How to navigate a friendship after a disability diagnosis.

How to navigate a friendship after a disability diagnosis.

My first know-how with disabilities was back in elementary school. I learned one of my best friends at the time was diagnosed with Autism. All his behavioral aspects, like being lost, trying to converse, handwriting all over the place, etc., now made sense to me. I learned from my parents about what Autism is and understood my friends' challenges. I was lucky to be taught to be patient and more compassionate around my dear friend. However, it tore my heart to see my friend being left alone at recess and all the other children from the grade making comments about him being "weird." We are now in middle school, but as his Autism progressed, my dear friend is now part of a special needs class. I don't see him daily, just on his birthday and holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas when I visit him at his place. There is not much to discuss, but I am happy to see and spend time with him. At the end of it all, I still feel that I lost my friend to Autism.

Other than my dear friend from elementary school, one of my other close friends' brother, also a middle schooler, was recently diagnosed with dyslexia; this was something that his family was not expecting. His parents just thought that my friend's brother was not interested in doing the work or his fight to read a book, not because he had challenges reading but because he was a kid being a kid. I saw how stressed his parents have been after the diagnosis, knowing that their son had a significant disability that would make it difficult for him to read, a skill needed throughout life.

It's sad to see my friends struggle with disabilities. I can't imagine how others with even more critical disabilities must be working and getting about their daily lives.

How it impacted their life, their parents not being able to come to terms with their child's diagnosis. Why did these parents choose to hide it? What made them feel so uncomfortable about disability? How come the disability over here - Dyslexia and Autism were not diagnosed or went undiagnosed in the elementary school years? Are the teachers trained to pick on the early symptoms of disability?