A friend with young children recently ranted a bit about how parents who don’t invite ALL the kindergarteners to their child’s birthday party are mean, crappy human beings. Now admittedly, I may have a different perspective than the average parent, but my first thought was: Is she crazy? Who wants a party with 25 to 30 screaming five-year-olds?

My second thought was this: Get used to it. Special needs kids, even ones who are fully mainstreamed, don’t get invited to parties. Or play dates. Or sleepovers. The day may come when you don’t even get invited to family functions.

Do I think this is fair? Hell no. But I know it happens. I’ve heard it again and again from other special needs parents, and I know the struggles I’ve had with my own family. No one likes to admit it, but exclusion of special kids often happens at the hands of the people who know us best, the people who should find it easiest to practice full inclusion.

Let’s use my family as an example. One of my sisters planned a “family” camping trip a few years ago and didn’t invite Katie and me. When I learned, after the fact, about the trip and complained, my mother defended this very intentional act by saying that Katie couldn’t handle camping. This may or may not have been true at the time for my autistic daughter, but I felt I should have been the one to make that decision, not someone with limited knowledge of Katie’s specific abilities.

I told my siblings I was hurt. Nevertheless, the annual “family” camping trips continue—without us—but now my three siblings do a better job of keeping them secret. The problem is, my mother eventually slips, and I end up feeling hurt, sad, and resentful over our exclusion. Eventually Katie will too.

Even worse, the exclusion feels like punishment for something neither Katie nor I had any control over. Would you punish a child for having cancer? I doubt it. So why punish a child for having autism?

The fact that my siblings continue to exclude us from the annual camping trip makes me wonder how many birthday parties and other activities Katie and I are excluded from in the misguided attempt to “make things easier.” The problem with this assumption is that neither Katie nor I want easy. We may not have asked for autism, but it’s here, and we’re determined to overcome it to the maximum extent possible. We want challenges—the bigger, the better. Is it too much to ask that my family support us in this effort?

More and more I think the people who want to “make things easier” are the people who already have it pretty easy in my book. They don’t want the hassle of altering their plans to accommodate someone with differing needs. They say it’s all about me and my child, but really it’s all about them: their inability to change, their fear of the unknown, their need for control, their unwillingness to see things from a different perspective. Yet study after study has shown that people who live or attend school with disabled children are more compassionate, more tolerant, more flexible, and better able to think outside the box. These are skills we should all want, not only for ourselves but also for our kids.

So while I’m still not sure about a birthday party with 30 screaming kids, maybe my friend has a point. The next time you feel the urge to exclude someone because it would “make things easier,” remember this: inclusion benefits all of us, not just the disabled.

Until next time,
Cynthia Patton