Beyond the Classroom: Building Friendships and Belonging

Every parent wants their child to have people who know them, include them, and genuinely want them around. But for kids with intellectual and developmental disabilities, friendships and a real sense of belonging can be harder to find, even when they’re included in school and community activities.

We sat down for a conversation with Dr. Zach Rossetti, associate professor of special education at Boston University, about helping kids build friendships, connect with peers, and find a sense of belonging at school and beyond.

Watch our full conversation in the video above, or check out this recap with the highlights!

You can find the link to Dr. Rossetti's research with The Arc, "Making Friends in School: A Toolkit for Teachers, Paraprofessionals, and Parents" here.

Hi everyone, welcome to Undivided Live. I'm Lindsay Crain and I head the Content and Community teams at Undivided, and for my visual description, I am a female with a short brown bob, dark framed glasses, wearing a brown collared shirt, and I'm sitting in a green office with bookcases to my right.

Undivided is a digital platform and service that supports families raising neurodivergent and disabled children. Our technology draws on our expert backed resources, and what we've learned from supporting thousands of families to help you advocate for a stronger IEP, uncover gaps in services, and navigate insurance and benefits, and because it's personalized to your child, it doesn't just answer your questions, it helps you uncover needs, explore options, and identify things you might not even know to ask about.

You can click on the link in the chat or scan the QR code to find out more about Undivided today. And while we are fighting for access in every space and system, a monumental task that often involves hundreds of smaller battles just to take one step forward, I'm sure I don't have to tell you one of the most important needs can get overlooked and undervalued by the very systems that could actually help: The need for human connection and belonging. One very common fear that we hear from parents is, “Will my child ever have real friends? Will there be true acceptance? Will others realize how funny or deep or real or nuanced that my child is?

And what about if they communicate, express themselves, or react in ways that kids aren't used to? And should the school be helping or is this all on us, the parents?” So let's talk about what real friendship looks like, how to foster genuine connections, how to make friendship programs meaningful rather than patronizing, the role of IEPs, and how friendships evolve as our kids grow. So here to talk through all of this and more, we are happy to welcome the Associate Professor of Special Education at Boston University, Dr. Zach Rossetti. Dr. Rossetti is a former special education teacher and inclusion facilitator. His research... I say that with excitement because we don't have enough of that.

His research focuses on social interaction and friendships between students with and without intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. He's coauthored several books, including Seeing the Charade: What We Need to Do and Undo to Make Friendships Happen. He is also editor in chief of the Journal of Education and on the editorial board of several inclusive education journals. Importantly, he also brings lived experience as the sibling of a brother with disabilities. Welcome, Zach. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here, really excited to be able to discuss this very important topic, as you said in your introduction. Yeah, and I will say you'll see yourself.

The first time I talked to Dr. Rossetti, I was so excited because he understands our families on a personal and professional level, and it makes me very excited that he is in the field doing research to help our families and our children grow up to be adults who are really included in everything where people are included. So Dr. Rossetti can let us know how we can wake up the world so they get to know our kids, because if they don't, they are missing out. So, Zach, you helped create this incredible resource with the ARC of Massachusetts called “Making Friends in School: A Toolkit for Teachers, Paraprofessionals, and Parents.”

Jen is going to share that link in the chat so you all can see that as well. I want to share a little background first and then we can dive in. I'd like to read a quote from the toolkit that starts us off on a personal note. It is about your brother, Todd. You wrote, “My brother Todd was included in general education classrooms throughout elementary, middle, and high school. Adults and students of all ages seemed genuinely excited to see him, and they frequently mentioned how happy he was. Often we didn't know these people ourselves, and they would always explain that they were in class with Todd or knew him from school. Clearly, inclusion is critical to friendships.

However, despite his popularity, Todd was never called at home and he never hung out with friends outside of school. In fact, he did not ever develop a true friend. Todd was included and accepted, but not befriended.” So that's hard to read, and what strikes me about Todd's story is that he wasn't excluded in the way that we typically think about exclusion, maybe how a lot of our kids are treated, right? They're ignored. Todd's classmates knew him, they liked him, they were happy to see him, but as you write, you wish those kids hadn't just walked away after saying hello or giving Todd a high five. I think another parent in the study was quoted as saying her daughter with CP was extremely high fived.

The sad thing is, for many families, they would love just having that high five, but in reality, we all recognize that there is a difference between acknowledgment and belonging. Excuse me. And in fact, your 2025 study, you spoke with 44 students from elementary through high school, and none described having a friendship with a classmate with an intellectual or developmental disability. That is really depressing and sadly, unsurprising. So I just talked a lot, but I want to know, Zach, what struck you most about what these kids had to say and what does it tell us about why friendships with our kids aren't happening?

