Kindergarten does set the stage for some of the best lifelong friendships, and I know several people who have been glued to the hip since then.
But how would you feel if your child was almost ready to graduate from kindergarten, and hadn’t been invited to a single birthday party all year?
This woman’s son is going to be graduating from kindergarten in approximately ten days, and not a single one of his classmates asked him to come to their birthday bashes.
“I know that it’s his fault, no one wants to invite the autistic know-it-all who has meltdowns and pees/poops his pants once every other week, but it still hurts. This isn’t what I wanted for him,” she explained.
“He turns on his friends at the slightest provocation. He cries and whines when he doesn’t get his way. He even bit another child when he thought the child was threatening him.”
“But he was telling me today about three new friends who all formed a club, turns out they are imaginary friends. Since he has a birthday really close to Christmas, I have wanted to let him have a summer send-off party to sort of make up for it. But I don’t really want to. What if no one shows up?”
She does everything to help her son improve his socialization skills, she promises. He was in a very intense Applied Behavior Analysis program for well over a year, but that didn’t help.
Unfortunately, her son’s pediatrician passed away, and that was the only person who accepted their insurance in a 50-mile radius. If that person were still alive, her son would have been enrolled in play therapy.
So, here she is, wanting to do something to compensate for the fact that her son hasn’t made a single friend since beginning school.
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She’s hoping an over-the-top summer party will win some friends for her son. She spent a fortune on his birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese, but only two kids came, and her son isn’t even friends with them.
“Back in January and February, he was so awful and getting removed from the classroom multiple times a week that I went and put together goodie bags to give out for Valentine’s Day,” she continued.
“…Maybe I’m ultimately sad for myself. I remember how terribly lonely I was in high school. How I would hide in the bathroom in the mornings, how I ate lunch in the library because I had nowhere to sit in the cafeteria, but what’s wrong with wanting to prevent my child from experiencing that kind of pain? I just wish things were different.”
I don’t think her son is doomed, but I do think she’s projecting a lot of her unhappiness about this onto him. Instead of throwing her son a crazy, expensive party and inviting everyone, maybe she can see if the two kids who came to his birthday party would like to do something with her son instead.
Or, she can take him on a special trip to celebrate graduating from kindergarten and make that milestone something to celebrate.
She also might be able to find some playgroups for her son to join outside of school for other autistic children, so that could be a good option for helping him make more friends.
What advice do you have for her?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
