, that he’d, found his peace of mind in his own imaginations, to find a way to accept himself, it’d mentioned how as long as we change our views about looking at one another, then, we would realize, that every one of us is unique, existing, like the many miracles of the world.

And so, this, is this mother’s way, of helping her own son grow up normally, by introducing him to the outside world, so more people can meet him, so other children can better understand that the child is this way, because it’s, natural.