Yeah, thank you. It was a really surprising finding in some ways, because I expected to hear about at least a couple of friendships. This was a smallish and fairly well resourced district that called itself inclusive, and the fact that there weren't any friendships was somewhat surprising on one hand. On the other hand, not, because... --and you understand. Yeah. --Yes. Right. Right. Lots of places say they're inclusive and are very far from it, and so that was part of it. It was really interesting. I'll come back, I think, to some... Well, this will take us to some broader ideas too, but there were some clear differences by grade levels that were pretty fascinating.

In elementary school, the students were... described some of the behaviors that they saw in class from a classmate with a disability and a lot... and the students didn't know what to make of them, and they said that the behaviors were kind of funny and that they laughed and they weren't sure if they should laugh or not. And I don't think it was that they were making fun of the students, it was just funny that this happened in class, and it showed, I think, a lack of understanding about the behavior and about their classmate with the disability that went unaddressed.

And so in elementary school, there tends to be more inclusion, more opportunities together, and if there are these interactions or behaviors or different ways of communicating, different ways of engaging in class, that they tend not to be addressed by school professionals. I think we kind of forget, well, what are students thinking about them and how are they understanding this, and that stood out because there are clear social consequences of that. If students aren't understanding someone's behaviors or communication or ways of being in class, that there might... there are going to be problems related to friendships.

The middle school students were the sharpest, I thought. They recognized that their classmates with disabilities were often in separate places, they wondered why there was a Friendship Club at this school, and they said things like, “Well, why the heck do we need this Friendship Club? If I saw my classmates with disabilities more, we wouldn't need this club.” And they also recognized... Smart kids. Sorry. Had to... Yeah, I know they were. They were incredible, and they recognize that teachers treated their classmates with disabilities differently. Sometimes too easy, like they got away with stuff that was clearly against the rules, and sometimes too harshly, like they had to leave the room.

And again, it points to ways that teachers can let everybody know about what inclusion means and the different supports or accommodations that different students have in class, but also kind of points to equity in some ways. And these are all important because friendships are, and need to be, horizontal relationships in terms of social power and kind of reciprocity and mutuality, and so to be a potential friend, if we're striving for authentic friendship as much as possible, we need to kind of even the playing field, I guess, or be on that horizontal rather than vertical axis, and it's a way to improve inclusion as well.

The high school students were problematic, and I think really emblematic of what we do in special education and things we call inclusion that aren't really inclusion. The high school students clearly were acting as mentors and helpers and were on the kind of vertical way of interacting with peers with disabilities. This school had a unified inclusive sports program, and all of the students I spoke with were talking about how they helped the kids, and they used that word... those words like ‘kids,’ ‘buddies,’ in the program, and it was pretty infantilizing. It was pretty clear that not only did they see themselves differently than their peers with disabilities, but they thought I would be just as pleased about how much they were, quote unquote, helping them because their teachers probably were, and this separate system that’s set up in school kind of promotes that, and so that was problematic, obviously, for friendship.

And then there was a little bit of discussion about students not knowing how to interact with their classmates with disabilities, non-disabled students, and when they don't know, they kind of reverted or resorted to just trying to be nice, and it was somewhat overly formal, which led to either more helping or kind of inauthentic relationships, and so it was the chance for kind of authentic friendships was hindered by that as well. And maybe also the not even understanding what they were do... I mean, if you think... If they thought about their friends, they would realize, right, this is not how I'm friends with other friends, and not just I might need to communicate differently, but because I'm not actually treating them as a friend, but it isn't that they were doing something malicious, and I think you just said so much, and I really want to unpack a lot, and I think, let's really kind of go step by step to unpack a lot of what you said.

First of all, though, I have to say I kept hoping that once we were getting towards high school, that as kids get older that they would understand and be more open, but like you said, they were, but in a way that maybe... that they weren't fully understanding that what they were doing was not... that they were there to really create authentic friendships and not to be a helper and have a token ‘helpee,’ which we’ll definitely... or however we want to say it, which we'll talk about.

I mean, there is lots of potential. I think that kind of dynamic is somewhat easily redirected for for many students, and I have worked with and known many high school students who do hit a level of maturity or recognize... being more confident in themselves and being... and therefore being more open to others that they may not have been in middle school, for example, so there are some positive trends that can happen as you kind of age throughout the school system as well, but this is certainly a dynamic to watch out for. Yeah, and another thing that you said struck me that is so true, and that is that some of the kids that you interviewed actually pointed to the way that schools separate students with disabilities from their peers, so it seems like we're creating the very social barriers that we're then trying to teach our kids to overcome.

So, I mean, how do we... Let’s make it harder for ourselves. Yeah, exactly. We're talking about inclusion, but it's not exactly being modeled, so how do we overcome that? Yeah. Well, so inclusion obviously maximizes time together, which allows students to see each other, get to know each other, learn about each other's strengths and interests and ways of being and support needs, and all of that, and those are all important for friendships. And maybe I'll say right now, what guides me in a lot of this is how anyone makes friends, which is... most of us, at any age, make friends with people that we see frequently and with whom we share interests and/or identity characteristics that are important to us, so those are all clearly important and why inclusion is often linked to friendships, but even in inclusive classes and I... That's... That can mean a range of things in terms of equality and social opportunities, so that's part of the problem, but we often need to do more proactively and purposely to support social opportunities, higher quality social opportunities consistently over time that eventually hopefully would become friendships.

