“I am raising a very VERY strong kid. Please do me a favor and raise very kind kids in return”.
Cara Thulin’s touching Facebook post has gone viral after she penned an emotional open letter asking the parents, children, and teachers at her son’s new school to help her.
Zeke has just started high school and Cara is worried that he will find strange surroundings difficult to cope with.
With this in mind, she asked people to reach out to her son and ask him how he’s doing in order to make him feel more comfortable and less afraid of a new building, new people, new teachers and so forth.
Here is her post in full:
“Attention parents and kids and teachers at Kickapoo…
“This boy is in your ranks now. And I need you all to help me.
‘His brain grew up differently than a lot of ours. It grew up focusing on protecting Zeke from being overwhelmed by sounds, and light, textures, and smells.
“His senses are stronger than ours. And so while we were growing and paying attention to other babies…and learning how to behave and react…he was paying attention to the way sun hit his moms earrings, or how loud the dog was…and he missed out on all that social training we didn’t even realize we were getting.
“He runs to class, he doesn’t know his graduation year, he gets really confused in busy hallways, and he loves that he can tell what year you are by the color of your ID badge.
“If you see this kid, say “Hi Zeke!” and don’t get offended if he doesn’t respond. He heard you. And he feels a little more confident now that someone knows his name.
“Ask if he’s doing okay, if he likes class, or if he has any questions. Compliment his band tshirts. He LOVES Panic! At the Disco.
“He may answer you. He may stare at the floor. He may run away. But he’ll know that you care.
And I promise you, that will help him feel better than he feels when people laugh at him. Because he does notice when people laugh at him. He just doesn’t know why.“I am raising a very VERY strong kid. Please do me a favor and raise very kind kids in return”.
Speaking to The Kansas City Star, Cara told the publication that the idea worked really well and Zeke is settling in well.
Although she was initially worried that the social media post would backfire and he would get too much attention, people have just accepted him and treated him kindly.
“They’ve all been kind, and helpful. Just treated him like one of the rest.
“It’s all I could have asked of them. Just to exist and go thru high school with him. With that extra bit of compassion that they wouldn’t have had before they knew he was autistic [sic]”.
