Making Friends

The other day the boys' class went on a field trip to the zoo.  I agreed that Zack and AJ should go, because they love the zoo.  It's a place of familiarity and comfort for them.  Chances of success were great.  I went along, too.

Afterward, the para who came along to help told their teacher back at school that the trip went great.  Their teacher was thrilled to hear it.  I thought it went fine.  Nobody had any meltdowns, nothing terrible happened.  Nothing amazing and fantastic happened either.  It was fine.

The class was broken up into groups of three, each with a parent volunteer assigned to them.  And they all sort of roamed the zoo individually. We saw a few of them here and there, but there wasn't much interaction with the class.

For the most part, this was just another day at the zoo, except I had the para along to help.  And she was very helpful.

There is one boy in their class - Evan - who has befriended them, sort of.  We ran into him a couple of times during the field trip and he came right over and embraced Zack.  I was really surprised Zack tolerated it, but he seemed used to it.

Other than that, we had virtually no interaction with the other classmates.

This article from the Huffington Post makes me think of events like the field trip to the zoo, and how little contact there seems to be between the kids in the neurotypical class and my boys.  Forging relationships between children with special needs and children without special needs is tough all over.

A couple of weeks ago at Partners in Policymaking, a speaker who has an older brother with intellectual disabilities commented about how when he was growing up, every time he'd say he was going "out to play," his parents made him take his brother along.  In time, all the neighborhood got to know his brother and became his friends and caretakers.

Often when Aliza puts on her coat and announces she's going to the neighbor's house to play, I look at the boys, and sometimes AJ is looking at her with some wistfulness.  I think.  It could be me, just wishing they could go out and play with kids as easily and naturally as she can.

I can't let the boys go out with Aliza alone.  But maybe I should go out with them, more often.

Feel Good Friday: Spring Explosion

I have bene wanting to sit here and get a post ready for Feel Good Friday all day, but haven't had a chance to sit at the laptop and do it until now.  I volunteered at the boys' school this morning which was fun as always, and I met another one of the team that works with the boys.  Then I ran home, the boys got home from school and ate all their chicken for lunch (score 1 for Arby's).  Then the therapists arrived, and we have been working on FST (Family Service Training) for the past couple of hours.

But it's still Friday, right?  It's not like I'm too late.

Spring has finally exploded all across our backyard.  It's actually not the most colorful spring I've ever seen, but I'll take it.

Part of me wanted to smart off at it and say "took you long enough," but I feared retribution in the form of more clouds and rain.  So I kept my trap shut and got out the camera.

Zack and AJ played back there this week after school with a few of the neighbor kids.

Did you know there was a time when I thought I would never be able to say that sentence?

*Smile*  We are so typical.

I mean, they jumped in the trampoline, played on the swings and slide, and in the playhouse with their sister and two other kids.  At one point, a little girl actually got AJ to agree to sit down in a little lawn chair so she could play "school" with him.

AJ PLAYED "SCHOOL!"  Only for a few minutes.  But STILL!

We are so, so lucky to live in this neighborhood full of children ready to take on whatever challenges the boys might present, and find a way to play with them.  That little girl didn't care that AJ didn't cooperate too much as her "student."  She just played as much as he was able to.

Aliza swung herself across the monkey bars and AJ wanted to do it too (learning from imitation, at its finest, right here in my backyard) so she held him up and helped him across.

Well, Zack thought that looked pretty fun and wanted a turn, too (imitation, over and over, loving it!) but Aliza wasn't done with AJ yet, so she told Zack to get down and wait for his turn.  He screamed and looked like he was going to cry.  You see, he's not much for hearing "no."  It kind of feels like a slap in the face for him.  So Aliza ran right over and gave him a hug, and he hugged her back, and then we all clapped, and it was amazing!

How come those kind of interactions didn't happen inside, all winter?  What is it about the outdoors that makes magic like that happen?

Anyway, life is good.

Look at these cute tulips the boys made for me at school!  A couple of years ago I would get things from the school and I didn't really believe the boys had a hand in making them.  Picking up a bottle of glue and squirting it out onto construction paper was just not something they could even be bribed to do.  But now, I took these out of their backpack, held them up, and said "did you make these?  They are so pretty, I love them!"  And they smiled shyly.  Oh yes, those were handmade by a couple of little boys.....

It's a very feel-good Friday!  Check out the other Feel Good Friday entries over at Lia Sophia Tomgirl!  Sometime soon the originator of Feel Good Friday, The Girl Next Door Grows Up, will be back and online, but until then, many thanks to Lia Sophia Tomgirl for keeping it going!

