Playdates

When my oldest was younger, we were always having playdates. Matthew would talk about kids in his daycare, we knew their names, weekends filled with adventure playsets and playrooms with wall to wall. Matthew went to a ridiculous number of birthday parties and that led to more friends and more playdates. It was like a revolving door of chuckegymboreebouncehouse fun for his first six years.

Adam however, in stark contrast, has very little playdates. The playdates we do have are really playdates for me, when I am getting together with my friends who happen to have kids ranging in ages and we throw them all in a room while we laugh and catchup. Adam's birthday party invitations are mostly ignored. I see them and immediately groan. An invitation to a chuckegymboreebouncehouse party equates to illnesses requiring nebulizer treatments and an antibiotic. Matthew spoke about friends and shared school stories, but Adam doesn't know any kids in his school. We ask him for names and he will tell you he played with his "best friend", but " I no member his name".

There is also a disconnect, because he attends two schools, it's hard to be involved in one school, and with two, I think I just rationalize with, well, I'll get involved when it's 'for real'. When he's is elementary school.

One school, the special education school, he attends part time and based on the flyers that come home, no one must work, but me. They have fairs and luncheons and tea parties and book sales and petting zoos, that are all during the day. I envision mothers with cool hair, coach sneakers and stylish totebags volunteering at these functions, meeting other mothers and having their special education children connect and flourish.

The other school, the regular daycare school, is difficult because he is only there in the afternoons and maybe it's his part time attendance that fails to connect us, but the other kids seem so 'normal' when I go to get him. They speak so perfectly and I can't help but feel as though they might not play with him. The kids can't wait to tell me what Adam did that day that was inappropriate. Several kids will run up to me when I get there and tattle on Adam instantly. "Adam's mom, Adam hit me today" or "Adam had to say sorry today". The teacher shushes the kids and shoos them away and then occasionally will mention something to me, but often she just smiles and knows that it's not major enough to warrant a conference. Communication does impact relationships and I imagine those kids are like Matthew, playing with the kids they see all day long, not mentioning to their mothers that they need to play with  the kid that comes half the day and talks weird and doesn't always listen.

There is this one kid, a boy, who I discovered takes the bus with Adam in the morning to the special education school. In speaking to Adam, I learned this fact. My face lit up when he told me that his friend on the bus also played with him at "afternoon school" in the sandbox. Could it be true? Another special kid, perhaps this kid could be a friend? a playdate? I wrote a note to the mother of this child and gave it to the teacher. Then drafted a second note. Yes, we had his name completely wrong. Adam thought his name was something else. Right boy, wrong name.

Daniel's mom and I tried to set up a playdate for weeks via emails and texts. Yet again, another obstacle to our world. When you work, and your kid has delays, there's a whole lot of appointments and some days, you think it will work, but your kid feels otherwise. Finally she and Daniel came over. It was a fabulous two hours.

Daniel's mother is from South America and had many questions about the education system here. Her son's iep meeting was coming up and she had questions about what it meant and what to do and what options were open to her. I shared my knowledge and answered her questions honestly. We discussed and shared how we as mothers blame ourselves for our children's disabilities, shared the obstacles within our families and cultures and discussed that this disability thing is difficult to manage along with being a parent of a preschooler. We complained about parents bragging and their fake complaints, we shared stories of our children's difficult toddler years. Tearfully we talked of dreams for our sons and how far they each have come. We were hugging and thankful for this connection when it was time to leave. The boys played wonderfully, they had few issues and were adorable in their play, it amazed me that they connected so well and seemed to be on the same page laughing at jokes that only the two of them understood.

There needs to be more of this. Yes, there are clubs, groups, social networking sites for all this, but in reality working moms of special education kids are freaking busy. We are busy blaming ourselves for the disability that most free time we have, we are overcompensating trying to fix the disability with play therapy, letters, sounds, reading books, and teaching our kids or we are taking a mental and physical break and escaping from the madness of it all.

I promise to try harder to find more mom playdates and to connect my son to more friends. It was one of the best two hours of my week.