Gloriously Ordinary Sundays - 6th April 2025

I’ve been thinking lots over the last week about friendships, connections and relationships. All the stuff that’s covered under Test Four. It’s a follow on from Ciaran’s birthday really as I saw him surrounded by people he loves and who love him over the course of his three parties.

Funny thing is, on several occasions throughout both his and The Girl’s lives, what I have to assume were well-meaning professionals and actually some friends and family have made massive assumptions about the ability (and I choose that word intentionally) of both my kids to make or to be friends.

I remember a few years ago a college that The Girl was at setting an outcome for her (again intentional language) about how she would, ‘greet people, saying hello and ask how they are’. When I queried it, they said it was because in her planning meeting we’d talked about her wanting to make new friends at college. The teacher in question said, without a hint of irony, that if she wanted to have friends, she had to know how to say hello and ask people how they were. I’ll just let that one sit with you.

I worry lots about how crap a friend I am. I’m a weird introvert extrovert mixture. I’m outspoken, gregarious, and known to be the life and soul of a party when that’s required, but I also regularly need to be alone. I have lots of people who I love and whose company I really enjoy. On a daily basis, I think about people I’ve not seen for a while, contemplate sending a text and then mainly never do. I fail to reach out to people to make a time to meet. I guess what I’m saying is that many would say that I lack some of the skills required to be a good friend and I’m sure there are some great outcomes you could set for me. The truth is I know that I have a solid group of people who don’t see me as lacking, who tolerate my flakiness and would call me their friend.

One conversation I’m increasingly having, mainly with paid workers is around people who apparently don’t want friends. The narrative goes something like, ‘Well you’ve got to understand that I support people often autistic who just aren’t interested in other people/going out/socialising/whatever other word you want to add.’ When I dig a little, without exception, the people they’re talking about are connected. It might be online, it might be via WhatsApp. It might be at the corner shop. They’re connected in ways that work for them - just like we all are.

At Ciaran’s Wednesday birthday party in Flat Two we had a fabulous conversation about how all his friends and family are allocated a Disney character that is then part of who they are. Ciaran had invited Sharon to the party – my friend now also his – and she observed that she didn’t have a character. Ciaran thought for a few seconds and then told her that she was Scuttle the seagull from Little Mermaid. There was a brief conversation about whether a Scuttle is male or female and apparently, there are two versions from different years that cover both genders (I do know that much because Isaac Samuels is also Scuttle). Sharon’s Disney knowledge is better than mine but still not good enough to know who Scuttle is, so she was a tad bemused. Two days later she got a card in the post from Ciaran showing a picture he’d drawn of Scuttle and an explanation of who she is. One of the ways Ciaran shows love is to draw pictures for you, and everybody who’s part of his life receives regular cards and pictures. He started doing that several years ago without any outcomes being set.

Chatting about this to a friend today she shared that her 16-year-old son (who would be described as having severe learning disabilities) is liked by his friends at his mainstream comp because he makes them laugh but also because he gives him the gift of not having to try so hard to be 16. They can join George in his world of Mr Justin and do the Hokey Cokey with him because, well it’s George isn’t it? What a lovely relief from being a 16-year-old boy that must be.

The Girl has very few words and yet if I think back to her days in sixth form, she had a strong vibrant friendship group. I’ve got a lovely photo of her in the sixth form common room in the middle of a group of twenty or so other young people, mostly on their phones, some with headphones some without. I think her gift to her girlfriends was that they could just be with her. They didn’t have to do anything.

I think the point I’m trying to make is that we need to buck our ideas up about what constitutes friendship, connection, and relationships and accept that we all do it in very different ways. Just cause I’m not meeting people down the pub three times a week doesn’t mean I don’t have friends. I also think we need to take a look at ourselves when we judge someone’s skills or ability to be or have friends, and recognise that we’re talking baloney.

I’ve been working with some lovely people from SeeAbility on a Gloriously Ordinary Lives programme and last week we were exploring Test Four. We did some thinking about what friendship is and this is the wonderful record of our chat. I’ll leave you with that but I think there might be more on this next week!

PS. Have you heard about 'Getting Curious About Creating Gloriously Ordinary Lives' training course? It's a 5-session course where you'll learn how to create Gloriously Ordinary Lives, reflect on current support practices, understand your role, and develop a clear action plan for making a difference. The course is for everyone and starts in June.

PPS. Did you see? The Gloriously Ordinary Sundays Podcast episode 10 is here. I chat with Sam Clark, Chief Executive of ⁠Learning Disability England⁠. We talk about the importance of people opening their own front doors as we share the new campaign - I Open My Own Front Door, Do You? - by Gloriously Ordinary Lives in partnership with Learning Disability England.