Big Brothers Big Sisters
I have mentioned before my involvement in the Big Brothers Big Sisters Program and much fun it is. After being paired up, you pretty much just run around the Boys & Girls Club and have a good time. My kid has some special needs and I hoped to help him in these areas. After our 1st few meetings, I identified a few areas I wanted to help him work on. To be honest, at times it felt as though I wasn’t able to reach him. He was making new friends and starting to come out of his shell. There was improvement, but it crept at a turtle’s pace & that frustrated me a bit.
Last week, with only a few weeks left for this semester’s session, we had to fill out surveys on the experience. I had a couple detailed ones & he had a pretty simple sheet to fill out. I got done with mine & I noticed he was covering up his answers as he wrote. Wow, the kid must be really writing some terrible things to be hiding them.
Me ever being curious asked him to see what he as writing. He didn’t want to show me. OK, this is the point where I am like WTF? I had a great time doing this. Did I traumatize the poor kid?
He reluctantly lifted his arm to reveal a few crudely formed words. They may have been written on a penny piece of paper, but what I saw meant a ton to me. You have no idea what being described as “cool” by an 8 year old will do for you when you see it written on a piece of paper. I started asking him about some of the other questions on the paper and he started telling me about how he makes more friends & he gets along with his family better. He then asked me if I would be his Big Brother again next year.
It is the little things in life that mean the most, I have always believed & always will. A few words by a little red headed devil child absolutely made my week & validated my career decision.
