Richard Lavoie - Its So Much Work to Be Your Friend: Helping the Child with Learning Disabilities Find Social Success

What do they all want from me?

What do I have to do so theyll like me?

Who do I have to be to be one of them?

Do I have the right stuff to satisfy and please them?

They dont very often articulate these questions, but children and adolescents wrestle with these quandaries every day as they perform for diverse audiences: their peers, their parents, important grown-ups outside of their family (mostly their teachers), and their own self-assessments. They desperately want and need to get in good with these highly judgmental audiences. Some children are blessed in having what it takes to win rave reviews from all. They carry with them a widely coveted asset called childhood versatility, a packet of well-rounded abilities plus a keen sense of how and when to deploy them to please the outside world. Other kids are more narrowly specialized; their kinds of minds are calibrated to satisfy only certain highly specific demands. Many of them become remarkably productive adultsonce they are permitted to practice their specialties. Their school years, on the other hand, may be punishing and arduous, sometimes so ego-lacerating that they are drained of ambition and left with enduring biographical scars. Adding to the damage, some of them experience rejection and isolation by their peers. Those who fail socially are especially at risk, and appropriately, they comprise the central focus of this book.

Proficiency within the social arena has two striking benefits: it is a source of fun and it makes you feel like a desirable person. When youre a child, other children are your yardsticks; you keep measuring yourself against them. And you hope they will come to perceive you as worthy of their companionship and admiration. For a child, few, if any, sensations compare with the ecstasy of social acceptance. The protected and connected feeling that comes with being sought after by peers pumps fuel into the engines of growing up. Intimacy and shared recreation provide positive stimulation and a much-desired feeling of belonging, thereby averting the dark shadows of loneliness. Every child needs to feel wanted. Exchanging instant messages at a rapid clip, having a cell phone that wont cease its melodic chirping, harvesting prestigious party invitations, and feeling you are in demand at a lunch table go far to make a kid feel validated. If others want you with them, you must be special.

But stringent admission requirements have to be met if a kid is to enter into the joys of interpersonal engagement. To get in good, she is obliged to prove her tastes are up to date. She must use well-crafted verbal and nonverbal communication, while projecting just the right public image. She is expected to exhibit well-calibrated body movements and facial expressions and implement ingratiating patterns of behavior. Throughout, she must be able to study her companions and monitor herself so as to keep delivering to others what they would like from her. She has to gauge the effects she is having on people around her; that way she can make on-the-spot adjustments of her behavior, speech, or conveyed impressions. She should be skilled at marketing herselfwithout boasting or aggressively overmarketing herself. It is helpful if she has some desirable products to offer, such as talent in sports, a sense of humor, video-game expertise, or good looks. She also must be a rapid and astute interpreter of social scripts and incidents. After all, how can you react appropriately to other peoples actions when you misconstrue them? The presence or absence of such sophisticated interpersonal intelligence will either enable or disable the social life of a young child or teenager. And for most of them, nothing else matters as much.