I started off taking Logan to "ordinary" baby group at the local Sure Start Centre and that was fine for a while. Then his friends were moving up to the Movers and Explorers group at around 6 months, so he moved with them. It's supposed to be for crawlers up to walkers and although he wasn't crawling (or even sitting) at that age, the staff were fine for him to move up and it meant he was still with friends the same age.
Unfortunately, the group changed due to some people staying there a bit too long and being asked to leave, they had children who were walking/running round and disrupting the group while the mums sat and chatted, leaving their young ones unsupervised. Now each week there is a "messy play" activity that all children are expected to join in with and be directly supervised by their parents. As far as I'm concerned, this excluded Logan, he is only just sitting and starting to commando crawl at 1 year old and I don't want him falling face first into a pile of jelly/custard/cornflour or whatever they are playing with that week. So I've stopped taking him there and he is missing out on some potential contact with his peers. I've been told he is more than welcome by the staff, but can't see how he can be included properly when all his friends are doing something else?
We are lucky enough to have a great group of friends that we met through one of the baby classes and stayed in touch with after. It means that Logan has contact with 6 of his peers and it's been doing him good as he has been copying their behaviour, something his paediatrician recommended. We do still have contact with the mums and toddlers from the Sure Start baby group but don't see them much any more apart from the round of first birthday parties that are going on. In any case, most of the mums are now back at work again unlike myself - I have mananged to take all my annual leave and then go straight into maternity leave number 2 as my second baby is due in December.
Logan's other activities involving other children are mainly with one of the local Down Syndrome groups who have lots of children of around the same age. He has an early intervention group, a new playgroup starting shortly and a coffee morning. I have also taken part in one of their Makaton classes. He also has a local authority therapy group with other children with multiple special needs (physio, speech & language, early years learning, occupational therapy). Interestingly, I had to pull Logan out of one particular special needs group as he was getting upset by slightly older children being disruptive and much older children not leaving him alone because he was the only baby and they wanted to cuddle him. The other parents/teaching assistants weren't making much of an effort to say "no" to any of this, so I felt forced to remove my son from the situation. Luckily, I did make one good friend at that group who I have stayed in touch with.
As far as the future goes, I'd be happy for Logan to take part in activities/classes/groups etc. with children who have special needs and/or children who don't. Then again, he is still very young and my opinions might change as he gets older. Also, I know that Down Syndrome isn't as much of a disability as some of you have to cope with on a daily basis and I can appreciate why things might be difficult for a child who has greater mobility issues or learning difficulties than I am having to deal with.
