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?

OP
Whilst i understand your point and your genuine pain , this post isn’t helping
As you are taking your anger for school parents out on a population who have an unusually high understanding of the issue

And I get it . And I do teach my children this is really do

Sorry it’s been a shit start to term

I'm so sorry, it sounds heart breaking. I always try and teach mine to be inclusive but they don't like people in their personal space at all, if someone was making my children uncomfortable I'd encourage them to politely excuse themselves. I don't really know what to suggest as children don't have the level of empathy and understanding (some) adults do. I'm sorry, I hope things get better.

And my children will choose theirs.

Which is fine, but earlier you were saying liking someone and spontaneous friendship wasn’t a choice.

I get you op. One absolute bitch of a mother looked in horror at my DD talking to her DC and hurried her along. My DD is the sweetest, nicest little girl you could ever meet...did she think her precious child would catch my dds sn by talking to her? Sadly, as I have to do the school run for several more years, I can't tell this bitch to go fuck herself, so I plaster on my smile for my dds sake... because having sn AND a mum who tells other parents to go fuck themselves might be too much!

TheBigBallOfOil

I am happy to encourage my child to be kind and tolerant. The rest is up to them. If they said to me, “Mum, I asked X to play football with us but he didn’t want to. He wanted me to have a game of chess. But I wanted to play football so I didn’t,” then I am happy.

This is a heartbreaking read, OP. I really feel for you. I have to say that’s I can’t pick my children’s friends - that is heir free choice. I do always teach them to be kind to everyone though. The little girl who was polite but walked a different route because she felt more comfortable doing so didn’t do anything wrong! Everyone has the right to feel comfortable and not have their personal boundaries ignored. As parents we should be making effort to create opportunities for all children to mix and accept each other. Friendships can’t be manufactured though.

Which is fine, but earlier you were saying liking someone and spontaneous friendship wasn’t a choice

It isn’t. You either like someone or you don’t. You can choose to be friends with someone whether you like them or you don’t.

I agree. You can not force friendships on children. Children are young, they themselves are still leaning. To say that they should explain something differently if a child does not understand, or include a child in a game when they may not follow the rules etc, is putting an adult perspective onto a child. Yes as adults we can see that this is how it should work etc . But children are just leaning themselves, without being expected to know what another child’s behaviour is, why they behave in that why, and how they as a child should deal with it.

Unfortunately you will end up, forcing a child into others, who will become impatient and not want to be around them.

What’s the solution? I.Do.Not.Know. I honestly have no idea. But having taught in a mainstream school, and had plenty of experience in special schools (and this happens there too!) along with NT children myself, I can say there is no simple solution, because I’ve seen so many ‘solutions’ been implemented and failed. It’s like the million dollar question.

So, that’s a big backtrack right there, Hercule. Previously it was Pontius Pilate. I take from that that the thought experiment was effective. That’s good. Hope it influences you IRL.

I think that sometimes forcing a child to play with another can actually cause resentment towards that child which is the opposite of what you want.

Interesting post, but I wonder how parents could make their DC want to actually connect with «different» children and not just be kind and polite. OP you say they should challenge themselves but how do you think parents could achieve it, considering most social interactions happen at school? Genuinely asking :)

I think it's to do with the individual child's personality as well- one of DS's best friends from nursery was a little boy who was non verbal, it just wasn't particularly relevant to my kid. However, he's very comfortable in his own skin and very open with anything new or unusual so it helps- I certainly wasn't like that as a child.

I wish I had the answer to this as I experienced it in primary school with my dyspraxia/ASD, I also see it in my cub group and we do everything to encourage the children to be inclusive. The children are all very polite and bullying wouldn’t be tolerated but they often find it difficult to accept the differences of others, especially when it comes to speed games. Once they are of Scout age they seem to change.

I take from that that the thought experiment was effective. That’s good. Hope it influences you IRL.

No, I don’t think it will. What I said doesn’t contradict what I said before. I said I will encourage kindness. An invitation to play is kind. What I won’t do is force my child to continue to engage when they feel uncomfortable, or to be friends when they don’t feel genuine feelings of friendship.

