To urge you to teach your children to be genuinely inclusive, not just polite?

[gingerginger2]

My kids are back at school this week (Scotland) and after a summer of seeing them without the context of their peers it’s a sadness again to see them interacting with other children.

On their own, they are sweet, silly, funny, kind, playful, interesting, creative, chatty. They are part of the world, full of wonder and learning and play.

But in the context of kids their age, they are different. They both have learning disabilities and dyspraxia.

They don’t know this though, they don’t quite realise they are “different” yet. They are little, they learn slowly, despite the constant lessons from society’s exclusions. They run up to their “friends” in such a carefree happy way, eager to talk, play, connect. It doesn’t seem to occur to them not to.

And when they do they mainly encounter silence. Uncomfortable polite looks. Or polite confused monosyllabic mumbles followed by eager escapes into actual easy friendships groups. Or at best a short conversation in a humouring tone, a tone learnt by imitating the tones adults take with small silly children.

There’s not really any unkindness. There’s just a refusal to actually engage, to get to know, to connect. An embarrassment and unwillingness to spend time with my children’s lack of social skills, messy clothes, an uncomfortableness at their invasion of their personal space. So a brief hello before getting on with actual friendships and relationships and life. An obvious desire to politely not engage. A smile with the lips not the eyes.

I’m amazed they don’t seem to realise that they’ve been snubbed again. But they din’t Mainly. Learning disability means everything is hard to learn I guess. But it’ heartbreaking to see they just carry on and continue to fling themselves at people, wide open, encountering boundaries wherever they go. I worry that soon they’ll start to realise and feel the pain of these rejections.

I worry too that maybe they do feel the pain. Maybe it goes somewhere deep, and maybe they are learning day by day that people don’t like them. That society isn’t for them.

I hate it.

Please can you teach your children to be more than polite and kind to their peers with disabilities? Please can you urge them to actually get to know them, to actually connect and include them? Even when they are messy, annoying, noisy and a bit weird. Even then?

I don’t think the OP is suggesting that any parent should force their child to be friends with another or should try to influence their children’s friendships. I think she’s just suggesting that parents should try to encourage their children to be tolerant, inclusive and open-minded.

OP, I’m really sorry you have to experience this. It must be incredibly painful.

Stepping in to remove her from a negative influence is something I will do without apology, because she is my child.

So she can choose her friends as long as they meet with your approval and aren’t a negative influence.

an uncomfortableness at their invasion of their personal spac

Sorry but I refuse to teach my children that they have to allow others to invade their personal space. Ever.

@NoSauce Sorry, I think you misinterpreted the way I meant that.

OP says her child will run up to other kids, hug them, be in their space, chatter to them, etc, which some children seem uncomfortable with.

I was trying to explain that as a person with sensory processing issues I would be very uncomfortable with anyone at all doing that, not because of their disabilities, but because of my own issues.

So I would likely be the little girl walking the long way round, not to avoid a disabled child, but because it would make me feel panicked due to my own issues.

I’m a bit confused as to why this invasion of personal space has become a theme.
Most kids with SN don’t do it. Some kids without SN do.
Convenient get out clause, perhaps?

On the other side of the coin is a child being asked to shoulder the responsibility for engaging a child with SEN when doing so can be enormously difficult and draining for them

That’s why it’s important for all parents to teach their children the importance of inclusivity so it doesn’t fall on one child. If the whole class have empathy and understanding, imagine how the child with a disability would feel?

Sinkgirl, you are only thinking from one perspective. I can engage with people who invade my personal space but even as an adult it takes A LOT from me. I get stressed and exhausted by extroverted people after a while. If it's someone invading my space that would be doubly tough for me.

Some kids are exactly like me. It can stress them out dealing with other kids how need that a bit more effort to engage with.

Some of us have our own challenges even if it these are not very visible.

@TheBigBallOfOil possibly because the OP mentions it in her OP. And, this being a site full of mainly women, we are hyper sensitive to the unwanted invasion of personal space as many of us will have experienced it repeatedly (SN or no) and can sympathise.

I need penguin bollards for Pengwyn's bollocks - we see you.
And if you ever were a teacher God help the state of the nation.
Seriously, take a look at yourself.

Great post OP.

Well said.

So she can choose her friends as long as they meet with your approval and aren’t a negative influence.

The red line is placing herself in danger. I am her mother. Of course I am not going to let her do that.

yet was consistently left out of everything and bullied out of schools, sounds awful.

