Making friends as a mother of a special needs kid
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Anonymous
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Thank you so much for starting this thread. I struggle with this all the time. Most of my friends are parents of SN kids. I have become so much more guarded since my older child was diagnosed with ASD. I thought I would meet people through my younger son, but he also has ASD.
Someone also mentioned that as SN parents we tend to not want to talk about the small stuff. Most of the time, this is very true! I am incredibly thankful for all of my friends, but especially the ones that "get it." |
Anonymous
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Very big hugs op. I feel your pain. I have twins one with sns and one without. The child without disabilities has had a hard time due to bullying of his twin. It has been heartbreaking. We moved when my children were three and what I had the hardest time dealing with adults who were nice, maybe very superficially, to me but treated my children like they had cooties. I would get invited to get togethers or social activities but my children were invisible or treated like they were dirt. Frankly I'm bitter about the way both of my children have been treated by these asshats and my child with sns has mild disabilities and is very well behaved.
I'm sorry I'm not much help. I'm stuck in the place of "most people suck". |
Anonymous
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For the kindergarten & 1st grade brithday kids, that really sucks. However, are you sure it is isn't just that the other kids didn't have parties and not a slight of your child?
I ask because of my two youngest (both typical) one of them had lots of invites in kindergarten, all from boys, but the teacher that year allowed you to send in invites as long as you included all of one gender or the entire class. The next year the teacher required kids to invite the entire class, and our invite was the only one that went out. He also got invited to one other friend's party by evite, but it was a very small group. This year my kindergartners teacher has the invite the whole class rule,and there have been only two parties: my kid's and a girl's princess party at a ballet studio. That is it. None of the kids who showed up for our party invited him or anyone to a birthday party this year. Could that be what happened to your poor little guys as well? That the party invites were stiffled due to the requirement to invite the whole class? In just two years there was a huge difference in the number of invitations my kids received, and the only real difference was the requirement to invite the whole class and not just one gender. I really hope that is what it is and not a direct snub. Kindergartners tend to be so inclusive naturally, even of kids with special needs. |
Anonymous
Not, PPs, but unfortunately it usually doesn't have to do with class rules on invitations. SN kids getting snubbed starts even in preschool and you can bet at that age it's not the kids doing the shunning. |
Anonymous
I was the OP of the 1st grader who did not get invited to a single party that year. Our school had no such rule about inviting the whole class or the entire gender. He is currently a Junior and evites were not around then. There were definitely parties because the boys would talk about them in class or at recess and my son would come home sad to hear he had been left out again. |
Anonymous
What do you think is going on with the other parents that they treat your kids so poorly? And what kind of bullying have your kids experienced? That is just unforgivable, I'm so sorry. |
Anonymous
| I am really puzzled by this requirement to invite the whole class. Why would my child invite people he isn't friends with or worse, who are bullies? Luckily, DS' school doesn't have such a requirement. He usually invites 3-4 people from class plus some kids he is still friends with from his old preschool. Everyone has a good time. |
Anonymous
| Another SN mom with the same story....we invited the whole class to DD's birthday party...it's now June and not a single invite has come her way. It's just disgusting to me. I can't stand seeing these kids anymore. The old "we only invite 3-4 kids thing"...okay, fine. But where does that leave MY kid? Why is she always alone? |
Anonymous
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My child has been snubbed starting in K. In the early years of ES most of the snubbing came from the parents. My son always had close friends at school but was often not invited to their parties. There were 2 parties where all the boys were invited in the class except my son. Most painful was the party of one the children who was close friends with my son and played with him all the time. The parents didn't want their child playing with my son. To make matters worse, the mother was a teacher in the upper grades at that elementary school. The kids would even come to my house for playdates and those parents never reciprocated.
I also volunteered for both of my children's classes and when volunteering for my other child's class was present for a discussion by several parents about the kids with disabilities bringing their class down and how the school was so good that parents with kids with disabilities were trying hard to get in the school. It was a great school for children without disabilities, but the parents with kids with sns knew the school was horrible for them. Years later, my son was very close with another school mate and both my son and the other kid kept bugging for a play date. I called the parents, the dad said absolutely and that mom would call and she never did. Eventually she and I were volunteering at the same time and both kids were bugging us about a play date. When the kids were away from us she told me a play date wouldn't happen because her son "only has dyslexia". |
Anonymous
This is our experience as well. People don't feel the need to reciprocate invitations-- so when their children have parties or play dates, they just ask their children for a few choice friends and a SN kid is rarely at the top of the "desired" list. People usually aren't deliberately excluding--they just aren't actively including, and so a kid at the bottom of the pecking order is always left out. |
Anonymous
I do think many parents actively exclude. Several parents told me to keep it on the down low that my children started at special ed preschool because both had significant speech delays. At our first private preschool another mother heard me talking to a teacher about the previous preschool and told me later TO MY FACE that at first she didn't like that my kid was in the class but that she was over it. |
Anonymous
| yikes, pp! What did you say to her? |
Anonymous
| Who are these people? Did they come here from some other planet? |
Anonymous
I've got to echo this. I haven't experienced anything overt or downright outrageous like PPs. I mean, maybe people are thinking this stuff but not one person I know would dare say it out loud. My DD is still young though, so this thread does have me worried about what's coming up the pike. |
Anonymous
| It sounds like I've been lucky so far. My son attended a preschool for 2-3-4 yr olds last yr. He was in the 2s class. By the end of the year, it was obvious that something was not right. Of the 10 kids in his class, 6 sets of parents have been beyond supportive. 3 are teachers in MCPS. They helped me to negotiate the IEP process. They told me who to ask for, when to follow up, and how to get the services I needed. One of moms is K teacher. She reviewed his IEP goals from a K teacher aspect-- if he met the goals as outlined, would he be ready for mainstream K? In addition, all 6 moms and dads are always therefore me when I need them---either to chat or to have a playdate or to vent. Even though we are no longer in the preschool, we are still invited to all the bday parties. So I don't think all NT parents are clueless--there are some really nice people in the world. You just have to be lucky enough to cross paths with them. |