Good Evening everyone,
I am hoping that after everyone heads back to work/school from Christmas Break that I will finally be able to get back to the blog daily!
I am sorry I haven’t been good about writing in it over break. There is so much going on yet, nothing really seems to jump out of my head to write about on the blog.
Tonight we finally had our last Christmas with my ‘real’ dad and his ‘girlfriend’. It was really fun and she brought her grandson over who is my sons age and they played the whole time….until my oldest daughter took him away from my son…something she tends to do often.
That is why I rarely if ever make play dates for my son anymore. His sisters always take his friends away and I find my son playing by himself a lot with his friends playing with the girls. It is hard because my son isn’t super social but, he really enjoys having friends over but, his sisters…especially our oldest daughter are so social that they tend to ‘steal’ his friends away very easily.
I feel so bad for my son because he wants friends so bad and I don’t feel like I can call up his friends and ask if he can go over there. So, it is easier just not to make play dates. I know, it isn’t right and I need to be more aggressive in my helping my son find friends. He is very sociable and does enjoy doing things with others, he just doesn’t have the social skills of a lot of children his age. I think some of it might be his being on the spectrum however, I think A LOT of his being on the spectrum is more the fact we don’t have children in our neighborhood and he has never really been around other boys and children his age very often or often enough that he feels comfortable around them.
We get together once in a while with other families and he knows the children however those families get together more often that we do and they also live in neighborhoods with other children.
I feel many times we have done our son a great injustice by living in Richfield….or at least our part of Richfield. I also feel my own inadequacies socially have played a part in his inability to develop socially.
I believe it is all a horrible cycle….I wasn’t socialized as a child so, I had very few friends growing up and the ones I had, I was never very close with. As I grew older, even in high school, I very rarely saw my ‘friends’ from high school outside the school walls. I had work friends and school friends and very rarely did the two worlds ever combine. I too grew up in a neighborhood with few children and what few there were, I didn’t get to play with very often since my mom worked full time and I was either at the sitters everyday after school and then at my dads every other weekend; or if I was at home, I couldn’t play with the neighborhood children until my mom got home from work and sometimes, that wasn’t until dinner time or later and by then, everyone had gone inside to spend time with their families.
I feel like my son is heading down that same path. It is hard to see however, I feel paralyzed by it at the same time. I always thought my husband would be my saving grace in this area however, how? He works and when he comes home, he is often tired and the last thing he wants to do is hang out with some other persons child.
This is one of my goals for 2021. I pray that I will get over my own insecurities socially and get out there for my son. I will get out there and help him find great friends and really facilitate his friendships.
I will put my own fears aside and create those play dates for him, I will even have the guts to ask other parents to take him instead of me taking their child. I can do it! I know I can!
My little guy is the best and really has a desire to have good friends, I understand that feeling best so, I need to be the one to fill that part of his life up.
Ok….that blog was a bit of a downer….really I don’t feel down about it all.
Just happens to be what is on my mind now.
I have to go, baby crying….night everyone!