Friendship is a long word- a wooping ten letters. For some friendships come easy. Two kids meet t
hey like Angry Birds and Mario and Legos and bam they become friends its that easy. For others it is really hard they might be shy interverted or a little nerdy,
Enter a child with a pretty sigficant disabilities
I should propise by saying that I do have special needs and sigficant social issues and do not have a lot of friends, nor have I ever had solid firendships. I have tried befriending those with special needs and adverage people with some success, not much but some aquences and some firendships past. In lainmans terms, I may not be the best person to give advice here but this is just my own oppion, which.
I think kids with special needs need to have a mixture of firneds. They should have peers that also have disabilities if possable with the same dignoses. I have seen the special connection that others have made with those with disabilties. For example, I have witnessed two young people with the same disabilities as "brothers" even though they are not related, good luck convinceing them though. I have witnessed a group of young kids rally together to support another kid when they had a meltdown and all three kids shared the same disability. As for me I do feel a special connection to others with CP. Which is why I love doing the World CP montage, and online I read stuff by fellow CPers and I think, "Man I could have written that." But I do not have a close friend with CP but I think I would enjoy that. In the meantime I have friends with disablties over the past 21 years of my life.
I also believe that kids with special needs need to have average (ie people without disabilities ). I am not going to lie I had a lot of help from my mom and book gal on this subject
I think my mom put it best in that interacting with different types of people allows you to break down stereotypes of that person and allows people to see that when the day is done we are all just people. Book gal agrees ,her best friend is different from her but what makes them best friends is knowing that they have each others back.
Another reason that interacting among abilities is that those with special needs will need to interact with the general population for the rest of their lives. 99 percent of the time I need to interact with the people at the store in restaurants and college. Most of these people do not have disabilties therefore those with disabilities need to learn how to behave with average people. The social skills I do have I had to learn in the world. I could not have learned them in amongst my peers with disabilities because some of them are trying to learn them themselves. In first grade I had to learn about personal space because when I got too close to my classmates they did not like it.
It a nut shell those with special needs need a balance of friendships. It is nice to be amongst people that understand what you are going through, yet by isolating one self people with special needs do not get a chance to bridge the gap and gain the social skills needed for success. What are your thoughts.
If you know someone with Cerebral Palsy
click here to learn more about a photo montage that
AZ is hosting for World CP Day.
Got image from http://theadaptables.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Children-with-disabilities.jpg