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?

If you are reading this, wondering what you can do to encourage your kids to be more inclusive then , perhaps myself and others can say things that’ll help us? Bearing in mind all SN kids/families are different.

1- tell your kids it’s ok to ask! It’s fine! If my kids are doing something that you find weird or don’t like, them it’s ok to ask me or them why and to ask us for help to figure out how to get past it. Good example was the poster earlier up the thread who’s son had an austitic friend John whose hugs were a bit much. So they came up with a hug scale of 1-10 and began to teach John to hug appropriately depending on someone else’s feelings. My gosh it would help SO MUCH if my children’s Peers were involved in designing and reinforcing strategies to improve my chikdren’s Social skills!!!!! Instead of me just always repeating the same stuff to them over and over. They might even learn quicker if they had a group of friends helping them. So instead of avoiding my kids because they talk to loud/stand to close , their peers help them to learn not to! In a fun supportive way. That would be great

This is a hard thread to read. The parents who get it, get it and the parents of the children who don't struggle portray what happens in the real world. Inclusion doesn't exist in society. 'Kindness' and move along to the people you actually want to spend time with does.

My son is totally alone. He's never known friendship, being included, having someone want to spend time with him or find something he says interesting. He knows himself to be 'weird, not normal, strange, unlikable, no friends, alone, lonely' - these are terms he matter of factly uses about himself because he sees and hears what people say and think about him. He sees the sniggers, the eye rolls, the active cutting out of groups by people turning their backs, children running away from him etc'. He regularly talks of suicide and there is a reason why there is such a high rate of suicide within the autism population. Because they feel there is no place in the world for them. That they are wrong.

My son is only 8. Autistic and profoundly gifted. I've had to teach him that being alone is better. That people aren't nice and prepare him for a life of solitude but that is his reality. It's better that he knows the truth about society than spends his time feeling like his failing at the real world By never being included. Sadly, his mental health has improved because of this approach. This thread confirms my view.

I think it’s easy to forget that a lot of NT children also struggle socially. They may not have a diagnosed reason for finding social interaction difficult but nonetheless they do. For these children, it’s asking quite a lot of them to make sure they include everyone, or to notice if another child is lonely and go and chat to them. They are finding it hard enough trying to navigate playtime themselves, without being given the added responsibility of looking out for others who may be finding it even harder.

For children who are naturally sociable and make friends easily, I agree they should be encouraged to throw their friendship net as widely as possible. But I genuinely think those DC are the minority.

sunshinedaisydo and a hug for you and your boy x

When you read some of the replies on here from grown adults you can see why other children can be so intolerant and not inclusive or accepting of differences.

Absolutely butterfly, it’s passed on and the child knows no difference.

Okay OP I understand what you are saying now. You are basically saying teach your kids that they have to make more effort to be friends with SN kids.
I will talk to my DH about how we can do this. Being completely honest, my social skills are not as good as they could be and DH has taught me a lot about social skills. I wouldn't have made the extra effort as a child because I found it hard to make friends myself. My DP has excellent social skills and already makes the extra effort himself with adults with SN.

This thread has made me so sad.

The exclusionary attitudes displayed here explain why I am treated differently and excluded by most other parents.

They explain why my disabled son knows no-one in our village and why his non-disabled sibling is often excluded too.

She gets it. She sees the soul and personality in everyone. She includes everyone and is first to speak in makaton when a non verbal friend needs help or to play the same game over and over with a friend with LDs. And has been excluded by others as a result.

WTF is wrong with people.

sunshine, your son sounds so much like my brother. I’m so sorry that your DS has to face the same exclusion and cruelty that made my brother’s childhood such a nightmare. I truly hoped that we as a society had evolved in terms of understanding and inclusiveness. But this thread is yet another indication that very little has changed.

for you and your son.

so Sorry sunshine x but not surprised.

I’m a bit of an extrovert and I often wonder whether I inadvertently put too much importance on relationships and should just ignore it and teach my children to be self reliant and ignore other people. Trouble is they seem to be extroverts too, craving conversation and contact

Just to say that’s it very true that’s it’s important to teach children about boundaries and staying safe and also that navigating social relationships is a skill which it takes a long time to master.

It does seem to me though that encouraging inclusivity/being a good classmate could very much be part of this. It could show how you can let people into your life on a step-by-step-step basis, seeing how it goes and deciding to take it further if progress is good. Which is a lot more in line with maintaining safe boundaries than simply deciding to be friends with someone because you like them/they are popular.

If the choice of how a child views someone is between “someone to whom I am polite to from a detached distance” and “someone I am friends with” there is not much room for nuance or personal/social growth there.

It could be healthy to teach that there may be gradual stages of getting to know someone on the way to being a friend (where some trust is extended in stages over time), that there are people who you see regularly and have some connection with who aren’t ever really going to be friends and also that even in long established friendships there are different levels, types and areas of trust which vary according to the person, to your shared history and the external circumstances.

