A Lesson in Patience

I received this from a good friend in an e-mail this morning.  It seemed like a natural follow-up to my previous post More than 2 Sides to a Story about Autism and one of my first posts What Do YOU See?  Don’t be offended and before getting your knickers in a knot, please make sure to read to the end of the story as well as my “observations” that follow.  Thanks!

A lesson in patience …

A woman in a supermarket is following a grandfather and his badly behaved 3 year-old grandson.  It's obvious to her that he has his hands full with the child screaming for sweets in the sweet aisle, biscuits in the biscuit aisle; and for fruit, cereal and pop in the other aisles.

Meanwhile, Granddad is working his way around, saying in a controlled voice, "Easy, William, we won't be long, easy, boy." 

Another outburst, and she hears the granddad calmly say, "It's okay, William, just a couple more minutes and we'll be out of here. Hang in there, son."

At the checkout, the little terror is throwing items out of the cart, and Granddad says again in a controlled voice, "William, William, relax buddy, don't get upset. We'll be home in five minutes; stay cool, William."

Very impressed, the woman goes outside where the grandfather is loading his groceries and the boy into the car.  She said to the elderly gentleman, "It's none of my business, but you were amazing in there. I don't know how you did it. That whole time, you kept your composure, and no matter how loud and disruptive he got, you just calmly kept saying things would be okay. William is very lucky to have you as his grandpa."

"Thanks," said the grandfather, "but I'm William. This little shit's name is Kevin."

Let me just say that I am obviously feeling much better as this made me LOL!  Being a parent of a special needs child whose “behaviours” are often times misread, I have to admit when I first started to read this I cringed at the description (“badly behaved”) of the little boy.  Perhaps I’m hypersensitive and dissect everything waaaaay more than I should as my immediate reaction was that perhaps the little boy had not been properly prepared before going into the supermarket or he had to wear his blue pants because he favourite black pants were in the wash or McD's changed from white bags to brown bags or he thought they were on their way home after the last stop or……oops, this isn’t about me is it?!?  Tee hee. 

As I kept reading I thought to myself wow, what an amazing granddad.  He gets it!  BAZINGA!!!  Gotta tell ya…NEVER saw that one coming!

Enjoy the not-so-obvious!  D