Happy Pebbles, Happy Ripples

A parent from a support group has shared an experience that will have a lasting effect on her autistic son – it’s a beautiful, anecdotal example about the true kindness of strangers.  

These were her words:

Happy Pebbles, Happy Ripples 

Today we had two sky engineers who came to our home to sort out our satelite dish.

It’s bad enough when we tidy or move things around, our boy can’t cope and has a meltdown, so you can imagine how on edge we were feeling.  But instead the most amazing thing happened!!

One of the engineers was looking at our son’s collection of rocks, fossils and minerals and started talking to him about them. Our son removed his fingers from his mouth (a rare event when he is stressed) then started explaining where he got them from and taking them off of the shelf to show the man the different things he had.

The engineer listened and then asked our son “how strange would it be for someone to come into your house and see your collection and just happen to have a a stone in his pocket called Tiger Eye?”

Our son replied that would be strange.

And then the engineer produced the stone telling our son all about it.  Our son’s face lit up, finding out someone else collects these, and then as he handed it back the engineer told him that he could keep it to go with his “impressive” collection!

Our son could not have been happier, he thanked him and then sat on the floor examining the stone with his magnifying glass.

When the engineer saw this response he gave my son a piece of rose quartz, followed by a piece of turquoise, and told him that he was sure they would be well looked after here so he should add them to his collection.

My heart burst!

Such a simple act of kindness from a stranger has made the biggest difference in what could have been a very challenging day.

We have never met this man before, he had no idea that our son collected stones or had autism before he walked into our house.

But to our son this man has made a huge impact.

This was only two days after I had been explaining to our son how his actions were like a pebble in the river –  the ripples go far and wide.  They have effects you can’t predict.

This morning as my son was having a hard time I asked him which pebble he was going to be.  

What ripples would he send out to affect the people around him?

This afternoon my son told me that the Sky man was a happy pebble with happy ripples.

It proves that there are some amazing people out there who will accept our children and make a difference in their world, even if it’s only from a twenty minute encounter. 

Happy Pebbles, Happy Ripples 😍😁