So encouraging inclusiveness and teaching safe boundaries could very much be part of the same landscape in trying to learn/teach how to navigate social relationships over the course of a lifetime.

I think that if children were naturally doing this, the OP wouldn’t be posting.

They are. As PP have noted, til the adults get in the way.

Yes jennymara, you have to actively include. It’s not enough just to passively tolerate and be polite. You need to genuinely actively engage with people, learn a little about them, teach them a little about you. Find common ground. Then if a friendship flourishes, great! If it doesn’t, then no biggie, but a foundation of mutual connection and understanding had been made regardless.

I haven't RTFT because it's so long, but I do understand what you're saying. DD and DS are both neurotypical and they instinctively have a way of reaching out to other children who don't have anyone to play with/are having a hard time for whatever reason. DS is esp. good at this and his teachers have noted it. I honestly don't know why and, I don't take any credit for it!

But it can be challenging. One of DD's friends with SEN just wouldn't stop touching her and stroking her hair. DD (14) kept asking her to stop but it didn't work and the friendship waned. In hindsight, perhaps we should've spoken to a teacher and asked the parents to help with this behaviour. DD just couldn't cope with it.

DS (11) likewise has one friend who is definitely part of the friendship group, but it's difficult for 10/11 year-old boys to understand why this boy sometimes talks to himself and some other behaviours.

As PP's have said, you can't force friendships and I think it needs to be a combination of open-mindedness on both sides and also an understanding that some behaviour is too much - that's where the parents/teachers come in.

Yes, just ask if something is difficult. Teaching folk with SN boundaries and social skills is really important and really difficult. You need to be creative, consistent, kind. The more people to reinforce these strategies the better. If a classmate with SN is doing something your child struggles with, then talk to the teacher, talk to the parent and the child and your child and try to figure out as a supportive society strategies to support and teach. Why should it be left to the families in isolation, excluded by others, to do all this work? Society teaches NT children, why can’t it also teach SN children?

To be honest, I don’t know if children are natrually inclusive. In my experience the majority haven’t been. Some have been more than others. That hasn’t alwYs correlated with their parents. I’m not sure I know a simple answer.

I don't think children or adults are naturally inclusive beyond a certain very young age. I remember reading research about how white kids tend to play with white kids, black kids with black kids and asian kids with asian kids, even if they attend a very diverse school.

My dds invited friends to their party including twins (my dds are twins too) and one was friends with the girl twin but not especially the boy. My two were 5 and at that age I felt it was much kinder to invite both twins and dds were happy to. The boy twin has severe learning disabilities including autism. He's also the smiliest little boy ever. Anyway, the df brought the twins to my DD's party. They arrived first and df approached dh as we were setting up with tears in his eyes, and thanked dh for including dts. That was the moment I realised the difference having sn makes re birthday parties.

I'm not stupid but it wasn't something on my radar. It really shocked me. It was the first party in a year this little boy had been invited to. I'm regularly shocked by judgy parents on the playground though - I think my expectations are high.

I think the fact you say you are extroverted sort of explains why you can't understand why people are defending their children's right to struggle with this. As a few others have said, a lot of NT children also struggle with social interactions, but you are acting like it is always easy for them to "work harder" to "challenge" themselves, when for a lot, having the courage to talk to somebody in the first place is hard enough, let alone keep trying if that person makes them uncomfortable.

That is why people have focused so much on things like invasion of personal space or getting easily angered, because as much as we can say those things have been caused by the child's SN, behaviour like that can be too scary for some children regardless of the cause, even NT children who just don't happen to be extroverted.

Bullying is entirely different, but expecting a child to not feel intimidated by certain behaviours (that happen to be caused by SN but that can feel threatening nonetheless) because you wouldn't be is asking a little too much of shy young children to me.

Society teaches NT children, why can’t it also teach SN children?

Actually I think our society is not very good at teaching any children social skills - NT or not. They generally seem to learn social skills through a “survival of the fittest” regime in the playground. If we taught social skills to all children, and supervised their playtimes more thoroughly and intervened more, we might end up with a nicer society.

I think teaching social skills would be positive. I would love someone to write a book with practical exercises about this.

Yes fair enough AE18, I take your point that some kids may be introverts . And others maybe struggling in other ways, have other problems that they are carrying too.

But it doesn’t explain the sheer relentlessness of the exclusion that myself and others have described does it?

OP which country are you in?

Why do you keep saying "folks"? I'm sorry, I know it sounds like a derail but it makes everything else sound fake...

Scotland. I just say folks, not sure why. Grew up in England, lived in Birmingham for a while. Sorry, no one has ever noticed or questioned me on it before

The OP is in Scotland. It says so right in the very first sentence. I can’t believe anyone would suggest there is anything fake about this thread.