To me, being a kid at heart would be reading with kids.
More specifically, reading with autistic kids.
To be honest, this personal experience of mines is something that I’ve been reticent and surreptitious about for humility reasons.
During my mandatory community service in my senior year in high school, I volunteered at a public library. My job was mainly shelving books. But there was this interpersonal role that I took while volunteering at the library that I couldn’t resist taking.
One of my voluntary jobs was reading to autistic kids.
Whenever I go to the children’s section of the library while working, I developed this passionate interest with reading to kids ever since I first took a summer volunteering job at a daycare center (just to incorporate a past experience in my resume). When I first found out that these groups of children are autistic, I figured that this would be my chance to improve my empathy and get to know these kids some more, as well as learning more about the autism spectrum.
When I picked out a children’s book to read aloud to them, something else made me impressed.
These children became very unique to me. Not only they paid close attention, but most of them were able to memorize the entire book after I only read it to them once. When the book was finished, they came to me and judging by their facial expressions and reactions, they wanted me to keep reading other books to them. I read them another book, and, again, they all became so mesmerized that they suddenly developed their passion for reading books as well as memorizing the entire stories.
That was when I realized how compassionate I became whenever I read to autistic kids.
These kids were phenomenal. They were able to mentally record any books I read to them. It made me assume that regardless of their developmental disorders, they were capable of bright futures ahead of them. They could be writers, such as I. Or maybe audiobook narrators judging by their articulate verbal recording of a book.
Children with autism has been one of my inquisitive interests ever since I saw that Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise movie, Rain Man.
In spite of their daily developmental struggles, every autistic person is a savant at a specific subject, such as Raymond Babbitt being able to solve complex math equations and counting cards and Jacob Hunt having phenomenal detective abilities in Jodi Picoult’s novel, House Rules. In this case, the autistic children I’ve read with are literary savants.
After this experience, I decided to do independent reading with autistic kids throughout the rest of my 15 hours of community service for high school until my volunteering is complete.
Even though I only read with autistic children just for high school volunteering, I can never forget this personal experience. I can never forget how extraordinary these kids are to me.
I’m sure that they have bright futures ahead of them as I predicted.
Therefore, according to myself, being a kid at heart would be reading children’s books with children, able or disabled. If I could turn back in time, I’d do this over again out of nostalgia.