{"id":528,"date":"2011-02-16T09:05:35","date_gmt":"2011-02-16T09:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2011\/02\/how-do-you-teach-a-child-to-make-friends.html"},"modified":"2011-02-16T09:05:35","modified_gmt":"2011-02-16T09:05:35","slug":"how-do-you-teach-a-child-to-make-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2011\/02\/how-do-you-teach-a-child-to-make-friends.html","title":{"rendered":"How do you teach a child to make friends?"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"IMG_6342.JPG\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

One of my earliest prayers for Penny was that she would have
\nfriends. Back then, when she was an infant, I hadn’t read the studies that said
\nmany individuals with intellectual disabilities experience depression as a
\nresult of loneliness. I didn’t have statistics on hand that proved the need for
\nfriendships as much as, if not more than, educational or vocational
\nopportunities. I just sensed that making friends would be harder for her than
\nfor typical children. And so I prayed.<\/p>\n

Since then, I’ve become all the more convinced that the
\ngreatest struggle Penny will face is in the social sphere. Sure, she’ll have
\nlearning difficulties and physical impediments and health concerns. But I
\nsuspect that her need for friends will be her greatest challenge.<\/p>\n

Part of the challenge arises because I don’t know how to
\nhelp her. When I was a kid, I ran around with other kids in our neighborhood. I
\ngrew up in a 5,000 person town in North Carolina where the speed limit was 25
\nmph everywhere. (There were two stoplights on main street, but even there, I
\nremember a time when I was sitting in a car with my friend’s mom. The light was
\nred. She had the windows rolled down and chatted with someone else on the
\nsidewalk. The light turned green and she kept talking. It turned red again. We
\ndrove at the next green.) The pace was slow and the town was safe and most
\neverything and everybody was within walking distance. The older kids played
\nwith the younger ones because there weren’t that many of us. Even for a
\nbookworm like me, it was easy to have people to play with all the time.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Penny’s life is structured in such a way to make that easy, small-town give and take nearly impossible. She gets home from school at 4. There are no kids in our neighborhood who are her age. I don’t know the other moms from her school, and I’ve rarely put any effort into arranging playdates.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, a teacher sent a note home about Penny’s bad behavior. My stomach lurched. The note described Penny repeatedly knocking down another kids’ blocks, and tugging at the other children’s clothes and generally misbehaving, even after reprimands and time-outs and all the rest. Sure, it can be attributed to a new baby, disruption in her schedule, fatigue. But I’m certain that what’s really at stake here is a desire to make friends, and trouble knowing how to do so.<\/p>\n

It’s one of the few times I’ve felt helpless as a mom. A part of me wants to make a rule for myself that we’ll start having playdates twice a week . But I know the barriers–with whom? At 4:00 when Penny is exhausted from school and we’ve got a little over an hour before dinnertime? With a new baby in the house? It’s not going to happen.<\/p>\n

So I’m brought back to my knees.<\/p>\n

I prayed this morning, again, for friends. It’s a short term hope, but a long term prayer. I want Penny, over the course of her lifetime, to know the love of one or two faithful and good friends.<\/p>\n

And then, at ballet class this morning, one of the moms wrote her name and phone number on a napkin. “Why don’t you call us so we can have Penny over for a playdate? My daughter would just love that.”<\/p>\n

Maybe God will take care of this one after all. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}