After church today, we decided to go and just hang with the kids at Hermano Pedro for an hour or so. Dick had to get back to Chimal by 4 for a soccer game, but, since he’s scheduled for surgery tomorrow (I’ll let him blog about this—since it is his body!), it would be the last time he would see the kids for a while.
It really was fun just to be with the kids, not trying to DO anything, but just hanging out. Since the nurses were going to wash the wheelchairs, we were asked not to put the kids in their chairs, but had a lot of fun playing on the ground and using the walkers.
Julio, who has been one of
the brightest kids around, is
really having a hard time
sharing attention with the
other kids. It seems like
during December and
January, when he first came,
he was kind of the “star of
the show” since most of the
other kids were home for the
Christmas holiday. Now that they are back, and others compete for attention, he’s really having a hard time. Dare I use the word “spoiled” about a kid in an institution?
But I guess it’s all relative. He doesn’t demand more than any child living in a family probably would. But in this setting it’s hard to give him all the attention he wants. There are so many who get no attention, that I find myself telling him he has to wait many times while I spend time with the other kids. It sometimes hurts my heart to see him rejected. But it also hurts my heart to see those who lie in bed all day with no love or affection.
One of Nelson’s rare smiles. . .
More and more volunteers are coming, and the kids who can “ask” for attention in one way or another seem to be getting it. I still ache, though, for the forgotten ones. Those who seem so unresponsive, until you spend enough time with them to learn their “language.” And it seems these are the kids that surprise me the most.
While I have spent quite a bit of time with Leonel, I was really excited when Brittany Fulp (a wonderful young woman studying special ed. who is living here now) told me that Leonel was beginning to raise his hand to say “yes.” He’d pretty much been able to shake his head for “no” but this is a great step, since for the longest time he has not been moving his hand at all. If it weren’t for Brittany’s perceptiveness, I fear I might have missed this all together. I fear I fall into a “rut” of thinking I know what the kids are able to do. Thank God for those who shake me out of my complacency!
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