Including Autistic Children in Social Activities

[Taz429]

I was horrified to read the recent top blog on here from a mum in floods of tears because her autistic son had been excluded from a local party. How can people get it so wrong in this day and age? My son had a classmate with autism and all the boys would be invited together for my sons birthday parties. I would never have dreamt of excluding "M".
I remember fondly one party where "M" decided that the football the boys were playing with was his and to some amusement of parents tried to stuff it up his jumper. The other boys knew and understood " M" and were fairly patient while we got another ball and "M"s dad talked to him gently. There was a feeling that the boys were protective of "M" as they all grew up together.

How can people get it so wrong in this day and age?

They're human and make mistakes.
There's a huge amount of conflicting information and they don't know what's correct.
They make incorrect assumptions - often based on anecdotal evidence.
They don't know all the children in their DC's class so don't realise until too late that a name has been missed (deliberately or otherwise).

Or they're just inconsiderate

Best case scenario; I think whilst there is a much greater awareness of autism than there was 10 years ago, many people assume that 'autism' presents the same in every case and that a child with autism wouldn't enjoy a party. Rather than considering each personal as an individual; some of the ASD kids I've taught hated parties and it would be truly cruel to "include" them (I tend to go with looking at it from the perspective of 'what does /this/ child want' in situations like that and making the decision in that way.) However many others love parties and it would have been cruel to exclude them.

Worst case; Or they're possibly horrible small minded people.

I haven't read the blog, but IME schools often don't tell children or parents that a classmate is autistic, so they don't know to make allowances. I guess it's up to the individual parent if they want to let other parents know.