When I was expecting my oldest child, I met a bunch of other mothers through pre-natal fitness classes. After he was born, I met some more at a weekly well-baby clinic where the babies were weighed and the moms chatted while the children hung out on a mat on the floor. All the babies were under 3 months so they were all close in age to my son. We started meeting weekly and alternating hosting duties. Most of the 10 or so of us ended up having a second child around the same time; built-in playmates for the second round of kids. When Precious came along, I was one of only two moms having a third. My older children went to nursery school, then to our local public school, making friends along the way. Before Precious came along, I had more time to organize play-dates and excursions for my children. Our playgroup mostly folded as there were only a few of us who had children in late 2005/2006 (for them, it was their second child).
Precious attended a special needs preschool and the children all went their separate ways after graduation. The one girl who lived closest had very little interest in Precious who seemed much younger than her, as her schoolmate’s disabilities were not intellectual. The schoolmate liked hanging out with my older daughter much better than my youngest.
In junior kindergarten, Precious went to school with neurotypical children. As it was a private school, children came from all over the area, giving us less opportunities to see these friends and continue the friendship. All of this was complicated by the fact that I was working 3 days a week and less available to organize play opportunities for Precious.
Precious is 5 now, but developmentally is just at the age where she is starting to make friends. For her 5th birthday, we invited all of the girls from her class to her party as I had no idea if she had any friends or who they might be. It went really well and she even played with some of the girls at the party.
I was thrilled when a birthday invitation came home from one of Precious’ classmates on the first day back to school after Christmas vacation. I called the mom to accept the invitation and to say that I would stay at the party to help her handle Precious’ speech delay (I can’t believe I described it that way!) The mom told me she knew my daughter from volunteering in the classroom and she wasn’t at all concerned about my daughter staying at the party without me. She even said “our girls play really well together.” (!!!! )
I was so happy that the party went well and that Precious had fun. She was as proud as a peacock to show us the contents of her loot bag, her balloon animal and her Tinkerbell tattoo.
What I want to know is how other people handle this. When your child’s disability is ‘invisible’, how much information do you volunteer in situations like this?