We can't force people to become friends. We wouldn't want to, but that's kind of the approach in the general framework, so even when students are together, we need to do more things, but it's very helpful when they are together inclusively. We're taking out one of those barriers, right, and you know that there's others to work on, but that's a big one. Yeah, and I... Obviously I... There's belonging outcomes of inclusion which are important and related to social connections and friendships, and inclusion.... I view inclusion as a human right and there should be much, much more everywhere, generally speaking, but connected to friendships, I think the key with inclusion is to then look at the quality and quantity of social interactions or interaction opportunities.

That's kind of part of the broad framework that I've come to utilize or that I've developed that can be individualized based on all the contextual pieces and everyone's situation so that the neurodiverse student with a disability can be seen as a potential friend and not stigmatized, seen separately, seen in that... on the bottom of that kind of hierarchical social ladder. So I think I answered the original question. You did, and you also pointed something out that always gets on my mind too, because you can be in an inclusive class and still be socially isolated, and so I think that's the other stuff, and... which I think... and that's what we also want to unpack, because that's what I hear from parents too, about like, well, my kid is in a class, right, but is still isolated. Obviously that doesn't solve everything, which is why... what we're going to be talking about today. Right. And if they're in that inclusive class without the supports they need, they're probably not doing as well as they might otherwise, and whether that manifests in... as behaviors or not participating in lessons or whatever that looks like, and especially if they're... Still I'm seeing this. If they're off to the side or off in the back and it's not addressed or there's not a class or school culture, community being built, then the other... the classmates are recognizing that it feels awkward, seems different, there's a clear divide, and that's not a potential friend, and it's got less to do with the specific student with the disability, but just the systems of supports and service delivery and inclusion in the school that are just kind of setting them up to fail.

So being seen as horizontally as possible, as another peer, as a potential friend, is important, and being a good observer, being honest about, like, okay, what's happening now, and then taking steps to get there if we have to improve the situation, which is what this is all about, is kind of another way to think about it. Yeah, and I want to talk about what schools can do, but before that, I wanted to just ask one thing, because I hear this from a lot of families, and schools say this a lot, so I wanted to make sure to kind of call this out at the beginning, because sometimes conversations about inclusion can unintentionally suggest that friendships with non-disabled peers are somehow more valuable than friendships with other kids with disabilities, so how do we make sure that we're not reinforcing that idea while still advocating for more opportunities for friendship?

Because I feel like that's something that we hear a lot as an excuse to not do it. I mean, I know at the beginning of our journey it was like, “But your daughter's peers are disabled peers.” I'm like, I know, and we love them, but she should have access to everyone and she should be able to choose her friends as well, so anyway, I don't... --Right? Yeah. No, that's such an important point and a great question, and I think what you just described is a big piece of it. The emphasis on inclusion that sometimes implies valuing friendships with non-disabled students initially... or it comes from the persistent lack of inclusion, which again... so... and when and if someone is included and does interact with all sorts of peers and classmates and has the opportunity to choose how they spend their time and how they spend their... and who... how they spend their time and who they spend their time with, that's, I think, what we would desire for everyone, and when someone has that choice, it... We... Again, we can't dictate who becomes friends and why people connect and whether they're diagnosed or not, as with anything, is almost immaterial at that point.

They've had connections, so it's not that they're more valuable, it's just often that they're not even possible and not a thought, so it gets kind of caught up in that inclusive piece. The other thing that's really important is that... and this is a fairly... for a little while now, but fairly recent development is that some autistic and neurodiverse advocates over, I don't know, the last five, ten, maybe longer years have taught us and kind of advocated around this, that we need to be careful not to elevate even not just friendships with non-disabled or neurotypical people, but neurotypical definitions of friendship and ways of interacting, and there are advocates who have said, “I do have a range of friends. My autistic friends know me the best. They know when to kind of pull me out or when to just sit back and let me be, and I can just sit and be quiet with them or sit and be myself, whatever that means, with them more easily than neurotypical people.”

And that certainly should be an option for folks as long as there is that choice and kind of full range. Our kids should have a choice who their friends are, just like everyone else, right? Go figure. Yeah, exactly. Go figure. Since, again, we don't have to tell anyone listening to this, but they are people. I want to talk about what we can do, so... And I want to start with elementary because, as you pointed out, and we know that it can look a little different as kids grow, so what are some practical ways that teachers and other staff can create natural opportunities for friendship during recess, lunch, classroom activities? What should we be working on with them?

Sure. Yeah. So elementary friendships are still largely play based, and so there's an emphasis on who plays well together and kind of the process of becoming friends for people at any age, incorporating kind of age specific, cultural specific norms of what people at that age do are basically like, what does the social interaction look like? What do people do at this age? So in elementary school, it's largely play based, as I said, and then so if you have the opportunity to play with different people, how did it go?

