Parties and Special Needs children

[titchy]

This is probably going to sound awful but I'm feeling rather cross with a fellow parent. DD had her 5th birthday party at the weekend and invited one of the children in her class, a little boy with Down's syndrome. No problem there at all. However the boys parents just left him. Although I have absolutely no experieice of Downs syndrome children I would not say he is a high functioning little boy - he barely has any speech and didn't really join in. (He is also one of the youngest in the class which of course doesn't help).

Basically I had a soft play area full of 25 very exitable 4 and 5 years olds and dh or myself basically had to spend most of the time looking after this little boy who kept either making a run for it, trying to open dd's presents or crying for 'Dada', or just sitting on the floor crying for no aparent reason. Fortuntalely a couple of close friends stayed, as did two other parents whose children were a bit clingy so they could help with getting the food ready, party games, rubbing bruised heads better etc.

when the little boys parents came to pick him up they said 'Oh how's he been?' 'Oh fine' I said, cos you do don't you.

However I'm still feeling a little bit annoyed (also cos we just didn't have the time to video the party as well) and wondering whether I should say something. I shoudl add that basically the boy was fine, although I'm not sure he really enjoyed it, he was quite comfortable with other adults (i.e. me!) looking after him, but I really think for the sake of the host's parents if a child has particular needs the parent should stay, it's hard enuogh trying to run a party!

So shoudl I say anything? And also, in general if a child has been a brat at a party should one say so when the parents come?

My view is that if any child, whether or not he/she has special needs, is left on their own at your party and is clearly in distress, you should tell their parents when they come back to collect them. Otherwise they may genuinely not realise, and leave their child at someone else's party on the basis that he/she was okay at yours!

I am really offended by this post tbh

did his behaviour have anything to do with being ds? maybe he just missed his dad and nobody would play with him

I would have said something to the parents. The fact he has DS is irrelevant though.

I would have said he was crying and needed a lot of comforting. I don't think this necessarily has anything to do with DS. My stepdaughter who has no special needs would often be tearful and clingy at parties at six, and if that was the case we wouldn't leave her.

i would have said something too - it doesnt have to be nasty - you can do these things in a nice way and sometimes the child tells their parents anyway that they didnt enjoy the party, they were crying etc

Santa - Sorry didn;t mean ot offend anyone. It wasn;t the little boy I was cross with - it was his parents for not having the courtesy to realise that parties are hard enough to manage without one child having to have one to one attention. Surely it;s just courteous if you know your child will need a lot of attention that you stay rather than leave it up to the hist parent who already have over 20 other children to look after.

Dinosaur - he wasn't really in distress, only when I tried to bring him back into the party room.

I agree that the fact that this little one had DS is a red herring. Sorry, should have said that in my first post Fio2.

It was the reference to him sitting on the floor crying for no apparent reason that made me think he must have been in distress.

I'm surprised that with 25 4-5 year olds you didn't have more children crying, trying to make a run for it or asking for their parents. Maybe next time you have a party you should arrange for more parents to stay and help.

I would mention to the childs parents that he wasn't very happy though, otherwise they wont know and will leave him again.

titchy, in defence of the parents, they may have been reluctant to stay if other parents weren't staying, because they may not have wanted their son to feel like he was the only one whose parents were staying iyswim

I have this dilemma with DS1 (high functioning autism) although tbh he doesn't get all that many party invites. He doesn't really want me to stay, but he does need more help than most five year olds with e,g the toilet.

Gosh so many replies already.

I agree that the fact that he has ds was not really relevant the way I worded it. I think when I mentioned that I meant to say that developmentally/communicatively he seemed to be similar to a 2 or 3 year old, and you wouldn't leave a 2 or 3 year old at a party would you?

Also the parents of the children that were clingy stayed, so why didn;t this boys parents?

dont want to start an argument but maybe he is normally ok at parties, im sure they wouldnt have left him if he needed one to one. maybe he wasnt feeling well or something else.

I'm afraid to say it's part of having a party if i'm being honest. I was exhausted by the time my sons had finished. No parents stayed, i made sure i had adequate help. There was one child hiding under the table all the time sulking because he hadn't won anything, one deciding the bouncy castle was a good place to bounce on peoples heads. All children will be different and you cant expect to have a party and that not be the case. If you want parents to stay, put it on the invite.

I don't know why they didn't stay. Personally, I would say that the child had seemed quite unhappy, and that would be the limit of my responsibility. We all know kids can vary in how they react to situations. Maybe he's normally really happy at parties. Maybe he's not been to any and they thought he would be OK. Who knows.

