Suffer the Little Children...

On Tuesday nights I teach English as a 2nd language to Hmong children at Family Baptist. This week I was working with the younger kids and they all had so much energy. There is this one little girl about 2 that attends. Gloria Ormiston, the other teacher, and I have no idea what her name is because she doesn't have any older siblings that are in our class who can tell us and she doesn't talk when we ask her. She usually just falls asleep during class. I literally mean FALL too. Last week she was sitting on my lap and I put her on the floor in front of me while we were singing action songs. She fell to the side. The fall awoke her and she sat up, but was getting ready to fall over again when I grabbed her and let her fall asleep in my arms. She was out within seconds!

This past Tuesday, during the Bible story time, she was wandering around and wouldn't sit in her chair. I pulled her over to me to sit in my lap and when I did, realized she was wet. She got down and I looked over by her seat. There was a huge puddle on the floor! The poor thing had wet her pants and not let us know she had to go. Praise the Lord she was sitting at a table on the tile, and not on the rug! I cleaned up the puddle as best I could with napkins until after class when we could get some cleaner and paper towels. The little girl just stood by the table the rest of the time. When her mom or grandma came to pick her up (not sure which it is), I tried to find out what her name was, but her 'guardian' couldn't understand me. An older boy next to her must have been related and he told me her name-Pai Xiong (Pie Shong). I figured if the mom or grandma couldn't understand me asking what her name was, she wouldn't be able to understand me telling her Pai wet her pants. I told the boy and he explained it. Pai's guardian grabbed her pants to feel and then started earnestly talking in Hmong to Pai and pointing to me. I don't understand ANY Hmong, but I am pretty sure she was telling her to tell the teacher when she had to go to the bathroom! Poor thing! At least we have a name now to go with the adorable little girl.

Here are some pictures of the other children in our class: