Reply to Those reminders my child isn't blending

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[quote=Anonymous]
Parents of young children,  I can well understand why you seek natural friendships with children in your child's classroom or in outside activities with his NT peers, but maybe also look at area activities at times for those youngsters in his age group with special needs, too.  It may just be that a son or daughter might shine in a youth sports team focused on meeting the needs or including those with special needs = at least in the early years to learn the rudiments of the game.  Joining a group in which one might continue to learn skills and bea part of for several years is also another possible outlet such as scouting, a church based  youth group/service program.  In middle school or high school, there may well be "service groups" such as Key Clubs that inquiries could be made about joining with a bit of peer support.  Another community-wide group would be Special Olympics sports training.  Consider your child fortunate for the times they will have a natural friendship with a bit more mature/understanding peer even if only in the school setting.

Keep the focus on what will benefit your son or daughter in the early years in school.  For us it was to be in the best placement to learn the core skills of especially reading as well as writing and basic math that would serve her well in adulthood.  There was never any question of a regular academic program so it was an easier choice of placement.  If a regular high school diploma is possible, then I would put the appropriate academic setting and level over a social situation within the school.

As  your children move onto high school, I can't say enough about Young Life.  In our area there is a college based special needs program called Young Life Capernaum for high school up through age 21 young adults.  It was started here about seven years ago and was so popular that half the group was over age 25 and just had to separate from the YOung Life program per se.  We are fortunate that a few young couples with children decided to start a young adult offshoot following the same kind of programming monthly and servie a diverse group of young adults. Keep working on the basic communication, social, behavior skills because in any setting mainstreamed, fully included, volunteer job, competitive job, or social situation it will serve your son or daughter well.

Also, if your son or daughter could benefit from a positive mentoring experience, college students can be a wonderful resource to use and even for higher-skills (asware) middle schoolers or early teens, you can always use the excuse that the person will have a set of wheels to get one around to this and that and better than an after school or summer camp program.  Sometimes, just learning to make a positive connection with one of the same gender a few years older can really help smooth things out.  We have used such relationships for now about 15 years.   
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