A School Lesson in Compassion and Understanding

--by vickistanley04, posted Sep 21, 2010

My seven year old son Nicholas came home from school one day and in the context of our usual "How was school?" chat he told me about one of his classmates who had asked him to share his snack with him in a somewhat forceful way.

After this chat, as a room mother, I had the chance to better observe the boy concerned. I saw he never had a snack and was often dirty, so I understood a bit more his situation.

From that point on I sent extra crackers, etc., everyday and Nicholas made a point of sitting next to the boy at snack time so he could share - telling the boy I always gave him too much.

After this we realized he was unable to pay for field trips and the teacher was doing this for him. We secretly got involved with that also, making sure he was in our group for the times we knew there would be a visit to the gift shop.

We were told by the teacher that this boy began to blossom, in part due to our "adoption" of him and in part from Nicholas' friendship.

Unfortunately his mother moved before the year-end, resulting in him going to another school. We were heartbroken when he just didn't show up one day.

We hope our care for him helped him in some way at his new school. My son also learned a nice lesson and that is we never know what a person is living with to make them act a certain way.

You sometimes just have to dig a little deeper.

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Posted by vickistanley04
Sep 21, 2010
Comments (28)

Readers Comments

josietn wrote: As a teacher, this gave me such a warm blessing. :)

Vicki wrote: Great i hope it is a positive message for you

Oscarwty wrote: I'm a chinese senior high school student.

Your article has been picked out as a piece of english exercise.

Congratulations.

Vicki wrote: I agree ganoba. I like the "stay & play" concept.

ganoba wrote: First impression usually provide a surface reality, which may be misleading if we take it as the whole truth.

What you call "digging a little deeper"i call it "stay and play".

Gradually the whole truth unfolds.

In time this approach develops our ability to see the whole picture.

MargieM wrote: What a beautiful story - and such a life lesson to give your son! Kudos to you!

charlie48 wrote: I know those moments of kindness stay with you throughout your life; a friend of my son's related a similar story to me about remembered kindnesses. Bless you

KristinP wrote: Wow, what a beautiful story. Thanks for sharing!

serveothers wrote: You captured an important moment to teach one of the great lessons to your son while through live demonstration of what we expect from our children.

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