If you enjoyed it and the other person seemed to enjoy it and you were doing things together and you got along and enjoyed it, you're more likely to do it again. And then when you do it again and again, you kind of get to know each other and develop some of those deeper friendship characteristics and choose to spend more time together, and that's very generally the process of how friendships develop. And so paying attention to those interactions and doing things before, during, after to try to make sure it goes well or that there's going to be another round is kind of the broad thinking around this. Elementary inclusion, as I mentioned with the study, interviewing non-disabled students, inclusion could be improved, or the social outcomes of inclusion could be improved if teachers build more inclusive culture in class and explain to all of the students in class what that means, and everyone... We don't all get the same supports, we get what we need, and when she does this, it means this, kind of addressing some of what's not often addressed so it doesn't become a big deal or a potential barrier to social interactions.

Broadly, any age, developing a friendship mindset is, I think, the starting point and what that means, and it's in the handbook you mentioned, but what that means is basically believing that our student and... or students and children would make amazing friends, and that others would want to be friends with them. And with a teacher hat on, if I'm a teacher in a classroom thinking about friendships, thinking about social consequences of academic decisions basically all the time, because there's... Some students might get overwhelmed in the hallway between classes or struggle with transitions and so if that needs to happen, that they leave class early, for example, that can take away from some of the social interactions that happen at the end of class as they're walking to their special or whatever, so if it needs to... So I would first ask, does it need to happen. Can we do something else if it needs to happen? How can we make up for it in other ways?

And so thinking about a friendship mindset is just constantly trying to make sure that kids connect socially. Because elementary schools do focus on social emotional learning and development of all students, most elementary teachers are kind of doing this. It's the middle school and high school teachers that need to do it more. Okay. Sorry. Those are some broad... Yeah, yeah, because I want to talk about middle and high school, so... but I don't know if you wanted to... Yeah. There are a couple of specific things that I'll add quickly about elementary school. Lunch is difficult because it's short and kids do need to eat, but some effective strategies I've seen or recommended are a student with a disability might choose a classmate to invite to sit next to them at lunch that day, and then when they sit together at lunch, the important next step so it's not awkward or just silence is to structure the conversation.

Some kind of social script, topic to talk about, pre-teaching to the non-disabled peer, which hopefully would be happening in the class about how the student communicates or things like that, so that can be helpful. At recess, some effective strategies to be more inclusive have been having a buddy bench. Do people know what those are? I know what that is, but you might want to talk about what that is or what it should be. I don't know if I love the name, so I might rename it, but it's basically a place where someone, anyone, not just students with disabilities, obviously, anyone can go and sit if they're bored or not part of a game or an activity at recess and want to join something that other kids are doing, and all of the kids are taught when you see someone on the bench, you have to include them, and so it's... it resonates with elementary students.

It's very concrete. Here's what to do, and if you see this, here's what you need to do, type of thing. In k through five schools or pre-k to five schools, having older students at... if they're at the same recess or are able to kind of be like inclusion recess monitors to try to facilitate the same type of thing without a buddy bench, so they would kind of be walking around and if they see anyone who's on their own and they don't want to be on their own, let's... they help them join an activity type thing. Yeah, I'll pause there, because there's some classroom things, but it's... We've talked about inclusion and classroom stuff a little bit.

Well, I love a lot of what you said, and I'm sure that's going to echo into... because I'd love to know obviously same question about middle and high school, but what you're talking about, it so frequently is about trying to teach our kids social skills. Not that that isn't always important, but so much of what you mentioned, right, is teaching all kids and not just about kids with disabilities. That's one part, right, but it's the responsibility of building a culture of belonging, and that goes for all students, right, for everything, so it isn't, again, that tokenism of, hey, include the kid with the disability because it's a nice thing to do. It's like, this is what we're going to do for all of our friends, and taking those student leaders or those older kids, like you said, and having that be really part of their responsibility as a student leader of that school for every child, so that's... Thank you for that. That isn’t happening enough.

I think every parent will know, right? It's about our kid and training them into something and not about everyone else, so yeah. I think I would... We're... There's more to say about that, but just related to this point, friendships include two or more people and too much traditional special ed approaches focus on the child with a disability, think they're broken, we need to fix them, and social skills... There's a couple of steps to friendships after social skills, and I'll speak for myself. I have some friends. I had some friends in school. I don't think I had great social skills. Social skills don't lead to friendships, number one. So that... So we'll come back to that, I guess.

The other piece that what you were saying just made me think of, related to the older kids as mentors and kind of the whole school community and culture is that students with disabilities often have so many adults around them all the time, and kids not all the time, because some things are tricky and complicated and... but in many situations, kids will kind of figure it out on their own and they'll make an interaction and activity work for each other, and so I wish we saw more opportunities for kids to just be together, try to include each other and figure it out, and the adults are kind of supervising or monitoring from afar.

