Practical steps to explain how to include for girls

[bubbalicious]

Hi.


I am debating about talking to dd's girl scout leader about this topic. Girls are great, leader totally is into inclusion and we just did some skits on social skills. DD is not the only kiddo with special needs in the troop but she is the most obivious. Most can hang in the neurotypical world.

I would love some help in the step by step article or something.

Thanks!

[mrsbuttinski]

What are you looking to accomplish?

Do the Girl Scouts have any material already created for this? The BSA has scads and scads.

Are the parents of the other girls who have a foot in both the mainstream and sped world eager to do this or is this one of their "normal" activities for their DDs? Or is this just you?

[bubbalicious]

I have to talk to the leader to look at whether there is more information. We did a social exercise at the first meeting. Very basic and great for all the girls. This sparked my intial thought to incrase inclusion. Not just tolerance but the steps to doing more. I think this may be a bit too much for right now. I think once I talk to the leader to probe out other social exercises. She may or may not be into it (she is sped friendly).

Last meeting, dd was flag bearer and opened the meeting with the pledge of allegiance. Her articulation was normal for her but the girls giggled initially. I gave this some thought. I am pretty sure with the neurotypical girls, a mistake laughed off is no big deal. But for everyone it is...empathy thing. What do you think? Too young to teach this?

DD is not the only sped kid in the troop...she is just the most obvious. There are two others. Both who need social skills. One is on the spectrum and high functioning (mom talked to me) and the other is ADHD (distracted. she presents more like on the spectrum for social skills. Mom told me just adhd). There is a girl with medical issues. The leader has been strong about inclusion for my daughter and girl with medical issues (most apparent).

Open to thoughts.

Thank you!

[mamaturtle]

I would go over how everyone should act during a flag ceremony as a group.

But then again, I was that mother of the cub scout that was lying on the floor at a flag ceremony last meeting. I think DS was protesting he wanted to be a bobcat for the rest of his scouting life even though he is a wolf because our cat looks like a bobcat.

[bubbalicious]

mamaturtle, that is funny. We just started cub scouts for my ds. Tiger boy!

[mrsbuttinski]

It's hard to say.

The leader has a fine line to toe between inclusion and avoiding a critical mass of kids with special needs that would trend this into a "special education" type setting which would turn off the NT girls and turn them off of scouting which would make them unavailable as peer models for practicing emerging social skills.

As an adult leader at the troop and district level, I found that integrating/including kids with special needs successfully meant following the same sort of standards a school would for inclusion and/or integration. And sometimes that's hard because not all adult leaders are adept at making this work at all age levels and the ones who rock can become victims of their own success as families flock to them. At the elementary level, inclusion here looks like 25-33% of a class being made up of kids with IEPs- more than that and the special needs vibe prevails.

If this unit is 10 girls and 4 of them have developmental or behavioral dxs, it may not function as well as if those girls were spread around a bit to avoid having a split troop where the NT kids are interacting with each other exclusively and the ones with special needs are left with each other.

I know it stings to have other kids notice and react to your child's differences. If they giggled and shut themselves down as a group, I would let it go. As I recall, your DD doesn't scout with her classmates which is how this sort of thing typically is done.

IMHO, it would be better to let them get to know your DD and allow them the time to accept her and her differences rather than do something that shames them which will backfire. It takes time for kids to get to know each other, years in some instances.

[bubbalicious]

I agree. I appreciate the words of wisdom. Thank you.