You Gotta Have Friends

Have you ever read a story or article and it leads you right into your own thoughts on that same subject?

This blog post at Special Needs Disability parenting BLOOM  made me think about the importance of friendships.  Both for us grown ups, and for children.

Zack and AJ are mostly in a self-contained classroom.  That is, they spend the majority of their schoolday in the autism room.  I am okay with that because they are in no way, shape or form read for the process and curriculum that comes with the regular classroom.  In the autism room they can go at their own speed and actually made more progress that way because there are special features installed to help curb their anxiety.

They do go to the regular classroom daily for a short time though.  (And it's with the regular classroom that went on the field trip to the Children's Museum.)

So right now, their best opportunity to make friends is with the other kids in the autism room.  Like AJ has already done, befriending Tyler.  And I have decided that is okay, for now.  Those kids are just their speed.  Those kids won't judge or mock or tease.  And while you are growing up, while it's important of course to have peers, it's also important to feel like you can be yourself and to be confident that you are a likeable person.

Everyone needs friends who are like them.  I mean that's how we pick our friends, even as adults, isn't it?  The people who we have the most in common with are the ones we are most likely to be BFFs with.  Well Zack and AJ are going to have more in common with the autism classroom children right now, than the kids in the typical kindergarten room.

Throughout a lifetime, friends come and friends go, because we change.  The kids they hang out with today are not the kids they'll hang out with in a couple of years, because they will all grow and change, at different rates.  That applies to typical kids too.  Loss of friendship is hard, but we all should accept it as a customary, healthy process, because it's an essential part of growing up.  Ideally, new friendships crop up to replace lost ones.  If you have less in common with someone you used to talk to every day, it is only natural that you won't talk to them as often.

Doesn't mean you don't like each other anymore.  Growing apart is a natural process of living.

I do hope that one day they can have actual friendships, actual relationships, with peers who are in the "typical" world.  It would mean the world to me for that to happen.  But it's okay too, to have friends who have special needs like them.  They need friends they can relate to.  Friends who can make them feel "normal" and "typical."

Little Girl Dramas

Okay I'm trying very hard not to wish away the summer, but I've had about all the little girl drama I can take for one season.

You know what I'm talking about; the preteen drama queens -- a later, slightly more mature version of a toddler meltdown, when a group of little girls savagely stomp on each other's feelings and forget how to play nice.  Sort of a rated G version of Mean Girls.

It's been a long, hot summer for Aliza and her little friends.  Long weeks spent bike riding, swinging, making mud pies, running through sprinklers, swimming, and working lemonade stands have lost their ability to captivate and charm like they could in June.  Everything is "boring" now.  So tempers tend to flare with little to no notice.

It's funny how two little girls can play together quite nicely, but add a third little girl in there and suddenly you get a great example of the cliche' "three's a crowd."  Good grief.  If it's not "they aren't being nice to me!" Then it's "you aren't my friend anymore!" or even "I'm never playing with you again!"  I send one home and others come to take her place.  They are like little boomerangs.

There's just been way too much togetherness between all these little ones these last few months. They aren't feeling the love anymore.

I would have planned more activities for Aliza this summer, but it's hard to fit things in between the boys' therapy schedules.  All summer long, there were many days where the only time neither of them is in therapy and we could actually get in the car and go somewhere might be between 3 and 3:30 PM.  Not many activities seemed to exactly fit our free time.  She did take swimming lessons and go to vacation bible school, but we rearranged the boys' schedules a little to fit that in.  The boys' routine had to give a little too, because otherwise "it's not fair!"

 12 days until school starts, not that I'm counting.

Parenthood

Every week I watch Parenthood and at some point in the show I am struck by how much I relate to it.

I really appreciated the significance of Max playing with another kid at the park in this week's episode.  When your kid doesn't have friends you worry as much for his happiness as his social development and skills.  The twins are 5 years old now and I'm keenly aware that the other 5 year olds in the neighborhood run around together like a little pack.  Aliza goes from house to house, often with a gaggle of girls trailing behind her.  The boys stay home, mostly.  They love to be around other kids but I can't let them be in a group of kids without supervision.  I certainly can't let them go over to the neighbor's house and ring the doorbell.  Not that they want to.  Currently I guess, one blessing we have is they don't have the cognitive skills to realize they are missing anything.  But we work to socialize them, and hopefully one day they will be able to play with other kids without prompting from an adult, and without biting or pinching anyone.