I really do feel for op and I would love to live in an ideal world where everything is happy. My dd is in a group of 4 girls who have been to pre school and now going into year 2 primary school together. These girls are solid as a rock, one of the girls has sen and the others help change for PE and help to try to understand social boundaries like no hitting, hugging. And generally get on really well.

My dd has come home with scratches, bruises and strangulation Mark's around her neck. She was too frightened to tell anyone it was her friend as she knows her friend 'doesn't understand'. That broke my heart to see her cry firstly because she was hurt and secondary she didn't want her friend to get into trouble. I went to see the teacher who asked if i wanted the friend to be kept away from dd, I said no that's not fair and no one will learn. So they came up with plan to handle the situation which has worked.

But dd is also helping her friend so much she has almost become her fulltime school carer. That's not fair, I want my dd to have a childhood and not have to feel so responsible for others all the time.

So op as you want the best for your children please dont expect so much from other children. They are children they dont need responsibilities. I do agree about parties but I only ever throw parties the whole class can go to, which means she has only ever had 2. I also think school plays apart in ensuring everyone is included.

This is a timely reminder. My ds is very good at this, my dd not so much (though is quite tactful so would be like the girl who excused herself politely). I will be reinforcing the message every chance I get. There is always something to find in common with someone without necessarily “forcing” a friendship.

I know there are no easy answers, but the answer can’t possibly be “my kids are ok, so the rest can find friends like them in special needs projects”. I do think the idea that tolerance is a good thing has really damaged our capacity for empathy and understanding of others and our ability to find common ground with people.

How old are your children, op? Your post suggests they’ve just started school, with it’s references to the other kids not being interested in “getting to know” them?

Oh and another boy he liked was being assessed at nursery for additional needs and was later withdrawn completely much to my kid's sadness.

Yes, it is true. It’s absolutely true, it’s just an uncomfortable truth for those who don’t have to (or want to) deal with it

Of course it's not true. Children are not more or less disabled because of how the kids in the playground are.

hercule how likely is it that your son would ask? My DS has social difficulties and is incredibly sad that he has very few (like one) actual friend at school. I actually can see the playground and I watch the alpha male boys all at one end exclude and say no to my son when he asks to play.. Which actually he doesn't do any more, so I watch him wandering about alone at the far end not knowing what to do with himself. If his one friend (who is liked by everyone) is playing with someone else, he has now lost the confidence he once had to ask to join in. I love the idea of 'no child left behind'. He's 10 now so it's more difficult to implement friendship benches etc but I totally get what the OP means.

My sons school teaches inclusion from primary 1. It’s the schools moto and they have gone as far as to have the national autistic society volunteers come in and talk to parents and kids. My son has autism and adhd but over 25 percent of the kids in the school have additional needs so generally we are incredibly lucky that ds hasn’t encountered this.

However adults shock me with there misconceptions about autism comments such as so he can’t talk then...actually his language skills are and have always been well above average. He could speak in full clear sentences at 14 months.

It’s very sad though that parents can teach there kids that everyone is different so accept and include others.

So in the situation I suggested, hercule, you wouldn’t encourage your child to reach out to the excluded one and try and include them? Or you would?

School is a hard place to be for many kids imo. Anyone a bit different is going to feel it. It is rare to find a school enviroment where difference is truly accepted and even celebrated. DS1 has no SN but is still different from most of the other boys in his class and always has been. He is brilliant and funny and clever and interested in lots of things and yet has had almost no opportunity at all to show any of this at school. As a result, his friendships are formed out of school with like-minded kids he meets through other activities, and school is, sadly, a somewhat lonely place. We'll both be very pleased when it's over tbh.

I would always teach children to be kind, but they sound quite young, and young children can be thoughtless without meaning any particular cruelty or slight as they just don't realise. If children are picking up particular social cues about someone that makes them uncomfortable, sometimes they don't even realise that and why they have a preference for one child over another as friends. It takes a lot of skill even for adults to override this and realise they are dealing with someone not NT, so I think it's a lot to ask for young children to get it right. It's a learning process.