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?

Or girl she fancies, for that matter.

You still think i’m being unreasonable hercule? Why

Contraceptionismyfriend

Absolutely none of what my DD chose to do came from me. Absolutely her own choice to play something she didn’t want or to sit with someone who wasn’t her immediate best friend.

This wasn’t something I have taught her to do. She noticed a lonely child, a different child and made an effort to be kind. Sadly for the other girl - who is having a miserable time at secondary, I haven’t encouraged the friendship to continue and DD has probably forgotten all about her.

Oh come, you could substitute disablism for racism in that sentence and have it spot on.

So you can point me to historic legislation that says disabled people aren't biologically human? Where disabled people were trafficked and sold into slavery on an industrial scale?

@theresnotthatmuchtoit

Yes, that's exactly was I was trying to say. That people are oversimplifying the social complexity involved. And that telling children to put themselves in to situations that make them uncomfortable is actually a huge safeguarding issue. It's dangerous for them.

I'm in my 40's now and have really only managed how to manage this very complex task whilst not being at risk myself. Young children can not be expected to do this.

I think the point is: don’t assume that just because someone is neurologically different from you that they could not therefore be someone with whom you could be friends. It may not be so but it might be well worth giving them a chance because they aren’t a collection of “symptoms” and “behaviours”, they’re a person.

"Neurotypical"- is that the official name for children without special needs?

I’m not a fan of oppression Olympics. But are you aware of the number of slavery prosecutions happening today involving disabled victims?

So you can point me to historic legislation that says disabled people aren't biologically human?
Killed at birth? Institutionalised? Sterilised without their consent? Killed by the Nazis? I thought this was well-known

jellycatspyjamas that certainly happened throughout Europe and the UK in the middle ages. However it's not a reason to oversimplify a massively complex issue today.

gingerginger2

I think what you are asking of the children demands a level of empathy and the capability for abstract thought that children don’t usually possess. I think the girl you mentioned was kind and polite, and I think expecting more of her than that in the circumstances you described is - considering all the children I have met - unreasonable. I can see why you want it. Like I said on page 1, your situation would break my heart. ❤️

Jelly

Educate yourself about the holocaust. Educate yourself about how disabled people throughout history have been stripped of their human rights, locked up in institutions, abused and experimented on.

No we weren’t sold into slavery because we had no economic value. We were just knocked on the head or strangled at birth.

I think it's difficult, many children just don't have the emotional maturity to appreciate that some children are acting differently for a reason. We install into them that you behave in a certain way in a certain social situation, so they ARE going to think negatively about someone that isn't conforming to social norms.

Some children adapt very easily to this and some don't. I run a Rainbows group (girl guiding is inclusive) and I find some children are very accepting, some so-so and some - especially those with their own needs cannot cope with children who are not conforming.

I have three examples in my own family. DS1 (who is not massively great at social interaction anyway) is great with anyone with SEN, has a couple of friends with Aspergers and enjoys helping at the disability sailing. However, he is very rule based and he finds the children with ADHD difficult.

DD who would play with anyone, take them at face value and will adapt her games so that someone can join in. She enjoys playing with children of different ages/abilities and will often ask to be the helper at groups.

DS2 (who has a mild auditory processing disorder) cannot manage anyone who is loud at all, really does like anyone coming up to him that he doesn't know well and he would really struggle with your son. He has his own issues to deal with. He's still not great with many of the children in his year.
Insisting to him that he starts trying to engage with your child would affect him negatively and I couldn't justify that at all.

Anyway, you need to direct him to children that have the emotional and intellectual maturity to be lovely to him, or if they're all too young, send a group mail to the other parents asking them to prime their children. I think you're expecting too much.

Children learn by example. I wonder how many people posting here have adult friends with significant learning disabilities? How many are actually practicing what they preach?

I have a very close friend with DS, several friends with ASDs (mainly aspergers) and a couple with Dyspraxia. I’ve also got visually and hearing impaired friends and lots of friends with enduring mental health problems. I have also dedicated all of my 20s caring for a bedbound relative at home and now support two of my family members who have significant disabilities and cognitive impairment/socially unacceptable behaviour due to strokes. I work in an SEN setting.

Because I have issues around physical contact myself and tried to explain why the OPs son’s behaviour (that she herself explained) might have caused the girl who walked the long way round to do so, I and another poster with similar sensory problems were called disgusting and told we needed counselling for our “disablism”.

Jelly, there’s a very good book called Neurotribes which contains a lot of current and historic material about how people with SN, specifically ASDs, were treated and regarded.
Horrifying in parts but eye opening. Hard to read as a parent but I recommend it to you.

What troubles me is the suspicion that what underlies this view is an assumption that there’s a reasonableness to less favourable treatment of disabled people that almost, a little bit, kind of, makes it justified, which clearly isn’t present in the case of racial prejudice.

That’s not at all where I’m coming from, you’ve possibly missed the part where I explain both my children have additional support needs so no, disability discrimination isn’t more acceptable than racism. History tells it’s own tale though about the treatment of people of colour through the ages and to describe to two forms of discrimination as the same feels minimising of the historic and generation act of racism.

And yes people with disabilities were among the first victims of the holocaust, but the primary aim of the holocaust was to wipe out the Jewish race.

And the inhumane treatment of disabled people isn’t just historical. Look at the covert videos that have come out of nursing homes for people with SN. It’s heartbreaking to see the way some people are prepared to behave towards another person who frustrates them, or who takes more of their time than they feel they have. I want those people imprisoned for a long time.

www.abclawcenters.com/blog/2018/11/06/involuntary-sterilization-of-disabled-americans-an-historical-overview/

www.hmd.org.uk/learn-about-the-holocaust-and-genocides/nazi-persecution/disabled-people/

For example.

How is it minimising racism to establish parallels between it and disablism though? There are surely assumptions about relative importance and seriousness underlying that statement. I do find those profoundly troubling. Whether you have kids with SN or not is not relevant.

And yes people with disabilities were among the first victims of the holocaust, but the primary aim of the holocaust was to wipe out the Jewish race

Well I’m sure all the Useless Eaters herded into gassing vans were relieved to know that killing them was only a minor aim of the Nazis.

I’m with you completely, gingerginger2. Politeness and superficial “tolerance” are not the same as empathy and understanding.

What a thoroughly depressing thread, all this talk about being “uncomfortable” around children with additional needs.

I’m not going to play “oppression olympics” or derail the thread any further. I don’t think the comparison between race and disability in this situation is cogent and I’m not in any way intending to minimise the mistreatment of disabled people by saying I think they’re different sides of the same coin.

Mrs Ripley

Neurotypical (NT) not displaying or characterized by autistic or other neurologically atypical patterns of thought or behaviour.

Atypical/neurodiverse is the opposite
Neurodiversity is a concept where neurological differences are to be recognized and respected as any other human variation. These differences can include those labeled with Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Dyscalculia, Autistic Spectrum, Tourette Syndrome, and others.

Ignorami (!) will still use 'normal' for neurotypical - the reason neurotypical is more appropriate is because the implication otherwise would be that DC with SN are abnormal

Yep, ds has autism and a similar lack of self awareness. Since he was about 3 I've noticed some of his peers take that patronising 'grownupy' tone with him. To be fair they're just little kids as well and doing their best with a child they find baffling (and who is known to lash out as many with ASD do). Still hurts me though, even though ds is 0retty oblivious.

So far as the holocaust is concerned, both Jews and people with disabilities and others fitted in to the nazis perverse world view as people who were sub human and threatened racial purity.