There is a five-year old boy in our neighborhood, a creative child, a deep-thinker, a sensitively-sometimes-tenuously-wired soul who reminds me a lot of L. when he was that age. It's fitting, then, that this little boy also admires and even worships L. in the way small boys admire and might worship an older boy they look up to and want to be like. The other day on our way back from the pool I mentioned something casually to L. about whether or not he had noticed the way this small boy looked at him and admired him and L. all but stopped in his tracks.
"What? Why?" He was genuinely stumped.
"Because you're a neat kid, who does neat things, and he wants to be around you."
A pleased smile crept around his lips and when we continued walking I thought I noticed a new bounce in his step, and a certain proud swing to his arms.
"I still don't understand why," he said still perplexed, but happy and pleased all the same.
I thought about this on and off for much of the afternoon. I wondered if this was normal, this failure to perceive himself as someone worthy of worship and admiration, or if his confusion was just another example of his lack of self-reflection, his inability to project himself out into the world, to empathize, to step outside of himself from time to time and see what others see. We struggle with this so constantly these days, it seems. He can be charming and polite one minute and then, when under stress or in a situation which triggers his acute sensory sensitivities he can be horribly rude and oppositional without even realizing what he's doing, or saying, or how he appears to others.
That was a pretty rude thing you said, we'll point out to him time and time again.
What? he'll respond, swatting our comment away with his hand, as you would an annoying fly.
What you said, we'll say. It sounded rude and could have hurt their feelings.
Then he'll get cross and defiant and sometimes, really, really angry.
Maybe he won't ever get it. Maybe he'll spend his life leading with his favorite disclaimer: I don't mean to offend you but...and we'll keep on wincing inside, waiting for what will come out of him. Maybe he'll slowly develop coping skills to help him perceive others, and himself, in more acceptable and safer ways. But this was the first time I saw the other side of this, of L. just not getting how it could be that someone else could admire him, and want to be like him. I want L. to remember what it felt like to blush and feel proud inside at this realization; to feel and understand how powerful it can be, how good it can feel, to be that kind of person to someone else.