One way to arrange friendships for your child is through the toys that you provide. If you want other children to play with your child, arrange activities that require more than one child. This can be playing with puppets, bubbles or many other opportunities we will discuss throughout this workshop.
Have toys and materials that can be used by more than one child, and activities such as puppets or dress-up. These don't need to be expensive. In fact, you or an older child can make puppets for free. Here are three very simple, inexpensive ways:
1. Use cereal boxes, the individual serving size. Cut the box in half, stick your hand in and there you have a "talking"puppet. You can tape on eyes, draw a mouth, if you like. Ask an older child to make the puppets for you to play with his or her younger sibling. Yes, it is not great art or great anything, but the wonderful thing about children is they aren't art critics.
2. Use an old sock. Most people have lost one of a pair of socks, or had one with a hole in it they threw away. Use the other sock for a puppet. Wash it first (yuck!) If you have white or light-colored socks you can draw a face with markers. Draw eyes on the top and color a red mouth. Draw some hair if you are creative. If you are really creative and can sew, you can sew on buttons for eyes. I usually use some off of an old shirt I am going to throw away. You can also sew on a piece of red fabric for a tongue. Again, I usually just take some old sock or shirt I was going to throw away and cut off a piece for the tongue and sew it on.
3. And, the easiest one yet, get a brown paper lunch bag. Draw a face on it and use this as a puppet. You can do anything from just drawing a face with a pen to getting very fancy, gluing on other, different-colored pieces of paper for eyes, mouth and even clothing. I am SO not Martha Stewart and I often don't have all these colors of construction paper laying around the house. What I do have are bills and in the bills from the electric company, cell phone and others they often have a piece of pink, green or blue paper that is supposed to sell me something or tell me something. Those are useful for child projects like puppets. Hmmm. .. maybe some day I'll even read one of those and see what they are about.
To this point, we have discussed helping your child informally. There is a formal way to get assistance for your child with a disability, and that is through the Individualized Family Service Plan.
NEXT: Individualized Family Service Plans