Is He Normal?

There’s this lady in my church who always came to mass with her 7yr old son. I’ve never seen a kid as noisy and as restless as he is.

He’d run to and fro the altar while mass is on, he’d run around the church until his mom chased and got him to sit down. He’d roll on the floor and refuse to stand up even when his mom tries to get him off the floor, and then she’ll have to drag him along the ground to get him off there. This drama continues every Sunday, and it could be quite distracting and irritating, worse part is that they liked sitting at the very front of the church.

I’ve never heard him say a word/sentence, the only thing he keeps screaming is “heeee hehe” now and then. Perhaps he’s deaf and dumb? He’d tell his mom he wants to “pee” by saying “weeee”—which was quite difficult to differentiate from his usual “heeee”—but in this case, he places his hands on his private area to show that he needs to urinate.

One Sunday, the boy went in his usual screams “hee-hee”, and the old woman sitting behind me (perhaps in her 70s) who apparently got irritated by his noise, began to ask if the boy was normal. 

• “Is he normal?” She asked. She couldn’t stop repeating the question to everyone in her seat until a man sitting behind her responded to her:

• The boy is normal. He told her.

For the second time the little boy came running around, a bit noisier than he initially was, and this time I could hear the old woman from behind saying out loud: 

• “he is definitely not normal”. I suppose the boy's behavior was too “abnormal” for her to accept what the man had told her earlier. 

Her accent sounded Caribbean but I am not entirely sure where she’s from. However, considering the covert culture of the British, her blunt statement about the boy was very “UnBritish”.

I pitied the boy’s mom because sometimes she looks stressed. I can imagine how embarrassed she might feel sometimes about her son’s misbehavior.

Like that old woman, I also used to feel irritated by the boy’s noise during mass, I just kept wondering why a child his age was so difficult to control unlike other kids in church. At first, I thought he was perhaps, one of those “spoilt” kids who was being over-pampered. But I was so wrong. And it later occurred to me that the boy could be autistic or have ADHD.

Photo credit: Drcraigcanapari.com

I became more patient with him when I began to imagine myself as his mother. I asked myself what would I do if I were his mother? How is she feeling right now? She must be going through a lot mentally, because of this uncontrollable child of hers. It must be really hard, I hope she is getting the mental support she needs. Perhaps, the boy has no control over his actions. I said to myself. 

And it was only when I started placing myself in the mother’s shoes that I became more tolerant of the boy’s noise in church.

One thing that surprised me the most was how the church members reacted to this child’s behavior. They appeared very tolerant of him. Except for a few who’d turn to look at him from time to time when he was noisy, and then turn back to listen to the preaching. The other day, the boy was eating bread in church, and our Rev Fr. went up to him and gave him a high five ✋. Perhaps they understood his autistic/ADHD condition better than I did. They had become comfortable with being uncomfortable, which is the best way to live as humans in other to accommodate others. I truly admire the Church for this.

But I also imagine how different the church members’ reaction would have been if this boy and his mom attended a church in Nigeria. I imagine how one of the church ushers would have bluntly walked up to his mother and told her to please take her noisy child outside, and stop distracting others in the church. 

Or they would make her sit behind with her noisy child, and not in front of the church. Some would shout at the boy, frown heavily at him, or mock his mother for not raising him well/over pampering him; however, their reason would have been valid as well (but based on ignorance). But such treatment would be more isolating for the boy and his mother. And perhaps they would have stopped coming to church because of these mistreatments.

My take-home from this experience would be TOLERANCE! When we imagine ourselves in other people's positions, we become more human, more tolerant, more accommodating, and less judgmental. Today (2nd April) is world autism day, and I am calling everyone to make this pledge to be more tolerant of people because we do not know the reason behind their actions.

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