Teachers and parents can work together to ensure this doesn’t happen or to help. I think often the best ways are as much as structure as possible and then looking at why the child is left out, and problem solving.

Asking kids to problem solve for you isn’t a good long term strategy.

I have 3 dc. All with social communication difficulties to varying degrees.

My eldest has severe autism and learning difficulties. She is mostly tolerated wherever she goes. And that is really hard for her to accept. She knows the difference between people who accept that they need to accept her, and people who do actually accept her and are interested in her, as a person. She is 15 now, and still tries so hard, and it is just heartbreaking to see her amazing efforts at conversation and interaction being rebuffed, and not just by children/teens, but by adults too.

My middle child has Aspergers, and mostly manages to fit in successfully. Mostly. At great cost to her, it she would rather change herself than not fit in, sadly.

My youngest has high functioning autism, and he is struggling at the moment. He knows he is different, but doesn’t know how or why (he does know he is autistic, but is too young to really understand what it means), all he knows is that while he goes to great lengths to be inclusive of his friends’ wants and needs, they don’t do the same for him. So he will play what they want to play, but they won’t play what he wants to play. He will help them out if they don’t understand something, but they won’t explain things to him if he doesn’t understand. He would never dream of belittling anyone, or making them feel unwelcome, but they regularly laugh at him over things he doesn’t know, or exclude him because he ‘won’t get it’. There are times when I wonder just who has the social communication problems, tbh! I have had several meetings with ds’ teacher, as ds has had a really difficult year at school, and it isn’t just my (or his!) perception, it really has been happening as he tells me it has. And that is just heartbreaking. These are his friends, apparently.

OP, it is really hard, watching this happen in front of you. Seeing your children dismissed, as though they aren’t worth as much as another child. It gets harder as they get older/more aware. As I said earlier, dd1 knows when people are glossing over her, brushing past as though she is of no consequence. Tolerating her, but with no actual interest in her as a person. And she lest understand why she is not accepted in the same way as even her siblings (also disabled, but ever so much higher functioning).

I can remember dd2 being absolutely devastated when some of her year group laughed at dd1 because she was having an enthusiastic conversation about fire engines - dd1 was 12ish, dd2 was 10. Dd1 was talking to a teacher at dd2’s school, and was happy and excited that someone was actually taking the time to talk to her. And dd2’s peers laughed at dd1. Dd2 was upset, but also mystified - she asked me why it was ok for the boys to talk about Star Wars, or football, and she wouldn’t laugh at them just because she didn’t share the same interests, but they thought it ok to laugh at dd1 because she was having a conversation about something that didn’t interest them.

Tbh, dd1 is our canary in the coal mine, to an extent - if someone ‘gets’ her, and treats her as an actual human being, equal to them, then we know they must be a nice person. Sadly, all too often, people pay lip service to tolerating her - the smile that doesn’t reach their eyes, the obvious boredom with her choice of topic, the indecent haste with which they try to close the conversation and move on.

It isn’t just one person, once. It is most people, and all the time. Imagine a day where everyone you meet is desperately trying to not talk to you, not play with you, not sit/stand/walk next to you, not serve you in a shop, not engage with you in the same polite conversation other customers receive. And then imagine doing it all again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, for the rest of your life. It is beyond lonely and heartbreaking.

But it’s a general question isn’t it. To say well I don’t have to encourage my child to be inclusive because personal space is missing the point - wilfully, I suspect, in some instances.
My ds has perfectly appropriate boundaries in this and every other respect. He understands social rules and obeys them scrupulously. But he is still completely excluded.

I’m a bit confused as to why this invasion of personal space has become a theme.
Most kids with SN don’t do it. Some kids without SN do.
Convenient get out clause, perhaps?

Not at all, it’s because the OP mentioned in two separate posts that invasion of personal space was a specific issue and because she was very upset about a girl going the long way round due to her son getting in her personal space. Two of us tried to explain things from a different perspective, that we’ve been “the girl” due to our own needs and that children do have a right to protect themselves from an unwanted invasion of personal space. The girl was polite, she just took a longer route to avoid prolonged unwanted physical contact. This really hurt the OP. But there’s another perspective, one that doesn’t involve the child deliberately excluding OPs son, just protecting her own needs whilst being respectful.

The bit about your dd having the right to reject someone in a wheelchair if that made her uncomfortable was especially choice.

