Handle With Care: eight Ways Special Needs Parents Can Make Friends

I am non an expert on friendship.  In fact, I accept a history of many failed friendships.  But I keep trying, because friendship is the one thing that I value about at this point in my life.  Fifty-fifty though I keep insisting that I'm really an introvert who doesn't know annihilation about making and keeping friends, I often get comments and questions like these:

  • "Maybe you lot could share some ideas on how special needs parents can be a friend to someone with 'typical' kids."
  • "I am fatigued to clues that build relationships. I desire to be seen every bit friendly and playful."
  • "How nearly what non to say, or what to say, to a special needs Mom? Or how tin I assist a special needs Mom?"
  • "There are all of these articles for people to better understand how to exist a friend to special needs parents, only there's nothing that helps special needs parents with how to exist friends with someone whose kids are typical."

An Emotional Minefield

Friendship can be an emotional minefield between parents of children with special needs and parents of children without disabilities.  I know that I experience a mixture of joy and sadness when friends and family members rattle off their children's many accomplishments and milestones.

On the other side, parents of typical children have confided in me that they don't know how to arroyo or what to say to a parent of a child with a disability…so they usually say zilch.

To complicate matters further, when a kid's disability is discussed among friends, there is a trend to dismiss it:

  • "Oh, just all kids do that."
  • "He looks fine to me!"
  • "That'south zilch to worry about, my child is much more than medically involved.  She's had iv grand mal seizures and ii emergency room visits so far this month – and we had to replace the toilet after she chock-full information technology with toys once more!"
  • "At least he can talk!"

How To Brand a Friendship Work

In his philosophical dialogue On Friendship, Cicero points out that the Latin give-and-take for friendship, amicitia, comes from the word for love, amor.  Friendship is a spirit of goodwill between 2 people; ability and inability don't figure into that definition.

At that place are pitfalls, of form.  I know how those mistakes happen, because I'm guilty of them all. Fortunately, with a piddling bit of forethought and a lot of reconsideration, there are ways to make a friendship between a special needs family unit and a not-special needs family work.

ane. Start with light conversation

Not every conversation among friends needs to be deep and soul-baring.  I try to retrieve of 2 or 3 positive, calorie-free-hearted comments to say, and even that tin exist challenging for me at times.  Later on spending most of my life baffled by small-scale talk on topics like the conditions or movies, I came to realize that information technology is actually a social cue that opens up conversations.Friendship

When I attended the Friendship Circle'south Mom'southward Night Out during the summertime, I brought my waterproof camera to the pool.  My friends and I spent the evening laughing most taking pictures of each other jumping into the pool and swimming underwater – the photos were not flattering at all, simply provided a great opportunity for fun.

Some might say that small talk and goofing around are non meaningful, but mental health professionals agree that these interactions decrease isolation and increment well-being.

2. Know the difference betwixt a friend and a psychotherapist

Some parents of children with disabilities, such as myself, prefer to cut to the hunt and talk about what's really important.  Over-sharing and interrogating are common conversational tactics amongst some of the states, just it puts others on the defensive.  If you lot discover it necessary to apologize for unloading your worries and venting your frustrations every fourth dimension you talk with a friend, then it may be fourth dimension to schedule an appointment with a counselor to work through your problems.

3. Go along explanations curt and sugariness

Parents of typical children are sometimes puzzled by the things I exercise for my children.  Although I know that I do not owe them an explanation, I found that saying something like, "He needs actress help with ____," puts them at ease and opens up the possibility of developing the relationship further.

4. Observe a common cause

My well-nigh amazing experience with parents of typical kids happened when I was recruited to help write grant proposals for a new playground at my son'southward school.Group of FriendsConsidering we were all working toward the aforementioned goal, I felt accepted and respected.  Acceptance is a two-way street: because I felt accepted, I was able to role as a productive and supportive fellow member of the group.  When nosotros accomplished our goal, nosotros celebrated together. Finding a form, volunteer group or activist group non just provides topics for conversation, but also the sense of inclusion that anybody needs.

5. Reciprocity

I received the following comment on one of my articles: "These same parents — the ones who spend years unable to maintain the basest elements of the social contract, who forget reciprocity is an of import element in relationships — are baffled as to why their formerly close friends desert them. They aren't seeing the wood for the trees."

For many years, I was unable to reciprocate hospitality amongst friends and social groups.  I notwithstanding take difficulty coordinating hospitality when we have out of town guests, because of daily demands at abode.  But in that location are other ways to reciprocate in friendship:

  • Accept an hour to treat a friend for coffee while the kids are at a scheduled activity
  • Offer to include your friend's family in a field trip, or to bandy siblings for a short menstruum
  • Invite a friend for a walk at a park
  • Offer a service or creative solution to a problem that is troubling your friend – my friends are always surprised that I have therapeutic lesson plans, educational activities and out-of-the way field trip destinations in the back of my head
  • Explain that your family situation makes it hard to reciprocate in the usual manner, merely that y'all are open up to other ideas

6. Listen without judging

The biggest conflicts in friendship arise from judgment – information technology could be a false assumption, trivializing another person's bug or a frustration over the lack of resolution of recurring problems.

When my son's schoolhouse started incorporating "The seven Habits of Highly Effective People" into the curriculum, I had the almost problem with the 5th habit, "Seek first to empathise, then to be understood."  I think that human instinct is to communicate one's own needs beginning, simply the style to build relationships to is to dull downwards, listen and empathize another person equally a gesture of goodwill.

7. Exist involved but non over-involved

Close friends are an exceptional gift.  But closeness is non the same as co-dependency, which can backfire in emotionally charged circumstances.  Another commenter on 1 of my blogs wrote, "I did all of these things everyone suggested. I cleaned her business firm, I babysat, I threw a festival to help heighten coin for their medical bills, sat with them in the hospital, would drib everything to assistance her and I took them on vacation with u.s.a.. In the finish, she decided I was a bad friend. Told me she doesn't like to run into my perfect family, said that she thought I loved her son, but because I was moving I must non. She accused me of hating people with disabilities. I did all of these things every bit her friend because I felt that's what I would want people to practice for me."

Families that are in a long-term crunch may react in unexpected ways, and for me, it's necessary sometimes to take a step back to reconsider my knee-wiggle reactions and dependency on others.

8. Diplomacy

Earlier this twelvemonth I wrote near IEP diplomacy, and some of the same concepts employ to friendships that we hope to meet blossom.  Everyone likes to experience appreciated.  But everyone likewise needs some space for private thoughts and feelings.  Some may say that it'due south quack not to share 100% of our thoughts 100% of the time with a friend, or that friendship shouldn't be handled so delicately.  Simply I think friendship is too valuable to handle roughly.

Every bit Cicero says,
"Friendship makes blessed situations more brilliant, dividing troubles and sharing skilful cheer."