Are you secure enough to be a friend?

by Penbleth on Wednesday 29 June, 2011

Special needs people have friends. (Except where their social worker gets the wrong end of the stick and makes you think they don’t.)

Now, let me ask you a question, what do you see when you think of a friend of someone who has Special Needs? Let’s throw in people with mental health problems while we’re at it.

People with special needs don’t exist in a vacuum, in fact they, like all the rest of us, are surrounded by people. School mates, teachers, classroom assistants, doctors, nurses, social workers, play group leaders, respite staff, all these people and most of them relatively friendly. They’re not, at least not usually, the person’s friends.

Apart from class mates. Class mates, or school mates, can be friends, actual friends. Of course they have special needs too. Apart from the friends of those kids who go to a mainstream school, or the adults with special needs who go to college or work, what about their class mates or work colleagues?

What about neighbours? People who attend the same social group, Scouts, Brownies, Guides etc.?

You can guess what I’m getting at, who can be friends with someone with special needs? Another person with special needs? Well, yes, of course. What about someone who doesn’t? What about the school mate who goes to a mainstream school along with someone with special needs? What about the work colleague who isn’t SN? What about the neighbour?

I don’t just mean friendly, I don’t mean polite, I don’t mean someone who will speak to a person, spend a moment of time, I mean an actual friend. A kid who will call and visit, want to play, share toys, or argue over sharing, a person to hang out with at the weekend, after school, in the holidays.

I venture to suggest there aren’t that many, especially where the disability or needs are greater.

I wonder why?

Is it because people with special needs are kept separate from the mainstream? Special needs schools or classes, special sort of supervised work?

Or is it something else?

Could it be, and it is only a question, because we fear not just having a disability but being SEEN to have one?

If we are friendly to someone with extra needs we’re a nice person, if we’re FRIENDS with them …? We have special needs ourself? Could that be behind it?

What about our own kids, if they are friends with another kid who happens to have a mental disability or a severe learning disorder, how do we feel about it? Are we worried they will be seen to be the same? Do we fear other people will look down on them, see them as weak, as lesser?

Just some thoughts, some questions, about something so many of us take for granted, friendship. Friendship shouldn’t just be optional for people with special needs either.

Tagged as: children, friends, friendship

{ 4 comments }

Janet Isserlis 29th June, 2011 at 8:36 PM

reading too quickly so may be should hold off, but of course I won’t

teachers, adults other big people don’t model enough for little people what it’s like to just be with someone whose needs and strengths are different.

learned a lot about that in canada; seems the americans are generally behind that curve
thank you for this
xo

Penbleth Twitter: penbleth 29th June, 2011 at 9:27 PM: I wouldn’t like to say it is any one country, they are just thoughts about friendship and what might encourage or discourage that if one party has special needs.

Dawn 1st July, 2011 at 2:27 PM

I had to hold off until today to comment on this as it home quite hard, as it did when you wrote the first time.

Last night my 16 yr old (SN) had his prom at school and, for the VERY FIRST TIME since he started senior school, someone asked if they could come to our house for the afternoon and then get ready as they’d organised to arrive together in a beach buggy. I can’t tell you how much that meant to me.

His school is not particularly local but that never stopped friends getting together when he was in junior school. Of course kids don’t want the embarrassment of Mum organising things when they move up but the big difference was he suddenly moved much more into mainstream – and he was the one that looked just that bit different and, for most subjects, he often had someone helping/scribing etc. I remember a new Maths teacher saying to us that, when he first started at the school, he looked at H and said to himself ‘Now there’s a kid that could easily get bullied’. The point he was making was that H had the personality that meant it didn’t happen and everyone liked and got on with him BUT he didn’t have any special friends. I found that so sad. To his credit he has found his own way and would tell me he has plenty of friends (at least lots of people he plays sports with!) but I know that at home many of them are friends of his older brother and sister.

There is no easy answer to this is and I only hope it comes full circle and he forms a couple of close friendships at college come September.

I do know I was very proud watching him (and all of his year group) last night!

Penbleth Twitter: penbleth 1st July, 2011 at 3:08 PM: I am so pleased. After all, all we want for any of our kids is to be happy and have friends and do the ordinary things. I hope he had a great time.

Lynn