9th birthday party

[Lily27]

My son has a physical disability, not severe but still it stops him from paying sports and also he doesn’t have typical boy interests like football. His style is more gentle. He just doesn’t have friends as he goes to a tiny school and there are only 8 boys in his year, they are v physical and he finds it hard. He used to play with the girls but they have moved on into girl groups and he has no friends as a result. His birthday is coming up and for the first time I’m worried he has no one to invite to celebrate with him. What would you do?

Are you able to do a family party or celebration for him?

My ds goes to a specialist school with about 10 per class and in the past I’ve invited them all whether ds is specifically friends with them or not. They all loved soft play so that’s what we did.

Thanks! We can do a family celebration. We will do that but we haven’t got any kids his age in the group. He goes to a mainstream school, group of around 30 in the class.

Parties are hard and stressful. We've managed ok with either inviting one or two kids (might a couple of the girls be interested in pottery painting, an animal experience at the zoo or a trip to the theatre?); or having a family trip somewhere. Does he have a special interest you can leverage here? Plenty of museums do sleepovers for example - if he's into art or history or science or dinosaurs that can be a win. I think it helps to think about celebrating a birthday by making the day feel special rather than necessarily having a party.

Thanks. Agree about the parties. We did pottery painting last year, it went very well. The theatre idea is nice. Sadly he literally doesn’t have a special friend who we can invite :(
It’s a tough situation, he’s a sociable kid but he’s just not part of a social group any more. He’s on his own a lot. I will have to see if I can get a couple of the girls to the theatre to maybe to see Matilda.