Do your DCs have any school friends with special needs?

[Knickname]

My DS (3 years) started pre-school 6 months ago. Without going into detail, he has mobility issues and is non-verbal. He is therefore unable to tell me whether he has a favourite classmate etc.

Three times in the past 6 months he has been invited to playdates (with different children). However, when we are there, the host DC ignores my DS. Reciprocal invitations have been turned down with weak excuses.

Now I might just be being paranoid but I'm starting to wonder if it's because of DSs learning difficulties. Would other children think he's weird because he can't run, jump, ride a bike, talk?? Do you think he is going to struggle to make friends at school? He is such a gentle-natured boy, it breaks my heart to see him play on his own all the time.

My dd has a friend with sn, they are 4, and although there are obvious facial deformity, hearing aid, stomach button etc, she just thinks it is part of everyone being different, I have asked her if she notices anything about him but she genuinely can't.

I also had a hard te explaining what disabled meant when we were reading the bus signs, as she was just saying "everyone is differently abled, but they have same smile'

At 3 they generally play alongside each other rather than 'with' each other. My DD1 has gone off to her room before on her own when a 'friend' has come over to play . At 5 she is just starting to play properly with friends. So, in itself, i don;t think that is an issue.

Having said that i think (unfortunately) he may find it harder to make friends than others (although that may be the case for a shy or studious child equally).

My friends DS has ADHD and some other parents do find it overwhelming to ask him over for playdates. However he has some very good close friends and i don't think it has ever become an issue for him. DD1 has a girl with pretty severe autism in her class - she came to DD1's party and had a great time and hopefully she will come to play with us soon, although she attends another setting too, so we don't see her every day and this may too affect the time she has to develop friendships.

I wish your DS all the best, he sounds lovely

I think when kids are 3, it is completely normal for the "host" child to ignore his guest and vice versa. It does not necessarily have anything to do with having SN. In fact, the ignoring can go on until the kids are about 6 if they are feeling tired or stressed. IMO it's been a good playdate when the kids 1) actually play with each other and 2) don't fight.

My dd (y3) is very good friends with a child on the autistic spectrum.

I've recently been talking to some parents of children with disabilities about the issues their kids have faced at school. One of the difficulties highlighted was that kids with disabilities are sometimes excluded from playdates, not because their classmates don't like them, but because their classmates parents can be unsure about how much support they would need if they came back to play. It tended to be easier not to invite them. One way around this that has worked well in our school was for the parents of a disabled child to send a "round robin" to all the parents of kids in their year, explaining the disability and being really explicit about what kind of issues might arise if the child came on playdates but also explaining how these could be dealt with. Apparently it was a very successful strategy. Another parent of a disabled child held a kind of open house evening when she invited parents to her house and explained all the issues to them. Again, apparently this was very successful.

My ds' aunty (my sil) has cerebral palsy and probably has a mental age of about 4/5 and ds (aged 6) loves to play with her but he's been brought up with her so he just thinks she's normal as that's how she's always been, we just told him she's slow to learn so needs a bit more help.

Ds2 isn't too sure about her yet as she can talk very loud but he hasn't spent much time with her.

My dd is in Y1, and good friends with a little boy who has SN. He is statemented and gets almost FT support. Actually, it's not just my dd, it's all the children in that class. They are very fond of him (and protective of him in the playground, where he sometimes gets a rougher ride from older kids).

I must admit this rather surprised me, since I think in my schooldays he would have been bullied - he looks different, acts different, his family is very different. And of course it may not last. But right now it is really heartwarming to see.