Unfiltered Story #309439

My daughter has special needs, to save you the technical terminology she basically struggles to control her own muscles. She can walk, but it’s a rather unusual gait, she struggles to hold things well and has regular twitching motions she can’t control. During her childhood she struggled with the fact that her peers in school would either make fun of her or just avoid her as if they feared they would catch something from her. With her family and friends she was a sweet girl, but around strangers she tended to be apprehensive and shy, fearing they would treat her poorly.

At the time of this story my daughter was in high school. She had just had some sort of bad experience with some kids at school that Friday, though she didn’t want to share the details with us, and so she had been particularly withdrawn and down since. We were taking her to a jazz festival since she loves music and we were really hoping it may be able to cheer her back up.

As we were entering the park where the festival was a young girl around five or six came running up towards us. Trailing a little behind her was a man and a younger girl, presumably her father and sister. The man calls after the girl as she reaches us.

Father: “Remember you have to ask first before touching anyone”
Girl: “Can I give you a hug?.”
Me: “Oh. okay?”

As promised the little girl runs comes up to me and gives me a hug, then turns to my sister and gives her a hug as well, after asking permission of course. While this is happening the father catches up

Father: “sorry, She’s randomly decided she wants to give strangers hugs this evening. I’m just trying to make sure she at least asks permission first. Hope she’s not a bother to you.”

While he is explaining that the younger sister wandered up to me and, a bit more tentatively, reached out as if to give me a hug. I do the same back and receive my second hug of the evening.

Me: “no bother at all, their adorable.”

My daughter had been a bit ahead and to the side of us when the girls showed up, not too far away but enough that the young girls didn’t seem to have noticed her at first. They had both given us our hugs and seemed about ready to continue running down the sidewalk out of the park when the father spoke up.

“Hold on, you missed someone! Did you want to ask her?”

He gestures to my daughter, and both girls turn and run up to her.

young girl: “Can we hug you?”
daughter: “okay”

Both young girls take turns giving my daughter hugs, not seeming to mind at all her twitching muscles or the fact that she struggles a bit to hug them back properly. I swear my daughters face seems to light up a bit more with each hug.

young girl: “Okay bye”

Just as quickly as the girls showed up they start to run off back down the road again. Their father gives me a look of amused exasperation I’m sure most parents can sympathies with.

father: “Thanks for humoring them, enjoy the music”

I would have responded back but the father was already rushing to catch up with the girls. Not long after that I heard him shouting another reminder for the girls to ask before giving hugs as presumably another family got the same drive by hugging treatment we just got.

Meanwhile my daughter seemed as if a weight was lifted off her shoulders. The hugs from those little girls, and the fact that they didn’t seem the least bit bothered about my daughters muscles control, seemed to have been just solution to help bring her out of her funk. Between that and the music of the festival she was finally back to the sweet and happy girl I loved not long afterwards.

Thank you adorable siblings, for your random hugs and for treating my daughter like she a regular person and not a disability.