Imagine making an event and inviting all your friend but only one came.
How would you feel if you were in that situation? Will you feel hurt? Embarrassed? Left out? This is the reality that some kids had to face, especially those within the spectrum.
Christian Larsen has always felt left out even if he tried his hardest to be friends with someone. He has autism, and with that, socialization can be a little bit challenging.
That year, Christian begged his mom to throw him a birthday party.
Lindsay Larsen, his mom, already knew the challenges of putting up an event like this one for her son. She said that he had one in preschool that turned out to be great.
“This year I gave in to his requests. We sent the invitations out, and waited.” She said in a Facebook post, “When days passed and I didn’t hear anything, I thought perhaps Christian forgot to pass them out.”
Then, she realized that the invitations were not missing or forgotten.
“At the end of the school year picnic, Christian was saying goodbye to his “friends” and asked them to RSVP.” She said in the post, “One girl responded to him and said ok, and smiled. The rest were boys. Three didn’t respond to him at all. One just said, “No.” and another who was sitting at a picnic table next to us, first ignored him,”
It might have been painful for Lindsay to see her son undergo all of those. But she understood. It was something she expected but not something that dampened her spirits. After all, one did RSVP’d for Christian.
Her Facebook post didn’t fall on deaf ears, however.
A friend of hers, Blythe Ben-David stepped in to make Christian’s day a little bit more special. While she’s living far from her family, it didn’t stop her from helping out.
She contacted a family friend, football coach Dan Holtry from the Nampa High School in Idaho, to make the miracle happen.
“He has always been a great guy, a genuine guy with a big heart,” Ben-David wrote of Holtry in an email to CNN. “I knew if anyone could help it would be Dan.”
Holtry immediately said ‘yes’ to the request and he decided to take it up a notch too.
“The players jumped at the opportunity,” Holtry wrote in an email to CNN. “They were ready and willing to celebrate with Christian. Within seconds of a sent text, they were 100 percent in. No hesitation whatsoever.”
The precious moment was captured on camera. Lindsay was asking Christian about his birthday and the sprightly kid shared how happy he was.
Then, from behind, you can hear a low steady chanting of his name. Christian’s jaw dropped when a football team entered their yard.
Lindsay was thankful not just for the visit, but for the team giving Christian a chance to be a kid.
“The energy became electric and it was amazing to see how they all came together,” Larsen wrote in an email to CNN. “Christian often plays alone, or wanders off, but with the players there helping organize games, he became part of the action. He was playing alongside his peers, as well as the football players. I think it helped the other young children interact with Christian too.”
“I know that Christian felt amazed and blessed by the turnout,” his mother said to CNN. “He talked about it for days. One of the best things about his personality is that he is always looking for the positive. He didn’t question why the players were there, he just loved it. He has said multiple times that it was the best birthday ever!”
Watch how an entire football team showed up at a birthday party when only one RSVP’d.
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