It's not just like a... Free for all. ...Lord of the Flies type of thing, but kids... Yeah, yeah, kids will figure it out, and when they're invested and they figure out how to interact together, there's... it's... they're well on their way to interacting again and maybe becoming friends or helping each other become friends. Especially if that’s set up as an expectation and that's what they're seeing modeled around them from other kids. And then does that change or how does that change when we're looking at middle and high school?

Because a lot of the social times you're talking about, like recess, there's a lot of social time and... built into elementary that we don't see in secondary so how will that shift once our kids age? Yeah. That's such a good point. There's relatively less social time for students in middle school and high school, so part of the strategy is to maybe maximize interactions during those times, but, I think, beyond the school day a little bit also. The other change... or there are a couple of changes. In terms of friendship, it's not just like these instances of playing together or working together, and it goes well and you want to be with them again. There is conceptually, social-emotionally, there is the development of identity and awareness that this is a long term, enduring relationship that I get something out of.

I give to my friend and want to try to protect and middle and high school students just get way busier as they get older with sports, clubs, activities, performance, whatever someone's into, so I think that becomes a factor as well. Lots of social interactions might happen spontaneously with someone you're in a club or on a team with, like, oh, let's... as we're walking home after practice, we might stop off in this park and sit and talk for a while, and then we have to be home for dinner, or we might go to Starbucks before if we have free period coming up.

And middle school and high school students do start to create their circle of friends, and there's kind of a gravitational pull to be among your friends, and my daughter just started ninth grade and she... the biggest thing we heard about school at first was who was in her classes, and there's one class with someone who's not in her friend group, and that's a huge problem, but some strategies, I think, would... with that context would be to focus on interests from the beginning, and what do people with that interest do in school or outside of school. So club, team, group activity, and it needs to be inclusive, like schools need to, by IDEA, provide supports for nonacademic participation of students, and so really thinking about what someone might... with that interest might do.

Building on social histories can be helpful because in middle school and high school, I've seen that having a friend or two or a social partner or two can kind of break the ice and show other people, oh, this is like... like a classmate, like anyone else, here’s how you interact... It sounds so funny, but I do... I understand... People can get uncomfortable if they haven't been around... or nervous, or, like, well, am I supposed to... and then there's this person hovering next to them. Should I be talking to them, right? Kids can help each other break the ice, so then it just becomes like, oh, okay, let's connect, again, as people, right?

--Yeah. Yeah. Really quickly, I saw a question. I think it was... Somebody asked about your research. I just wanted to say that, yes, after we're done, I can definitely... We can go in and we'll share some of the links. I have links to Dr. Rossetti's research, and we'll share that at the end of all of the questions, because I think some people wanted to dig in further, which is great, so we'll definitely share that. And something that you've mentioned a couple times are friendship clubs, right? There's Lunch Bunch, Friendship Club, Best Buddies, whatever it might be called in your school or district, and these can be great opportunities, but sometimes again, we've talked about they can feel a little mascoty, right, where a non-disabled student, they might even get volunteer hours or recognition just for spending time with our kids, and our kids aren't a project, and... So how can we make sure that these programs are actually fostering friendships, right, rather than reinforcing that social hierarchy that you continue talking about?

And maybe the answer is no different than what you've already said, but... because I think these intentions are strong, so how do we make them work? Yes, it's a great question and really important point. I mean, the other common problem with these clubs is it kind of perpetuates that us/them divide rather than being peers. I'm a mentor, tutor, helper and there's not... which could be fine, because we all have strengths and needs and differences, but students with disabilities don't often have the opportunity to kind of give back or be the tutor or beyond, so... but... and interactions when you have a club like that, like I mentioned, unified sports, in the beginning, which is incredible and people love it.

People... Students with and without disabilities, families, it's an incredible opportunity, but it also kind of perpetuates the thinking of, oh, I interact when we have practices and games and not outside of this special group or club or activity, so I think... Well, the first strategy I would probably emphasize for school folks, rename these things and reconceptualize them. It's not... so that they're not condescending, and so that it's not quote unquote special, and importantly, reconceptualize it as well so that it is not a friendship club, because that's kind of... We can't force kids to be friends, and it's kind of awkward, like, we're in this group together and I feel like we have to become friends.

What if we don't have interests that we share? What if I just don't like that person? Just because you have a disability doesn't mean everyone's going to like you, and vice versa. You're not going to like everyone else who's willing to spend time with you. That's awful too, so it's much more effective and reflects how we all make friends if it becomes instead like a diversity club, an inclusion club, or better yet, an interest based club where people with those interests get to do a project or do something together, because when you see each other consistently over the school year and are having fun in an activity or working on a project you enjoy together, you're inherently getting to know each other, you're developing common experiences, which means each subsequent time that you meet, you have more and more to talk about, and it becomes easier and easier to talk.

