Tips for explaining SENS to toddler

[Scottishskifun]

Anyone have any tips for explaining SENS to a 3 year old?
If you have a SENS child what would have helped?
My DS has a friend we love spending time with and Im friends with his mum, he's particular about certain toys which is completely understandable. Before we just distracted DS with something else but DS has started saying X isn't nice because they won't share or let me play with trains.

I want to try to explain to him that sharing is good but for his friend that's trickier.

X's communication is also under speech therapy to develop it and DS has also picked up on this so want to gently explain. We have tried everyone is unique and some are better at different things.

Finding it a bit of a minefield and don't want to upset DS, his friend or my friend.
Any tips would be amazing!

I would find the ‘poorly brain’ comment offensive however.

@ineedsun its actually much more inclusive to speak to children about how they are the same as neurotypical children so that they can see that they aren’t some kind of ‘other’ and not reiterate how different they are. So saying that they are all learning makes us all the same.

Everyone is always learning whether they are SEN or not. Hopefully you will have learnt today that you can upset parents with disabled children for only seeing their differences and writing them off as not learning.

I am a parent of a child (verging on an adult) with SEND, which is why I’m commenting. What I’ve suggested is totally the opposite of ‘othering’ it’s acknowledging that we all have different strengths and things we’re not so good at regardless of whether you’re neurotypical or neurodivergent.

‘Still learning’ focusses on the child’s deficits rather than diversity in my view. There’s enough focus on that at school.

@User89174648495, so I can see now where you've got this from. That poster (who you have chosen not to name, so I won't either) didn't say anything further, but did say that they were trying to find ways to explain why their child saw things that were different to other children.
I'm actually struggling to see why you're so offended, so I hope you'll enlighten me.

My son is 3 years 4 months and autistic, non verbal. Honestly this is why I don't tend to hang around with NT kids at this age. They just aren't compatible with my son on a 1:1 type basis. He doesn't want to play in the same way as them, he ignores them, it's not feisable.

I would ask the other parent as this could be a very personal thing, how she wants her child described.

For me I say... Little X is still learning so for the moment he likes to do things this way, but you show me how you do it.

My son can't interact with other kids his age yet.

The superhero brain book might help.

I suppose I see things differently to the poster above in that I believe true inclusion is about acknowledging differences and accepting people as they are as opposed to glossing over them and trying to focus too much on similarities. Honestly the relief on my son’s face when it was explained to him exactly why he couldn’t do things in the same way others do was a real eye opener for me. When he was first diagnosed I was desperately trying to pretend to myself that he was no different but in doing so I was doing him a disservice - he needed to have his differences acknowledged and have adjustments made for him in daily life by us and others in order to be his best self. We are several years down the road now and he has many friends who do accept him for himself and appreciate his strengths - and his quirks.

Apologies OP for derailing your thread!

This whole thread basics goes back to my first point that people perceive and feel differently about their children’s disabilities, and language is very important to them.

Personally, I would be outraged if someone described my daughter’s brain as poorly, but I wouldn’t be in the slightest be upset If someone said she learns differently / more slowly / we need to help her learn. I don’t know why because they do essentially all say the same thing. I’m happy for my daughter to understand that she has a learning disability but I don’t think she would have the capacity to do that. Other people don’t want their children labelled and don’t talk to them about it. Who knows what is right.

I do believe my daughter is still learning and I hope one day she will stop kicking and hitting and screaming, I hope that her siblings will, in time help show her how to behave, so this is what I try and go with.

Which brings me back to my original point that if you’re really worried about offending your friend just talk to her about it and see what she feels most comfortable with. Honestly, it’s a very tricky path to navigate and I’d ask the parent as this tread shows you can totally shock and upset people without any intention as previous poster have done.

@vipersnest1 i don’t know why I found it upsetting but I did. I just felt very uncomfortable with the analogy.

Thank you I will definitely speak to his mum as I don't want to upset her. We have playdates as we like spending time with them but I also want to support my friend she's had a rough year struggling to get diagnosis and support for X.

We will keep it simple along learning lines thank you all for your insights it is indeed a minefield I generally find children to be more accepting of most things as long as it's explained in the right way (hence the thread) far better then adults.

We have known x since a few weeks old and he's awesome and he does interact with DS on his terms (same as any toddler to some degree) will want to be on a slide together etc. I watch for x's ques for when he's had enough and we wrap it up as my friend can be too polite to ask us to finish and I don't want to cause her stress if it's been an overload for him.

Will definitely check out that book too!

I do want DS to learn to be inclusive and feel its important for us to teach him and know that's different for everyone regardless.

I would take issue with anyone who described my DC's brain as poorly, because it's not. What an odd thing to say.

Having an autism diagnosis and a development delay just means DC's brain works differently to a DC their age without additional needs. It shouldn't mark my DC out as other at all. My explanations work perfectly well for my other DC (and any other DC we come across), which is good for me.

I've not explicitly told my older DC the younger DC's exact diagnoses, as to me it is their medical information which they can divulge (or not) to anyone they like when they are older.