It’s complicated

I am having a really hard time figuring out what to make of my son’s soccer practice this past Saturday. Can you help me figure it out?

As part of our town’s recreation department’s efforts to create recreation opportunities for kids with special needs, they’ve started an adaptive soccer league. High school varsity and JV kids buddy up with kids with special needs to play casually; it’s a low-pressure hour of fun. As part of creating local friendships for my son, who now travels 2o miles each day outside of town to attend school, I registered him for the program in the hopes he’d meet some local kids.

This past Saturday was our second practice. When we arrived, a winter soccer clinic for typically developing school-aged kids was wrapping up; the kids were cute and would have been wonderful buddies for my son, who is nine and has a developmental delay, but they were rushed out of the gym by their coach, who yelled at them to get off the court to make room for our group.

My son’s program started. The participants included my son, a seven-year-old boy from a different town, and about eight adult men who were well over 40, probably from a day program or a group home. I asked the coach who the charming men were and found out they had just come for a one-time visit but were being invited back for the rest of the season. Apparently, as hard as it is to find recreation activities for kids with special needs, it is even hard to find them for adults with special needs.

So. What to think? Am I happy that we are spearheading an inter-generational, regional group that provides opportunities for all kinds of folks with developmental disability? Or does it break my heart that there are no prospective chronological peer friends here?

A little of both, I guess.

Am I proud of our soccer coach for being flexible and seeing an opportunity to let the older men stay on? Am I disappointed that the coach of the typical kids (who is also the manager of the city’s rec department) couldn’t see the benefit of letting the kids from his session stay?

Again, a little of both.

Would a parent of typical children think it’s appropriate for their nine-year-old child play soccer with a group of middle-aged men? Would I have let my daughter stay? Do I have the energy to do something about this?

It’s complicated.