You develop inside jokes, and that's what... how friends are actually developed. So clubs are a starting point, are great because high school in particular is very busy, so I guess I would kind of suggest those things. If it is like a Best Buddies chapter, which many schools have, the ones that have been the most successful in terms of having more authentic and horizontal interactions, including students with and without disabilities interacting outside of the Best Buddies times are the one where the faculty advisor, the kind of teacher or advisor in charge is like us who knows... whose goal is not just to have a couple of arts and crafts activities during Best Buddies time, but wants kids to interact outside and will connect kids based on interests.

I sometimes come flat out and say like... like I would.... Speaking of my brother, he's... Maybe I... He wants more friends. He wants people to call him after school or to do things outside of Best Buddies, let's say. What do you think? I would ask kids, “What do you think? What would... What are some suggestions for things to do?” or etc. Which I have to say, Zach, my daughter's in high school. There's, I don't know, 100 clubs or something in high school, and there were clubs in middle school as well, and students can start these if they get a staff sponsor, so I think these friendship clubs, this is a great start, but our goal needs to be, hey, those 100 clubs, how are we incurring the support that our kids get to go like every other kid and pick what's interesting to them, and then be surrounded by kids with a similar interest, and is that supported in our school system, and again, creating that culture? That's obviously where we want to get to.

--Yes. And I see that we've had a couple questions specifically to... All right. Let's talk about IEPs. So what kinds of socialization goals, supports, opportunities should parents be asking for in the IEP? How can we really write this in to say great, this is what we should be doing, because a lot of districts and parents too, I mean understandably, right, really focused on academics, so what should that look like and how do we avoid those goals becoming a compliance goal? Because I think they can, a lot of times you see them in strange ways, written in strange ways, right? “Say hi. Say hi five times to a peer.” Things like that. Right. Yeah.

So if that’s important to the student or the family, and that's something that the student would benefit from, like a specific kind of social interaction skill, obviously having social goals would be important, and I think one distinction that is important to make is that... and this kind of gets... well... and is to emphasize social competence more than social skills, so in those weird compliance situations of, “Say hi five times,” that's focusing on the social skill, not social competence, which is the application of the skill in age, culturally appropriate ways, using the skill effectively, so kind of more natural opportunities, that type of thing.

I think related to goals, I would try to add social pieces, social components of academic goals, so, when working in a small group, when prompted from peer tutor, things like that can be helpful. Peer based interventions and supports are really effective, intervention or specialized form of specialized instruction where, as it sounds like, peers are developing or delivering kind of the academic support, so it's a way that students can interact more than they might be otherwise. That's something we can look up after. It's... There's a lot... It's a research based practice. Accommodations can include peer supports or other kinds of socially oriented pieces.

Having a peer editor on writing or... These are... There are probably other examples I'm not thinking of right in the moment. And then two really important things I thought of related to IEPs, and I mentioned it earlier, the kind of nonacademic participation, so within IDEA, there's description of nonacademic settings and nonacademic services that I don't know if many families know about... or maybe you've talked about it or... but really can lead to more positive social outcomes. These are things like lunch, recess, and all the extracurriculars, and nonacademic services would include counseling, athletics, transportation, health services, recreational activities, groups and clubs, employment, pre-employment, so there's all sorts of social interactions or benefits to... including talking to the school about supplementary aides and services that your student or child would need to access nonacademic services or participate with peers without disabilities equitably in nonacademic settings.

I've talked to families who... This would include a dance if schools are still having dances. I think... They do. Our homecoming weekend... Yeah, you're right. Exactly. So what do you need, if you need supports to go? So that would be supplementary aides and services. And then one strategy I learned years ago from Jeff and Cindy Strully, who are out in California, was if the student is going, or your child is going to their IEP, which there's lots of factors to think about, but it's usually beneficial to have the student there. They can learn self-advocacy and all of this, but if they're going, invite a couple of classmates at whatever age to help provide the social context and think about some of the supports that can go into the IEP to support social interactions that way.

That's cool. Obviously, they don't have to stay there the whole time, but having them be there in the beginning and talking about... Yeah, exactly. They wouldn't want to. Yeah, exactly. The teachers struggle with that sometimes, so yeah. And we have about ten minutes, so I... We don't have much time, but I really want to talk and I still have some questions coming in because we also have to address that there are situations with kids who might have behaviors or habits or things that are a little unfamiliar to their peers, so I want to talk about big barriers first, and I know this is a really big subject, but I just want to cover it quickly because then I want to talk about kids with communication challenges, and some behavioral challenges and how we can really build in friendship when things can maybe be a little extra challenging for people who haven't been around disability.

So really quickly, though, aides. You talked about aides. A lot of our kids need adult support throughout the school day, right? Communication, safety, behavior, access. And you've written about how that support can unintentionally create barriers, so what does good aide support look like? Also thinking about maybe are there ways we can write this into an IEP, but what does that look like and how can that... our children get the support they need without having that take away from friendships? Yeah. That... Adults can often be literally like a physical barrier, and when you're younger, it’s cool. Kids want to hang out with you, but very quickly, it's not cool to hang out with adults and they need to interact on their own, so I don’t know. People have described it in different ways.

