Evening all!
I don't want this to be a depressing or disheartening thread, but i've absolutely had enough of the exclusion of SN dc's from parties and general social occasions.
My dd who doesn't have an official diagnosis, but is more than likely somewhere on the autistic spectrum has always struggled to maintain friendships. She's very over the top and dramatic and sometimes finds it hard to separate fantasy and reality- Hence, she'll have a flock of friends for a few weeks or so and then the "novelty" will wear off and they'll back off and move on to someone less quirky. I'm lucky in the sense that my dd isn't in any way severe, but nevertheless, she struggles and I fear the struggling will increase as she gets older. For now though, she does from time to time receive party invites, but no way near the amount of invites as her classmates.
My issue actually isn't so much with how people are treating my dd, but how certain people/parents are treating other children with more severe SN. For example, my dd had her first ever birthday party with friends a few weeks back. She's 5. Most people who were invited came to our delight. There was one boy there who dd is very friendly with(most of the time) and he has down's syndrome and there was also a boy there with severe autism-non verbal. The boy with autism's mother said to me when she left "thank you. This is his first party invite. Nobody would normally invite him, so this means a lot to us". I nearly cried. I just couldn't believe why, in this day and age, would people choose not to invite dc's with SN to their dc's parties. The mother of the boy with down's syndrome also said something very similar when they left. If it were a party where only a select few had been invited, then sobeit. But, i've been to 4 parties now where the whole class is invited apart from these 2 boys!! I know they haven't been invited because i've been told. One mum actually said to me that she felt really guilty not inviting X and Y, but she didn't want any disruptions 
Whereas I understand the point, all small dc's parties are hectic and at points out of control, so this point overall makes no sense to me.
As a parent, I don't see how you can make the decision to invite the whole class apart from 1 or 2, who may or may not cause a few issues. They're not bloody locked in!! There's always a door which they can escape from if they have to. Most parents of SN's children that i've met are very thoughtful and understanding and will always remove their child if they are becoming difficult of disruptive and at a childs birthday of course, I completely understand that this can't happen........it's a very special time afterall. For goodness sake though, don't exclude them!!!
I just can't understand why this kind of prejudice is still happening. Surely you don't need that much intelligence to know that this kind of exclusion is just wrong. Or am I just incredibly bitter?