Friendships with regular families: Can they work?

In the early days, I tried to be normal. I longed to be normal. I tried to mould us into normality. It was a disaster. One consequence of this was the loss of several friends. In particular, those friends that had ‘regular’ children. Looking back, this was no one’s fault, but in the early and raw years of my unique parenting journey, I needed to validate my negative experiences by apportioning blame. So , I blamed those that couldn’t ‘get’ us. I felt unsupported, uninvited, unincluded. I was wrong in many ways, but it was my way of dealing with my pain.

Next, I gravitated to families who have children with disabilities, and made some lovely friends. One or two remain my dearest friends to this day. But even these such friendships don’t come with a guarantee. In many cases, there was an insurmountable incompatibility mainly down to our own children’s unique needs, and despite our best efforts, potential friendships dwindled.

When my second child was born, I innocuously dipped my toe back into the world of ‘regular’ parenting, and ‘regular’ friendships. I was torn in two directions. I found myself launched into the wonderful delights of school gate gossip, coffee, parks and playdates. Lunches, dinners, and drinks that involved benign, trivial, and light-hearted conversations. It kind of felt frivolous, selfish and somewhat even meaningless.

Yet I loved it!

In doing so I naturally found myself bonding into a warm and wonderful new collection of friends. I was entirely open about my older son and I was in awe of how my new friends were nothing but warm, welcoming and wonderful with him.

However, it is a tall order to expect anyone to tolerate the obstacles that we throw into any social situation. A couple of social dates in, and these new friends were starting to realise the vast abyss that separated our world from theirs. They were coming to learn that to hang out with us is a volatile and precarious proposition. How grateful I was, and still am, for those few that still try their best and make an effort. But how accepting I have had to become, that we are not as frequently included or invited, as we were in the earlier days of friendship.

The reality of the situation is, that no matter how fabulously inclusive a person is, how close a friendship I have with them, or how well our neurotypical children get on, there are such significant barriers in socialising with our family that given the choice, a regular family is inevitably going to choose to avoid. Why would you want to plan a day trip with a family who may dictate every single detail of timings, dining plans, location, etc, or who may need to leave halfway through an activity due to an unexpected turn of events?!

I find myself reflecting on my feelings of envy when I see my regular friends taking their regular kids for regular days out with their other regular friends, without an invitation extended to us. The former me would have recoiled with anger and upset about this, but I guess I have now come to terms with the realities, and differences, in our life.