School-aged children?

[Moon]

With school starting I thought it would be nice to remind ourselves to teach our children to be nice and accepting to all classmates. Kids with special needs are not weird or odd. They want what everyone else's wants --to be accepted!!!

[kpage9]

Oh dear Moon, what really good intentions!!!! But as a mom of one now-grown, and advocate for hundreds, of special needs kiddos I must say: Au contraire. In many cases they ARE weird and synonymously odd. Their reactions, communications, movements, impulses--even the way they may smell or other grooming issues (because of sensory dysfunction, NOT bad parenting or inherent "grossness")--are so often outside the norm.

Telling other kids there's nothing odd about these characters is--well, a little like saying marijuana will make you crazy. Kids know when we're not telling them the truth.

My wish is this: That we acknowledge differences WITH RESPECT. Even oddnesses-- with respect. That we help each other to see that underneath the apparent differences, odd quirks, are warm, beating hearts that love and fear and crave true connection. And that a little weirdness never killed anyone...and isn't contagious...and that the truly cool kids are the big-hearted ones.

But honestly to my mind, denial of the obvious just throws the denier's credibility into question, and contaminates the effectiveness of his or her kind intentions. AND/or makes the "normal" kid think they can't trust their own perceptions.

(you can see i have a little raw nerve here...)

One more thing: it's often so helpful to normally-developing kids to have a place to talk about their real reactions to "weird" kids...important to let them unpack whatever those reactions are, before we try to bring them around to a different understanding.

Kathy

With school starting I thought it would be nice to remind ourselves to teach our children to be nice and accepting to all classmates. Kids with special needs are not weird or odd. They want what everyone else's wants --to be accepted!!!

[Moon]

Good point. I guess what the originator of the comment means is "not weird or odd in the most important ways."

With school starting I thought it would be nice to remind ourselves to teach our children to be nice and accepting to all classmates. Kids with special needs are not weird or odd. They want what everyone else wants --to be accepted!!!