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've read through this entire thread and I feel very conflicted.
The OP and others are clearly effected by these issues and I think that their level of upset is somewhat colouring what they think is reasonable/acceptable.
Ultimately I've come away thinking that being kind and polite is all we can ask from our children towards others.
If a friendship develops then great but if it doesn't, well, that's just life isn't it?

The girl that smiled and politely excused herself did nothing wrong.
She didn't look at ops ds with disgust or tell him to go away.
She handled the situation in a mature and kind way.
It may not have been the way that the op wanted but she wasn't unpleasant or discriminatory. As a human being, she also gets to decide who she wants to spend time with.
A poster up thread asked if all the adults, who clearly and understandably feel very strongly about this subject, do the same in their day to day lives that they're obviously expecting children to do.
I used to work in a shop and every day, without fail, a gentleman with learning disabilities would come in.
I would be kind to him. I would chat to him and I would help him if he needed it.
Equally, if I was out and about on a day off (even now I haven't worked there for over a yeat) and I saw him I would also say hello and be kind to him.
Would I invite him to my house for a cuppa? Or in some other way attempt to force a friendship?
No I wouldn't. Not because of his disability but because I don't know him.
I, like the girl, get to choose who I want to be friends with. It doesn't mean I'm a horrible, selfish, unpleasant person, because I'm not.

I understand that the ops heart must break on a daily basis and putting myself in her shoes, I know I would feel the same but...I've come a full circle. Politeness and being kind are all we can ask of anyone.

I’m curious about you, hercule. Yours is an unusual mindset. Thankfully.

If your child is only a toddler Hercule, I really hope she doesn't end up alone with noone willing to play with her. You may look back on this thread and wish you had been a little kinder and taught your daughter a little more empathy.

She is incredibly empathetic. But it is true, she might find it hard to make friends. She likes order, and rules. She likes quiet. That isn’t necessarily going to endear her to everyone. But I have no right to force anyone to be friends with her.

“want your child to be in a position where she selects her friendships based on her own interests and comfortability whether that child is disabled or not.”

Does not mean that they shouldn’t be educated and encouraged to be more than polite and tolerant, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be educated to be inclusive and look out with their comfort zone when socialising, and to recognise that they require diffferent skills and amount of efforts when getting to know different kinds of people.

None of that means forcing them to be friends with someone they don’t click with.

I’m curious about you, hercule. Yours is an unusual mindset. Thankfully.

It can’t be that unusual. The OP is - understandably - upset because almost everyone behaves in the way I am describing.

No, it’s about encouraging openness and looking past immediately obvious differences so that friendship gets a chance to develop. It’s sad that so few people seem to believe that’s possible. But I’ve seen it happen, op, so please don’t give up.

I don’t know how many different ways I can say this: I would not force them to be friends. I am not sure how I would actually force them. I would express - in the strongest terms - my disappointment in them. I would punish any further comments about the colour of another person’s skin

But my child has a right to choose her own friends

So your DD says she doesn’t want to be friends with a child who is black for instance, you would still stand by and insist that that is her choice not to be friends with them? Just because she didn’t like their colour?

So your DD says she doesn’t want to be friends with a child who is black for instance, you would still stand by and insist that that is her choice not to be friends with them? Just because she didn’t like their colour?

Rather than force her? Yes. I would, at the same time, be communicating with her about what racism is and why it is wrong.

No, but I think most people would have slightly more awareness that their behaviour is problematic, wouldn’t they.

Some of you are being completely unfair to Herculepoirot. Her position is perfectly reasonably. It's hard when it's your child being excluded.

It really is ridiculous comparing race with a disability. Some disabilities make social engagement difficult and challenging for both sides. That is the main context here. You cannot equate that to racial exclusion because of a person's ethnicity or race. Context is key.

Given the context there is no equivalence with racism.

Making sure people feel included is not the job of a child. It's about institutions (in this case the school) and people more generally as a society. If the institutions and society are inclusive children will generally grow up to be inclusive of others.

It’s not even a case of being dutiful and polite and inclusive for the other person. If you do make that effort you have no idea what you are missing out on from not engaging with that person who happens to have a disability.
I feel so sorry for children prevented by their parents from getting to know a percentage of their peers because they (the parents) never learned to see past disability or to actively embrace and celebrate difference.

@JacquesHammer that does sound extreme. I’d have called them out on that.

That said, we do have an issue with people deciding to be DD’s friend when there is a perceived advantage. One girl in particular always begs to come to lunch with her (she goes early and doesn’t have to queue) or spend inside playtimes with her when she can’t go outside. All other times this girl basically ignores DD, never gets an invite to parties, doesn’t play with her or pair up or choose her for group work. It didn’t take DD long to work out she was at it!

I’m sure your DD wasn’t being sly or anything, but I can see how a parent might be suspicious of motives. That parent just sounded bitter though!

So: excluding people on racial grounds is not excusable. On grounds of disability, it is.
Yuk. Just yuk. What people.

No, but I think most people would have slightly more awareness that their behaviour is problematic, wouldn’t they.

