How Do We Support the Peer Acceptance of Children with Disabilities?

Abstract

Mark is a 6-year-old who loves baseball and playing with small building blocks. He is an affectionate child who loves hugs, high fives, and fist bumps. He also enjoys dancing, rough and tumble play, and being outdoors on the playground. Recently he and his parents moved to a new city where he has just started kindergarten. Mark has a mild intellectual disability and is beginning to print the letters in his name. Mark struggles with early numeracy concepts, and his teacher, Ms. Hannon, quickly realizes that she needs to adjust her instruction to support him across many areas of development. Mark likes to play with his classmates, but he often forgets the rules of frequently played card and board games. Because of this, his typically developing peers are becoming increasingly frustrated with Mark and are not including him in some of their games. Based on her observations Ms. Hannon thinks that the other students do not know what to expect from Mark in terms of social interaction and behavior. She also realizes that Mark needs more support to learn some critical social skills. She decides to investigate a class-wide intervention to help support all of her students' social competence, including their development of friendship skills. As a result of this intervention, she hopes that her students will develop more positive attitudes of acceptance around individual differences. OverviewMark's story is based on a real-life experience and one that you might have encountered as a teacher, or one that might present itself to you in the future. In this chapter, we aim to give you insights into how you can support students like

The Impact of Young Children’s Persistent Challenging Behavior on Child Care Providers: “It’s Like Floating in a Sea With No Paddle”

“…The providers described situations where peers would not play with a child who engaged in persistent challenging behavior, were afraid of that child, and used negative words when speaking about the child. The importance of peer-related positive social interactions and competence is well documented in the literature (c.f., Favazza et al, 2022; Meyer & Ostrosky, 2014; Meyer et al, 2021). Persistent peer rejection is a common experience for children with challenging behavior, and when not addressed early it is a contributing factor to school failure (Dunlap et al, 2006).…”

Strategies for Teachers Who Face Opposition to Reading Disability Literature With Children

“…identifying attributes, attitudes, values, and abilities that distinguish themselves from others (Favazza et al, 2016). These may be considered early labels that children learn and apply to their life simply through observing and interacting with the world around them.…”

“…A tool that can help families' conversations with their children about various disabilities represented in books sent home is a bookmark discussion guide (Ostrosky et al, 2015). Teachers can create this discussion guide by including questions related to the story, explanations of the disability and adaptive equipment seen in the story, questions that highlight similarities between the child and book characters with disabilities, and discussion prompts to reposition disability as a valued form of human diversity (see Favazza et al, 2016, for a sample discussion guide).…”

“…For example, Meyer (2021) provided a synthesis of guidelines for selecting disability literature for young children, such as reflecting on the representation of self-determined individuals and accurate representations and insight into disabled life. Several researchers have also suggested a list of children’s books and reflective questions that teachers and families can use when they talk about disabilities with their young children (Favazza et al., 2016; Ostrosky et al., 2015). Recently, scholars have emphasized how to use disability literature along with close reading practices with elementary students to engage them in critical literacy conversations about disability (Tondreau & Rabinowitz, 2021) and support their knowledge linked to reading literacy and spoken language standards (e.g., “If the book character with a disability was your classmate, how would you describe him?” “Why might you want to be friends with the book character?” Prince & Hayden, 2021, p. 6).…”

“…Much to some adults’ surprise, children’s identity development begins before the age of 2 (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2020). As children begin to develop their own self-concept, they are identifying attributes, attitudes, values, and abilities that distinguish themselves from others (Favazza et al., 2016). These may be considered early labels that children learn and apply to their life simply through observing and interacting with the world around them.…”