I think just the right amount of support, like fade and let classmates fill the space that you used to be in or invite classmates to fill the space. And related, we'll talk in more detail about it, like you said, but related to communication or behavior or even academic support and engagement, what do we know? What does the aide know? What do they usually do? And it’s important many times to teach kids in... Respectful of... Teach them what we know in terms of how to interact or support. We want you to interact, but when you interact, when she starts to rock back and forth a little bit, that means she needs a break or... All the things we know.

My brother didn't speak and didn't use an AAC device and so it would be really important to teach potential peers how to ask him questions and sign ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and observe because he sometimes reaches out with his good hand to choose yes or no, but oftentimes we'll just look quickly at the answer or to use a whiteboard and split it up into two, four, six choices, whatever. So these are things that peers... that aides, paraprofessionals could kind of convey to peers as they're fading back and still monitoring, still supervising, but allowing more time for students to interact. Modeling that for students and then letting students try can be a strategy.

Preparing for social opportunities, whether it's recess or going to... in high school, going to a pep rally with peers. I've seen one-on-one aides, paraprofessionals, kind of, whether it's with a social story or other visuals, kind of prepare students, like, okay, you're going to go with your friends or with your classmates, and I'm going to let you go, and if you need me or you need a break, you can use your break sign to... and I'll be right there. So there are a number of strategies that way, I think, but the idea is to try to fade back, pull other kids in and support them to know how to interact, because if it's awkward, especially in middle school, what do middle schoolers do when something's awkward, right? They avoid it. They're not going to do it again, so you might have only a couple of chances, and so you want it to go well for... especially at middle school.

Right, and you want to... Yeah, I love what you said, because you're not ignoring, you're explaining how does this... How does the student communicate? And then you're letting them do it instead of always inserting. They're getting the support they need, but group work doesn't become, which it often does, right, student, aide, and then they're left out of the group work, and then they're missing out on that organic peer interaction that others get. Right. Yeah. And I saw a question about this before. I think it's really important that we touch on, for children who struggle with impulse control, aggressive behaviors, or even just big movements that other kids might find intimidating, friendships can be especially complicated, so how do we help other kids and adults look beyond those behaviors without dismissing their own feelings or boundaries?

Yeah, I... It's a really hard one, and a lot of this is kind of long term and kind of small steps along the way, but trying to understand what's going on with those behaviors ourselves so we can better support our students and children, and then explaining that, kind of we were just talking about... explaining how to support someone if there are certain signs or kind of triggers. Do we need to take a break? Do you need some other support? And how to be safe themselves if it happens. So all of that is there, and then I... The kind of backward planning idea where we think about, okay, when do these behaviors not occur?

Or in terms of interests or activities, what does this student love the most? And I would kind of start there for potential social interactions. I mean, especially if there are fewer behaviors during that activity or during that time, but when... Yeah, when do behaviors not occur or occur less and trying to focus on those times or a preferred kind of interest or better times. If we do a good job around behaviors, like certain... Are they happening certain times of day more than others? Other kind of contextual strategies around what... Yeah, when they happen, when they're least likely to happen. It is probably one of the hardest situations for sure. And like you said, let's plan ahead. Let's think about it. Let's try to get in front of it.

And also everything you are saying just makes me think, and let's start inclusion, and having all kids around all kids as early as possible. I mean, I have friends who were lucky enough to be in fully inclusive schools from the beginning, and those kids grew up with their kids, so they knew, oh, okay. I'm just making up a name, right? Or I'll say Zach. Zach's getting... He's getting a little unregulated, right, or dysregulated, and then the peers also sort of knew... they knew how to handle that. They knew where they might be, like, “Hey Zach, here's something that you like,” and they can also be involved with that because when they don't see these students and they're stuck somewhere else, and then all of a sudden they're in 11th grade and they've never seen a child who's stimming or who's reacting, and that seems a little like, “What's going on?” but when they've seen it from kindergarten, they just know that student, they know those behaviors, and so that's... It's just another thing of like, let's not act like we're different species, and then all of a sudden, right, kids are way more open minded, I guess, than adults, right, and so when we're taking that segregation out of it and that barrier.... Right, and if they see it, it needs to be explained, because that goes back to the original... The elementary students who were... kind of had that nervous laughter about certain behaviors they saw in class. Clearly something just happened that doesn't usually happen in class.

As adults, we need to address it, explain it, and kind of make sure they understand fully what's going on, and what do you do when you get upset about something? What do you get upset about? How do you show that you're upset and how do you... ‘calm down’ is probably not a great phrase, but how do you... What are your calming strategies? And just making... Kids will get it and what seems like a huge distraction or disruption, even destructive kind of stuff becomes more... easier to handle and more normalized in many situations when we do that. Right. Absolutely.

