This story about a child who touched my heart, Joshua, when he first came to my center two years ago he was very withdrawn, he didn’t interact with the other children, and he barely spoke.  I remember saying to myself that he had the saddest eyes I’d ever seen.  No manner what I did to try to get him to interact with the other children he would just sit or stand but never participated in any of the activities.  During free or outside play he would stay to himself even when the other children tried to get him to play with them.  I voiced my concerns with his mother and she told me that she had been in a very abusive marriage and was currently going through a very ugly divorce and that her husband was very negative towards Joshua, as well as her and that was one of the reasons she moved back in with her mother.  She explained to me that he was always well behaved and fairly quiet and often played by himself.  After speaking with Joshua’s mom I sought out different ways to try to get Joshua to interact with the other children and to get him to engage in the daily activities, on this one particular day last fall, I remember that day as if it were yesterday, it was time for Art and some of the children asked if they could paint that day; and I said yes.  As usual Joshua just sat at the table playing with the paint brush, so I walked over to the table kneeled down, gave him a great big hug and told Joshua that I needed to him to paint me a very special picture so that I could hang it on the board; to my surprise he began to paint and when he finished he got up and brought the painting to me and told me it was a painting of black birds that he had seen when he went to the beach.  I was overwhelmed with joy because for a year and a half this child barely spoke, he proceeded to tell me that he loved running in and out of the water when the waves came.  I was so happy and surprised, I gave him a great big hug and held his picture up to show to the rest of the children and we all clapped our hands as I hung his picture on the board.  Back 2 Basics is committed to providing quality and loving care. And our goal is to provide a variety of exciting, stimulating activities each day so that each child can develop socially, emotionally, physically and mentally to the very best of his/her ability.  I believe Joshua just needed feel safe and that there were other who truly did love and care about him.  Joshua is now attending public school and is doing very well.  His mother called to tell me that he made the honor roll.