My daughter is too young to have real friends, despite the fact that her teacher, aides, and therapists all refer to Ellie's classmates as her "friends." Like most 1-year-olds, Ellie is fascinated by other little kids. But at this age, kids are more into what they call "parallel play" than any kind of mutual camaraderie.
Oh yes indeed, this is the easy part.
A little girl from the other toddler class at school recently transferred into Ellie's class. The teacher was making her feel at home by showing her the pictures on the wall of all the other 1-year-olds in the class.
"Ellie! Ellie! Ellie!" the little girl cried excitedly, pointing at Ellie's picture. Swoon.
Someday this will be so hard. Someday Ellie will be in elementary, middle, and high school, and she'll want to be friends with her classmates. Her classmates will not want to be friends with her, because she's different.
Oh sure, they might be nice to her, help her out with a math problem, possibly even invite her to their lunch table once. But she won't be the one they hang out with every Friday night. She won't be at all the sleepovers.
I pray that she won't be the butt of all the jokes.
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3 days ago
4 comments:
That is my prayer for you and Ellie, too.
Me too.
And that is so the hardest part. The girl I grew up with, the one who is so much like a little sisteer to me, she has the same problem. She is alone. She has "friends" that are all really her parents' friends. But she doesn't have girlfriends who call her, or a boyfriend, or friends to hang out with.
She does have a center she goes to to socialize during the week and she has had jobs, but somehow still it is not the same. And that is the hardest part to see with her. Because at 26 she is in sort of a perment state of adolescence, and remember being a teenager and how important it was to belong?
Gods, I am so not helping you at all, am I?
She is a beautiful and sweet and friendly and wonderful girl. And my prayer for her, for your children and mine, is always that they will find friendship and love in life. And for some, that is so much more of a challenge than for others.
Ack, I'm going to have to write a blog post about one of our neighbor's kids. He's the first one who has started pointing out that Alex is "weird." It makes me absolutely livid when he does it, the little shit. Anyway, I understand how heartbreaking it is and will always be, I guess is what I'm trying to say. It will never be easy, it seems.
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