I dont tend to leave my daughter (who has SN) at parties on her own, not that she gets invited to many but i dont see why just because our kids have special needs we should stay. Do you want naughty kids parents to stay too? Some of us just want our kids to feel 'Normal', not different.

Incidentally the last party we went to was that of a boy with down syndrome and most the kids invited had special needs and not all the parents stayed

why onearth do children with sn not get invited to many parties? how sad for them

most probabkly because parents dont want to have to 'look after' them for us

i havent met many sn children,just a wee ds boy and he was great fun. wouldnt mind him at my party! (sorry to hijack thread)

Fairyfly - I had enough adult help - 4 adults in all I knew would be there which would have been fine had I not spent most of the time with justone child.

Santafio2 - I didn't want to treat this child any differently by asking his parents tostay, alhtough I just assumed that they would, and didn't want all the parents to stay as I had enough adults there already. And yes I would like it if the parents of the 'naughty' children stayed - one did just that as she knows how disruptive her son can be (when he's not clinging to her).

In the end I had 2 extra mums so it was fine.

I agree it is a shame that sn kids don't tend to get invited to parties, but a lot of it is ignorance on the part of the parents - they're not sure how to deal with their needs and already have enough to do just looking after all the other kids without the added pressure of needing to spend a lot of time with one particular child. Maybe if parents of sn children let other parent know that they would stay at the party they might get more invites. Personally at all the parties I've been to there have always been severla parents who did stay, either becasue their children wanted them to, or becasue they were family friends, and one of my friend's dds is nearly 8 and her mum always goes to parties with her (actually I think she needs to let go but that's another story), so I don't necessarily think children will feel 'different' just because Mum or Dad stays at a party.

I'll have a word with the mum when Isee her later this week and just ask how he was as he seemed to be a boit overwhelmed by it all. I hope that doesn't offend her.

But how would we go about telling other parents that we would stay?

"I hear little Johnny/Jane is having a party. I notice that my ds1 hasn't been invited again. I just thought I'd let you know that if you change your mind I will stay with him so he doesn't cause any trouble?"

No party is worth grovelling for IMHO. I'd rather ds1 didn't go at all than go because he's been grudgingly invited by someone who doesn't really want him there (for whatever reason) but now feels obliged to ask him in case they are accused of being un-PC.

always have kids with SN at my dd's parties. dd1 last party, mieows kdis were there and we also invited a girl from her nursery who has GDD and epilepsy. unfortuntly the other little girl was ill the day of the party but we took her a party bag into nursery later on during the week. dd1 learnt some makaton from her as well. they would've been going to teh same school as well but luckily for the other little girl they finally got her statement sorted and they got her into the local special school, which her mum was a lot happier about.

mh well I would always stay (but then dd2 with DS is only 3 and not very steady on her feet or with a cup, still in nappies etc). I don't think it's fair to leave when the child does have quite a lot of extra needs and no way of communicating with strangers. At dd1's 5th b'day party was a little boy from her class who hated loud noises and excitement, as his mum cheerfully told me before sauntering off. He spent the entire party sucking his thumb perched on my MIL's knee - luckily had plenty of helpers but it would have been very hard for me and the little lad had there not been many adults around.

Just kind of vaguely reading through the replies, but I'm a mother who stays if I feel uneasy. My son has food allergies and it's just been recently (last year age 5 1/2) that I let him go to a party on his own and that was with a good friend of mine who understood what to do if something happened. Yeah, I do want him to feel normal, but I'm not going to force it on him he'd have been terrified to go to a party and be in charge of his needs (ie carrying his EpiPen, basically). He always asks about the food and remembers his previous reactions.

Any mother who leaves a child at party she knows they won't enjoy is just a pathetic user of free childcare. It doesn't sound like that happened. You should tell people if their kids didn't handle the party well -- how else will they know? My son is the king of "ok" as the answer to everything. Maybe the parents didn't know. "Oh fine" is a favourable response.. why didn't you tell them the truth? And it does sound like you're complaining about a child being clingy, which happens to many kids, most of whom don't have DS.

I'm glad opinion seems to be in favour of giving a fair idea to parents of how children have behaved since I always do this and thought I was about to find out I'm the bitch-from-hell

If a child had been clingy, I'd mention it, just as I would if he/she had been a handful or had behaved impeccably, etc.