Thursday, 12 January 2012

Birthday Invitation



Nathan got his first invitation to a friend’s birthday party today.  This may not seem like a big deal to most parents, but it’s a huge deal in the autism world.  When you have a social disability, you don’t get invited to many social events.  I’m hugely excited about it.

More reasons to get excited over it:

This isn’t an everyone-in-the-class is invited party.  The child had to pick and choose 5 friends and my boy made the cut.

Nathan actually has a friendship with this child.  We’ve had him over for playdates and Nathan has been to his house.  They walk home together from school =almost every day.

I don’t have to go and hover during the party to make sure he doesn’t do something inappropriate or harmful.  I can trust him to behave no worse than any other hyped up sugar-filled four year old.

Events like this give me a real hope for Nathan’s future.  Maybe it’s a bias on my part, but I want my boys to have friends and have people they can call up to do things with.  It’s a part of life you take for granted until you realize that not everyone has it.  Now, a lot of articulate people with autism have said they’re happier not being social, so I try to keep that in mind.  But I can’t imagine a happy life without friends to laugh with.

“Life is just a song, when you’ve got someone by your side to sing along.” – The Muppets

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