Okay, I’ll bite. Which part of ‘I wouldn’t be happy about it but she has a right to do it’ suggests I have some bizarre dislike of people in wheelchairs? Why would anybody dislike a person because of a physical disability? What a strange thought. My point is nothing to do with that, and solely to do with the fact that my child has the right to say she doesn’t want to be friends with someone. She doesn’t have the right to be rude, unkind or exclude them from play. But whatever her reason for not wanting to be friends, I am not going to force her.

So where is the ‘hostility’ you claim you see?

I think what you are looking for OP is that parents encourage something like “being a good neighbour” in their children. It’s more than being polite and kind but isn’t quite as much as friendship (although it can develop into friendship in time if it goes that way and people want it to- it actually makes future friendship more likely and possible).

It’s about being helpful, respectful, understanding, taking the time to get to know someone a bit, keeping an eye out for them, having their back when needs be, sharing knowledge, skills and life events. As I write that, it’s a bit like being a good colleague too, building a sense of community, having a bit of common purpose ( even if the common purpose is just getting through school reasonably intact having learned a bit on the way).

Sadly, as society becoming faster paced and more transient, the skills of being a good neighbour or a good colleague, are diminishing throughout society.

That said, we’d all benefit if good neighbourliness became a bit more prevalent.

Op, you may be suffering far more than your children. It is very difficult to watch but they may be totally oblivious to what is happening around them. We have autism in the family... We worry, we see the disapproval, we see the lack of friends, the getting behind in school while the one with the problem is enjoying a happy life mostly oblivious to the rejection. We also have aspergers... I just find it fascinating, same as above, they are happy people who care little about other people think.

So I would say, embrace your happy children as different as they may be. If they are happy, everything is ok.

I thought you weren’t engaging with me, hercule. It was a good policy. Stick with it.

I thought you weren’t engaging with me, hercule. It was a good policy. Stick with it.

Actually, no. Your insinuations about my feelings are unacceptable and I am telling you so. There is NOTHING I have said that indicates hostility, and you know it. You can’t back your bile up, can you?

But whatever her reason for not wanting to be friends, I am not going to force her

The reason is quite important though. If a child says they don't want to be friends with another child because they're a different race for example, would you accept that?

It isn’t just one person, once. It is most people, and all the time. Imagine a day where everyone you meet is desperately trying to not talk to you, not play with you, not sit/stand/walk next to you, not serve you in a shop, not engage with you in the same polite conversation other customers receive. And then imagine doing it all again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, for the rest of your life. It is beyond lonely and heartbreaking

My ds has perfectly appropriate boundaries in this and every other respect. He understands social rules and obeys them scrupulously. But he is still completely excluded

Oof i really felt these I hope your DC find some lovely friends who understand and enjoy them.

I don’t particularly want to engage with you Hercule, as I don’t think much of the motives or manners of a person who posts repeatedly about the thereotuca future friendship rights of her toddler in order to berate the mother of two disabled children actually experiencing these issues.... But...

You state repeatedly that you think I am saying that your child should be forced to be friends with my children against their will just because they have SN.

I don’t think they should be forced to be friends. Friendship is further down the line than what I am talking about. I think that they should be encouraged and expected to be more than polite and tolerant.

I think they should make an effort to be inclusive in their seeking of friendship and connection, and be educated to know that getting to know SN peers can require different skills and more effort than getting to know NT peers.

This effort and understanding may not result in a friendship ( as many have rightly said, this requires a spark, a connection). but the experience of being inclusive socially rather than just polite will almost certainly result In a broadening of their experience and a growth in empathy, which can only be good for them. And also good for the SN child, who might not have a strong friendship, but has had the chance to practise a social connection and experience being included. And good for society too, that people are educated to know that doing good for others and doing good for society is important.

If anyone is wondering how to teach their kids to be inclusive, please read Jax’s posts again.

Thanks for all the empathy and kindness xx

@NameChange84 You explained it better than me.

It's nothing to do with someone having disabilities, it's due to our own specific issues/mental health problems/disorder.

Not everyone who appears to not be inclusive is intentionally not being inclusive.

The reason is quite important though. If a child says they don't want to be friends with another child because they're a different race for example, would you accept that?

That’s a really good point.

For me “I don’t want to play with x all the time because they never want to play my games” is acceptable.

“I don’t want to play with x because they’re weird” absolutely isn’t.