Should you invite the child with special needs to parties/ playdates??

[mebaasmum]

I have heard of several incidences recently of the one child in the class with additional needs never being invited to parties or playdates even when its a whole class party. It smacks of discrimination to me. To my mind it is the reason why inclusion cant work no matter how inclusive a school is. The school cant make parents be inclusive.
The parents I know whose children have suffered in this way have been very upset.
What do you think?? BTW my son with addional needs is older and past this phase. I was thinking reception/year 1 where views are set and parents /children start making friends

There was one boy in DS1's class who had special needs.

We (and others) would invite him to parties. He would come along with his dad and his dad would stay. He didn't stay for the whole party as it got too much for him but enough to be part of the class.
He left the school but would still have Chritmas parties, Halloween parties and the like that former class mates were invited to as well as his class mates from the special needs school. They all mixed together.

Ishani as I said i dont have an issue with aggressive ds1: indeed I have been battling to get him supervision for years!

however ds3 never hurt a fly and is the sweetest, kindliest child I ever met. Children should be seen for who they are and not as a label.

Elmofan sometimes I think I shouldn't ahve kept my cool, that I colluded. But they will be out of thee in September. Trouble is ds4 has a place in nursery from Sept and has just been referred for ASD assessment; trying to work out if we can afford to drive him to next school on or not.

My daughter has only been in one class with a special needs student. She didn't have a party that year (finances) but if we'd done one it would have been a no brainer. I get irritated with the whole "but they're different!" crap. They're people too, end of.

Could you clarify what you mean by 'there's usually more to it than meets the eye' please Ishani. I understood the rest of your post, but not that comment.

I can understand it better if a parent came to me and said "hi we are planning xx party for little johnny. Do you think it would be something your jimmy could be involved with? what would we need to do? how would it work? would you be able to stay? or do you think it best if we leave him out"

why is it so dificult to ask? Why presume?

They are happy to be so vocal about their disaproval of our children yet they are too scared to speak up and ask for advice

if someone invitred my girls but were concerned by their SN and how to manage, I would certainly stay. SN parents dont all want to dump their kids and run.

Yes, certainly to whole class parties. Though my DD1 was best friends with the only little SN child in her reception/year1/year2 class so he was invited to all her parties, including the smaller/selective ones. Mind you, he was exceptionally cute and endearing!

Reading this just makes me so angry - I can't BELIEVE what crosses some parent's minds! When I was in primary school my parents encouraged me to be friends with and always keep an eye out for an autistic friend who I'd been in preschool with (and who was often taken advantage of by other kids, especially in trading games like Pokemon). My parents were friendly with his parents too, and supported them when other parents wanted him to leave the school after he was 'disruptive' in year 1. In fact, he had shouted that our classroom toilet smelled of poo - which it did and which the rest of us were just too shy to say!

Anyway - we're still in touch and I think it's incredibly important for parents to set an example of inclusion. I would not exclude SN children if it was a class-wide party but I would talk to the parent/s beforehand so that I knew how to best include the SN guests.

No you did the right thing by not causing a scene and therefore upsetting your ds but it must have been horrible for you . I remember picking my ds up from a very rare party he went to only to be told out loud in front of the other mums that ds (6yrs old) had run around all day and she said that she didn't know how i "coped with him" she spread the word that ds was too hyperactive and after that he hardly ever got invited anywhere. Karma had it though she then went on to have a very hyperactive little boy of her own .

I think it's very mean to exclude just one child - can't believe anyone would do this just because a child has sen.

However, there is one little boy in dd's class with behavioural issues (no idea if sen but I think quite likely) and I'm afraid we won't be inviting him this year. I've seen him at a number of other parties and his behaviour is always very challenging - he bit one of dd's other guests last year and she still had a mark weeks later. I think this is a bit much by the age of 5, but the real trouble is that the mother always leaves him unattended so it falls to the host parents to deal with his behaviour. I've heard his mum tell parents to wallop him if he does something naughty, but that's not advice that I could ever follow!

I completely understand that the mum is probably exhausted and in need of a break, but personally I think it's a bit unfair to leave other parents to deal with this sort of issue. Sadly, it's the little boy who willas probably suffer as I doubt that many parents would invite him now.

We aren't inviting the whole class in any case so I don't feel too bad about leaving this particular little boy out.

I always remember a boy in my sisters class. (30years on). He was often dirty, clothes fit for the bin and plasters keeping his specs together. They had a bin to put christmas cards in in the classroom, said cards distributed couple of times a week. He never got a card. My mum was in tears and sent him one from my sis and then several other ones from other pupils, unknown by them!!
Not special needs i know but wasn't his fault that he was as he was.

Well it's easy to say little johnny has been left out because he's sen rather than little johnny has terrorised half the class and that's why nobody wants him over to play, his sen is neither here nor there.
I would be uncomfortable raising the issue with the parents, it's not my place to be socialising somebody elses child so physical disability in the class I would choose venue that had access for the child and was easy fir them to join in of course, but if your child is likely to kick off and ruin my childs party then it's easier just not to invite them and it also makes it easier to not invite any other NT little horrors too so nobody is totally singled out.

But Ishani most of us aprents know whether our children have behavioural issues in class or not.

Heck, we usually quite literally have files of dossiers on it!

So whilst I accept that was why ds1 was rejected, why would ds3 be if not for his SN? (his autism type is even known as passive, he is the opposite of behavioural difficulty!)

My DCs are too young for school yet but I would encourage them to invite everyone to their parties for the first few years. However I think, like others on this thread, the problem arises when the children get a bit older and SEN/SN?EBD become more obvious and children start having 5/6 children for a party or fewer.

