"7-Year-Old Girl With Autism Writes Heartbreaking Friend...

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...Wish List"

http://news.yahoo.com/7-year-old-girl-w ... 40146.html

I agree....it is heart-rending.

I hope she finds a friend soon.

Someone needs to tell her wanting others to smile all the time is a horrible form of objectification.

No. No one needs to tell her this.

She just wants to be happy with a friend who is happy to be with her. There is no reason to read anything more into her wish list than that and she is too young to be bombarded with theory about objectification. She is seven, not a teenager or adult.

I hope she finds a friend soon, too.

I also hope she finds a friend who will treasure her as she is.

Just because you crave a friend doesn't give you the right to have one. Nobody is entitled to anything. Friendship and love have to be earned, not given for free. They are just like money.

In this picture she is sitting on the Giant's Causeway, located in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. I know it because I had to make a presentation about Northern Ireland in 9th grade.

Lets just leave all the social justice terminology BS out of this. I hope she finds an actual friend, but it's just as well if she doesn't, the harsh reality of life catches up to us all. I think it's better to learn this when you're younger. Children aren't entirely little fragile shells that need to be protected. They need to learn how to survive, not live in the bubble of the first world dream. Life is so f****d.

I'd be inclined to agree with that assessment.

It IS heartbreaking, and it IS hard, and it IS wrong. I DO wish people would actually TEACH common kindness, even to "the other," the "not-like-me," the "other-not-like-me" with no concrete, visible place to focus societally ingrained pity. For that matter, I wish it could be genuine liking and not societally encoded pity when we are kind to those WITH a concrete, visible "disability."

Sometimes it can be, but by and large, said same shittiness is human nature. sh***y old human nature.

I hope Molly-Raine finds a real friend. I hope she finds two or three.

I hope Molly-Raine, and her parents, don't mind "scraping the bottom of the social barrel" and letting her friends be other autistic kids, ID kids, ADHD kids, kids with struggling single dads on welfare, kids with weird religious requirements, kids who pee the bed and have parents who don't make sure they still smell OK, and the rest of "the kids no one else wanted," as my grandmother so humiliatingly and offensively put it (in a toast, at my wedding, in front of all my friends).

That's where I found friends as a kid. Actually, that's where I've found the best friends as an adult, too. I guess I'm a reverse bigot, but-- pretty much, in my friendosphere at this point, "the apparently perfect need not apply." To quote a popular song, "People like us, we gotta stick together."

I hope Molly-Raine finds lots and lots and lots of things she enjoys doing on her own, things that bring her smiles and joy, and doesn't grow up with an insatiable thirst to "be normal." Because, no matter how many friends she makes one day, that's something she can't have. I hope she doesn't idolize so-called normality, or the trappings of a so-called normal life.

I sure wish I didn't. She has the chance not to.

I hope Molly-Raine's best friend turns out to be Molly-Raine, no matter how many friends she makes as life goes on.

We all need protection sometimes. The fact that it's not always available doesn't change that

Common kindness involves realizing that, if you have no friends, it's probably because noöne wants to be your friend, and therefore respecting everybody else's right to give you a wide berth and staying alone. Better learn sooner rather than later not to try to impose your company where it's not welcome. It also involves respecting everyone's right not to smile if they don't want to.

As she is permitted in school and is 7, it is the responsibility of adults to help her learn if she does not know how. She is 7. Civil is for adults, for her age, friendship is important, and something she should be being helped with.

...Yeah. Wanting people to smile is good, categorically. Clearly everyone at her school should be smiling more. What harm could possibly come from that?!

Trying to force other kids to be her friends would be unfair to them, and wouldn't work in the long run anyway---it'd only make them hate her, and possibly want to bully her.

No. Trying to teach children to welcome others is what adults are supposed to do. It's not accurate to characterize this young child's desire to be able to relate to others as an unreasonable effort to "force" other children to be friends with her.

My observation as an adult has been that children being intolerant starts with them seeing adults not welcome a child who is different. I didn't notice this when I was a child, but the worst bullying my kids have seen.....started with adults. Specifically, the parents being cruel. There was never any bullying because adults encouraged inclusiveness and kindness. That may not be the same as friendship but it is a really good start.

You are wrong. You should never assume that when people do not do something, it is because they do not want to do it. There can be so many other reasons. Sometimes all they need is the opportunity. If the barrier is that they are uncomfortable with different, you give them the opportunity to get comfortable. And so on.

When you think like you do, you have defeated yourself before you've even stepped into the game.

I'm not easy for people to relate to and be friends with. I know that. But that doesn't mean no one wants to be friends with me. What I have to do is give them time. Build little bridges one brick at at time. Some people will eventually step onto the bridge, others won't, but I'm still miles ahead of where I would be if I had never tried. I realize the process can be a lot to ask of someone with limited social skills, but it can be done.

People want opportunities to connect with other people, they really do. You can't live in fear of being the person who "refuses to take a hint." Because when you do, you see hints where they don't exist. My husband was like that, always assuming that he wasn't wanted. When I reached out to his friends, they were grateful to be back in touch. It's all in his head that people don't want to be around him.

If you never make the steps, you make your negative assumptions a self-fulfilling prophecy. It doesn't have to be that way.

When my son was 7, there was a time he told me he had no friends. And then this little boy walks up to me and asks when he can come over to our house. In the process of trying to reconcile why someone my son isn't friends with is angling for an invitation, I discovered this child had been trying to make friends with my son but my son wasn't reciprocating. My son's perception of what was going on around him was completely inaccurate. ASD is, after all, a communication disorder, so why would he interpret everything correctly? He wasn't interpreting very many of the communication attempts from other children correctly, it turned out. He had no friends because of a communication gap, not because no one was willing. So, I mediated.

I know life isn't always rosy and some people will take advantage of other people's optimism, but I've found life is a whole lot happier erring on the side of overly optimistic.