The scene: Saturday morning. It is 70 degrees and gorgeous outside. Max and I are roaming around, and see two little boys on our block with their Razor scooters. Max is so excited to see them, he loves other kids and anything with wheels. He runs over.
“Hi!” he says, and smiles.
The boys look at him.
“He likes your Razors,” I explain, speaking the words Max cannot say.
Max taps one of the Razors with his hand and giggles.
“He’d love if you gave him a high five,” I tell one of the boys (the other has scooted away).
The child gives Max a combo high five/smack on the shoulder, which cracks Max up. Then the kid scoots away, too.
Max trots after them as I stand there wondering if I should have just shut up and let him interact with the kids in his own way, instead of being his mouthpiece. If I continuously speak for him, he will never learn to interact with kids in his own way, and they will never learn to accept him as his own person. Speaking for him also infantilizes him. Thing is, if I don’t intervene, kids tend to ignore him. The photo above was taken at our annual block party. There were dozens of kids there. Max ended up playing with the bubbles by himself. He had a blast but, still, he was playing alone. It broke my heart just a little.
We have a communication device, a Dynavox, which we really should bring out with us more often, as it would enable him to punch a button and tell kids things like “That’s cool!”
It’s a constant struggle in my head: How much should I intervene between Max and other kids.
Do you pave the way for interactions between your child and typically-developing kids, too?
Ellen blogs daily over at To The Max.