I can still remember my mum making me invite the SN girl in my class to my yr2 party, I think she may have had ASD/AS or similar although I either didn't know or it wasn't diagnosed as such then. She came with her mother, like lots of the other children did but she opened about half my presents before I had chance to, kept shouting out very loudly when everyone was singing me happy birthday and then hit me in the face knocking out a tooth (Luckily it was a baby tooth!)

I can remember being so angry that my mum had made me invite this girl and ruined my 'special' day and a rare chance to be the centre of attention!

In reception I will invite all the children in the class to my DCs parties but after that if any children are violent (NT or not) I'm afraid they won't be coming!
That said I would go out of my way to persuade/force my children to invite classmates who are very shy or a bit socially awkward for wont of a better phrase. It's onyl if they are going to hurt other children I'd have to say no.

I don't know Peachy that does seem rotten of the parents not to invite him, I imagine you over compensate and have loads of children over to your house can't think what else you can do to make sure he has a god social life. It must be tough on you.

Well we don;t have children here much becuase of dsq but ds3 is now at a wonderful school and so it doesn;t matter- ds2 struggles a little (has soem dyspraxia but essentially NT) and I am trying to get social services to help me set up a sibling support group in the vullage, will see what happens there.

DS4 was referred last month for assessment, will see where he ends up on the spectrum!

Some aprents are rotten- some people just are, aren;t they, and I do suppose 'prize' state schools naturally attract the most competitive people. TBH though I don't think most people get what a spectrum autism- even SN generally- covers and probably dont understand the variations in terms of behaviour. there will always be some prat coveting the boy's funding but I suspect there are three more who don;t quite understand and dont mean anyhting by it IYSWIM.

I was lucky; I went to a school with a class of Sn kids in and some integration even in the seventies and then I was aplced at an SNu by college: Sn has been part of my life. If it hasn;t then i can see why it's hard to get a grip on dx's and the rest but I would just say to them (in my head!!!) judge the child on their behaviour, not on some DM-fed generalisation about all kids with SEN or whatever.

Because of "ds1@, sorry

And ds2 does cubs too: enormously useful

Peachy that sounds so horrible for your poor DS :( it is reading things like this on MN that make me more aware of things like this, before I probably wouldn't have thought to notice children like your DS3 if that makes sense, they would have just been one of the many other children in DCs class who they weren't particularly friendly with, now I hope to make a special effort.

What I think is... I really don't have a life. I have almost no idea who in DC classes or year have SN, much less if they ever go to parties/playdates. How can people be so sure that "only one child has SN" when many SN are invisible? Or are you lot only talking about "obvious SN"? Either all-class parties are extremely unusual here or my kids are the ones always left out. And having the email addresses of all the other parents in the school year... how does that happen?? I wouldn't give mine out that easily.

But assuming you can know all those kinds of thing, some of the stories here are very :(. I do tend to invite a "wrong" sort of number from the class, maybe 18-20 out of 30 in the class, but then about 6-9 don't come so then we get the party size I actually wanted (12-14). If we only invited "half the class" then we'd struggle to reach the minimum party size that most venues charge you for.

Fyrtyle thank you. I can assure you that ds3 gets a lot of love and care and is thriving happily, though the more people who are in our 'co,munity' and aware the better IMO

I found that quite difficult to deal with as a parent.
There are 2 boys in ds class who have special needs. Each of them have a TA full time, one for health problem, the other for SEN (short attention span as far as I know).

ds has problems of his own which means that he finds it very difficult to go and play with other children (but not SEN). I find it difficult to have to choose between to 'guide' his choice of who is coming to his football party (and include these 2 children) and let him decide who is coming so that he can foster some friendship for himself.
I know he hasn't been invited to some parties because he is very often alone on the playground so I can totally relate to some of the comments above. On the other side, I can also understand his own comments re these 2 kids ('He won't be able to play with us' - the child is in a wheelchair atm and 'He is very naughty' - probably behaviour due to SEN but in my ds eyes, he doesn't want to play with said child).

Saying that, if it was a whole class party, I can't see how you could not invite some of the children (because then it is NOT a whole class birthday party is it?)

Ds wasn't ever invited which hurt greatly tbh. Ironically I would have refused any invitation because it would have been ds's idea of hell anyway but it would have been nice to have had the invite.
In the grand scheme of things though it was nothing compared to the petition to get him removed from the school or the Police visit because a known violent thug had threatened to firebomb the house because the school had thwarted his attempts to get into the school to "teach ds a lesson" after his son got a bruise (it was never established that ds caused the bruise tbh)

ds struggled in ms becuase of his sn , no behaviour issues if anything is more vuneable but becuase of being non verbal and physically not as able .I know parents are worried about well what if he wants to ask for a drink/food/toilet how can I understand him .

But sad thing they only need to mention it and I would explain that I would stay would not expect another person to translate as such for him.

Now at 6 sadly people I cna leavde him with are far and ew because of his speech

I can't even begin to imagine how anyone could invite a whole class and leave a child out - any child, NT or SN

I've only once ever had a whole class party for dd1, and never for dd2, and it was in Reception early on - easy for parents to stay, most did anyway. I can't even remember who was sn and who wasn't, tbh - all I know is that the party was chaos!

Very, very stories on here, and too.

ASD we had the petiotion too, a friend tipped me off and tearfully I asked the teacher and she said in a very looud voice that not only ahd she received no such thing but anyone trying it might consider what it woudl feel like to have hell raining down on them

There are good souls amongst the bad but that was under a week post dx and not a great induction to ASD