We removed my son from our local schools because he was not being included. He loves sports (plays W/C basketball and road races to 20K) and is very social.

When he began the local high school he went to the athletic director and told him he wanted to be involved in any way possible. The AD said he would get back to him. Two weeks later he was still waiting.

I called the AD and left a dozen messages. Nothing. I confronted him at an event, and he was openly hostile to the idea that a kid in a W/C could do anything for his sports program. Considering that I am an excellent judge of character, I called him a bigoted moron and went to the superintendent. Got nowhere and decided to make the switch as my son was hating school by this time.

After three great years in the special school, they get a visit from a group of kids from our district. Their purpose was toperform community service. They had ignored and shunned him for a year, and now he was a community service project.

What I found incredible was the fact that I actually had to explain how disgusting this is to the special schools administration. My son understood it quite well.

(Now, I am bragging) This year, my son is on the student council. He has suggested that his schoolmates develop community service projects and have one at his old school. He want their varsity W/C basketball team to play the old school’s varsity basketball team…

I just love it.

The kudos are well-deserved. Your post has me thinking and my wife and I discussing something important. In general I try not to blog or comment about my children as direct subject material, but I did send you an e-mail pointing out just a few things your essay prompted me/us to think about and look at a little more closely and carefully.

I’m curious as to what sorts of things you are now re-evaluating regarding parenting strategies? Of course, I understand it may be hard to be able to list things straight out — sometimes ideas have to percolate down and burble around a while, and be compared to life as it happens.

One of the things I realised (in later years) is that friendship is not something that can be made to happen, any more than one can “make” a child fall asleep. All one can do is to provide favorable circumstances, and ongoing ones at that. We all have good days and getting-too-overwhelmed days, and building a friendship requires building a comfort zone and extending oneself, not once, but repeatedly. You can’t push a person into a friendship, but you can invite them gently, and without a heavy demand upon what is expected of them.

andrea

PS If you like skeptical writing, I have a piece on just that, which you may find entertaining: http://qw88nb88.wordpress.com/sunk-by-bunk-and-junk/