I actually think most people have far less awareness than I do. I think they just do what they instinctively think is right and don’t give it that much thought. I’m not like that. I do think about these things. I am perfectly aware that this is a serious problem with no easy answers. I am perfectly aware that my refusal to force my DD to make friends with any individual child might be detrimental to that child. I am not saying these things because I haven’t given them thought. I am saying them because I have given them a lot of thought and this is where I have come out.

Hercule Poirot is sadly right, almost everyone does behave in the way she is describing.

FFS I don’t know how many times people need to say it’s not about forcing friendship.
It’s about encouraging your child to be open to its possibility. It’s not that hard to understand, really.

With physical disabilities people can largely overlook a missing limb or impaired eyesight because they can still have loads in common and enjoyable conversations. You can't remotely compare. My dd2 is missing a limb and more people than you'd expect don't overlook it. She does get people missing her out because "she can't" or sneering because she does something differently and has done since she was about 5yo. Before than children didn't really notice the difference.

However I feel your OP is very one sided. How did you know that child wasn't calling for a friend/prefers that way/likes to be on their own/some other reason why they excused themselves and went the long way. You've assumed it was because the other girl didn't want to be with your child. Not because she had a reason to go another way.
You're expecting this girl to make allowances for your dc and not judge them while judging her.

From the other side I have dd1. Dd1 is very kind, and will never intentionally hurt someone. If she'd been walking and your dc had come up she would have walked with them, even if your dc had wanted to go a longer way.

But what you wouldn't see is that actually she struggles socially. She often finds herself on the outside of a group, or the one someone takes again. The number of times that she has gone out of her way to help someone and she's found she's being pressured into doing it again and again, and found that the group has then reformed without her.
I was talking to a parent (she's 18yo now) last year who was saying exactly that about when she was at juniors. That she was an easy one for the group to leave out because she didn't make a fuss, and because she'd always be the one to stop and help.

She also doesn't like being touched and hugged. She wouldn't say anything to your dc, but she would struggle with saying "no don't touch me" because she wouldn't want to hurt them. She might well have got upset at home though.

Race is not a disability that causes people to behave in socially awkward ways. I'm finding this offensive and minimising of racism, antisemitism, etc and the history behind them.

Discriminating on the basis of (dis)ability is terrible but the context is very, very different. All isms are not the same.

Hopefully then Hercule your stance on racism would mean that you would get through to your child that everyone must be treated the same and that you wouldn’t need to force your DD to be friends with anyone of a different race to hers because she would be including them regardless.

So: excluding people on racial grounds is not excusable. On grounds of disability, it is.
Yuk. Just yuk.

Well, no. What I said above was, if my child didn’t want to be friends with someone because of the way that person made them feel (an example I used above was repetitiveness in conversation, but it could be any one of a number of things), and that behaviour was linked to their SN, it isn’t fair to say that my child (let’s say she is 7 at this point) is “disablist”. She would simply be trying to form friendships she found enjoyable. That is her right.

Now, it is my responsibility, as the OP says, to teach her that some people do require different forms of engagement and different levels of effort, but it doesn’t mean they are worth less. And I am happy to do that. What I am not going to do is call her “disablist” or force her to be friends when she doesn’t want to be.

FFS I don’t know how many times people need to say it’s not about forcing friendship.
It’s about encouraging your child to be open to its possibility. It’s not that hard to understand, really

Exactly that.

But in order to be open to the possibility you have to feel comfortable yourself. That’s where a lot of the avoidance comes from, the deficiencies in knowledge, experience and EQ of the parents, which they then pass on to their children. They can’t model the behaviour that would make their dcs’ school or club etc inclusive because they have never felt comfortable themselves.
I mean, there are still people in this day and age (and on this thread) who would like to see any children with a disability in a special school, whether that setting suits that child’s needs or not. As long as it suits that adult’s need not to have to give a fuck about another child’s feelings.

The likes of toooldnow perhaps could reflect on the fact that in times past, people would have used precisely this reasoning to excuse exclusion of children on grounds of race.
They’re not like us - they’ll have nothing in common - you can’t force them to be friends.
Such attitudes are largely in the dustbin of history. That is because parents and schools have worked to place them there.
Turn a blind eye to this problem by all means, but don’t try and kid me you’re a decent person for doing it.

Yabbers

If we hadn’t been at speech evening and enjoying a social evening I would have done. As it was the last ever evening of Year 6 I just left it. However I haven’t enabled the children to stay in touch.

DD has no other thought other than she felt sorry for this kid. They’d been at school for 9 years together and when the teacher told me about it, DD had said “I wanted her to end first school as first choice for once”.

She had a fairly rubbish trip in all. However the other kid had a ball.

Hopefully then Hercule your stance on racism would mean that you would get through to your child that everyone must be treated the same and that you wouldn’t need to force your DD to be friends with anyone of a different race to hers because she would be including them regardless.

But everyone doesn’t need to be treated the same. Some children she is going to invite to her home, some not. Some children she is going to tell her secrets, some not. Some children she will see over the holidays, some not. Choosing which children she forms those deeper relationships with is her right, not mine.