As I’ve mentioned before, E will not being going to her
catchment high school, which means none of her friends from school will be
going with her. Over this year, we are
aiming to develop opportunities for E to create some new friendships with those
she will be going to high school with. The
school and ed psych are supporting us in this and we hope to meet in the next
few months to look at creating a link with a feeder primary school. To supplement that, we are also looking into
after school activities both in the community use part of the high school and
other places attended by the cluster school kids.
This has made me reflect a bit on friendships and the
changing dynamics of those between children with additional support needs and
those without. Chatting to other parents,
it seems many found it relatively easy
to create opportunities for children to play together and for relationships to
develop. Children always seem very open
to this and accept whatever adaptations need to be made.
As the children get older, and start to develop
independence, things become more challenging.
Children start to enjoy the independence of playing without adult
supervision, often outside on bikes and the like. E wants to join in, but she’s slower and less
independent than them. She’s still
included but the children have to adapt their activities more to make that
happen. It’s the same for after school
clubs, many of which are based around physical activities which become harder
to integrate as you get older.
There are other barriers too. As E’s
helper I am learning to give the support she needs while blending into the background
at the same time. Going to someone’s
house is not as straightforward either as access is a bigger issue both for the
wheelchair and E getting to the toilet. She’s never had a sleepover other than with
family as the difficulties of lifting and transfers seem to daunting.
Now add into this mix
the changes that all children around this age go through and the idea of
building new friendships feels a real challenge to me. I
should say that E is a friendly girl who is confident that she has friends and has
the personality and empathy to make new ones given the opportunity.
It would be good to hear from anyone who has successfully
been through a transition like this and your own thoughts on the changing dynamics
of friendships.
