To someone who doesn't know, Alyssa seems like your generic, pint-sized Chinese six-year-old. She asks -- incessantly -- everyone she meets when their birthdays are, has a ridiculous amount of energy and tries to read everything in sight, including the book you're holding or a teacher's attendance list. If she wasn't so cute, she'd be a nuisance. It's funny how a label like "high-functioning autism" can excuse all that, and endear her to me as much it has.
Alyssa is my charge for her two weeks at summer camp. At her best, she is as quick as a whip (with pretty amazing math and language skills -- how many six-year-olds would call at teenage volunteer a "young employee"?); other times, it's hard to get her to stop asking the same question for an hour. She's fascinating, really. All I'm supposed to do is keep her out of trouble, but half the time I consider letting her just run amok because she seems to be having so much fun.
I wonder what it's like, inside her head. Her inability to focus makes it hard for her to function inside structured lessons and things that take patience, but the things that distract her somehow seem logical; she'll stop printmaking to tell me that we should get some water to clean off some dried paint, or leave her dance class to check out the CD player after the music changes. My mother always remarked that I was the kind of kid that wouldn't look up from her reading even if there was a fire raging, and here's a girl that's probably the polar opposite of that. And I love her! Perhaps that's the funniest part. These little kids have no malice, and no avarice. It doesn't surprise me that, in Chaucer's time, the only people to get direct entrance into heaven were thought to be children under the age of 7.
In any case, I get to start my day off tomorrow dancing with kindergarteners. Things could be a lot worse.
Alyssa is my charge for her two weeks at summer camp. At her best, she is as quick as a whip (with pretty amazing math and language skills -- how many six-year-olds would call at teenage volunteer a "young employee"?); other times, it's hard to get her to stop asking the same question for an hour. She's fascinating, really. All I'm supposed to do is keep her out of trouble, but half the time I consider letting her just run amok because she seems to be having so much fun.
I wonder what it's like, inside her head. Her inability to focus makes it hard for her to function inside structured lessons and things that take patience, but the things that distract her somehow seem logical; she'll stop printmaking to tell me that we should get some water to clean off some dried paint, or leave her dance class to check out the CD player after the music changes. My mother always remarked that I was the kind of kid that wouldn't look up from her reading even if there was a fire raging, and here's a girl that's probably the polar opposite of that. And I love her! Perhaps that's the funniest part. These little kids have no malice, and no avarice. It doesn't surprise me that, in Chaucer's time, the only people to get direct entrance into heaven were thought to be children under the age of 7.
In any case, I get to start my day off tomorrow dancing with kindergarteners. Things could be a lot worse.
