A few weeks ago, I sat and watched my son play with his toys. My son is a 5-year-old Autistic little boy who loves to organize. I watched him take five different color pool rings and place them in the center of the floor. Then, I watched him take five blocks and put them inside of their respective colored pool rings. Next, he took five Sesame Street figurines and divided them into their color groups inside the pool rings. I thought he was finished when he stopped going back and forth to his room for objects. He sat down in front of his divided toy town with a smile on his face. Then he began singing a song about colors and what different colors make other colors. “Blue and yellow make green,” he sang. Watching this didn’t make sense to me at first.
But, as the game carried on I started to notice the beauty of his little mind. He started by identifying each object by color. Then he focused on the similarities of each toy. Finally, he celebrated their beauty in song and had them mixing and mingling with each other, rejoicing in the different colors they make when they blend together.
This immediately became a teaching moment. I asked him about the color of mommy and daddy’s skin. “Mommy is brown and daddy is white.” Then I asked him if he knew what colors brown and white make. “Brown and white make me!” he exclaimed. “That’s right buddy, brown and white made you and you are beautiful. You are love.”