And looking at the time, and I know it's time to wrap up. We have so many things that we didn't get to, so we have to have you back because I want to dig further, but I do want to kind of... As ending, Zach, I mean, for the parent watching who thinks or knows that their child is lonely or worries that their child may never have a close friend, what is one thing that you want them to leave with today? Yeah, that... That's such an important question. I think, this is... This work of trying to promote friendships is long term, and there is an unknown to it, and it's hard. I do this for a living, and I tried to help my brother and our mom kind of promote this, and we were very unsuccessful for many years, and then out of the blue, there was a social connection for parts of a couple of years that I think may be a couple levels removed, but was related to some of our strategies, so you never know what's going to happen, so I guess I would say to keep at it.

When you do get tired or frustrated, take a break, talk to others, rely on your supports, but I remember a mother of a student in New Hampshire kind of saying, “When would I stop? I don't know if I stopped after 50 tries or 100 tries, and then I keep thinking, would the 101st try have been the one that stuck,” right? So while supporting yourself, keep at it, and I think... We didn't talk about this, but there's a piece about taking risks also in all of this work, so taking risks that you're comfortable with. Things that need to happen or definitely can't happen for your student or child can't... shouldn't happen, but within that context, what risks are you comfortable with?

And one very practical one, if we have a minute still, I... this same parent who talked about the 101st try, she had a daughter with Rett syndrome. I was... In our town, I was... She knew my mom and our brother... and my brother, and I was a few years older and had gotten my license, and she... the risk she took was letting me, a new 16 year old driver, drive her accessible van with her daughter and her daughter's classmates to waterparks, to the mall, all these places. I basically became the young, cool chauffeur slash older guy they got to hang out with if they hung out with this woman's daughter, and that was a huge risk, but part of what maybe... Her daughter was awesome and probably drew all the classmates to her and had great relationships, but maybe I was part of that equation in some way, so I... That's a big risk though, and that's... I wouldn't recommend that for everyone.

I have some friends who... I know how much those accessible vans cost. I know. Well, we had one. One of my other brothers crashed our accessible van, which was a huge, huge problem. So we're glad they picked Zach and his other brother to be... Right, right. ...for your friend. Oh my gosh. And I mean, I know... There is... I do have to ask one thing, if you have one minute. There is one question that came in a lot with questions ahead of time, were that parents were really concerned because their friends could not discern if someone else was being genuine.

They didn't have the skills to know if somebody was going to be... actually be their friends. There were a lot of people that sent questions in ahead of time that said there were kids who acted like they were a friend, but they were not kind. They worry about their friend... They’re parents worrying about their children meeting somebody that could be a bad influence. Of course, you could say that for any child, but when you really don't have the skills to maybe understand if someone is being real, if someone is being cruel, or if somebody is a true friend, what advice do you have for parents on that?

Yeah, that's a really important one and unfortunate that it does happen. We always saw it with my brother's disability, which was cerebral palsy, and not speaking. It was that vulnerability, and he couldn't necessarily tell us if anything happened to him, so that’s one part of it. The one... and it's related, but a little different than the one you're describing. I think two things, well, maybe three. For the school, building that inclusive culture and trying to limit bullying or kind of manipulation or taking advantage of someone and getting them in a situation where they then... I... Yeah, it's... Yeah... get made fun of, type of thing. As a family, it's a reason, if it's possible for you and there are different ways to kind of do it, but being connected to peers and maybe there are neighborhood kids or friends from elementary or middle school who can be advocates in the school and you can talk to them about, like, this happened last year.

We don't want this to happen, and we need... Can you help stand up or... and try to prevent this kind of thing from happening, or just know that it's happening and then you can... They'll let you know that's happening, and then you can talk to teachers about it. And I think it's also... It's probably the one situation that makes sense to me where social skills training, social skills interventions do make sense, like how to read emotions and what's safe and unsafe discussion or activities in a relationship. And so teaching students with disabilities about safe or healthy relationships and what to look for very, very specifically, and there are... and then teaching other kids not to do it, having advocates, in the school or maybe the paraprofessional is your eyes in the school.

What's going on? Is any of this happening this year? Because I heard it happened last year, type thing. That's an awful one. It's a bad one, and so, yeah, so before we wrap up, is there anything... Let's end on a good, positive... Any last thought, anything that we didn't cover that you want to leave people with, Zach? I... Yes, there should be. I think one of the strategies we mentioned is kind of teaching potential peers and potential friends some of the information that we know and what someone needs in a relationship and how to initiate interactions if someone struggles with that and this and that, but I... Oh, sorry. I lost my train of thought after doing this for over an hour.

Sorry, I know, and we've gone over, so you don't have to have a lot. I just... because we've talked about something which I know is sort of sobering, so I just was hoping to kind of... Yeah. Well, one of my favorite stories from one of my studies that was looking at established friendships and figuring out how they developed and what their friendships looked like, one of the examples of an inside joke, but also reciprocity, where the autistic student was kind of, as friends in a friendly way, teasing his non-disabled friend, because one of the things they like to do together was go to the zoo and... What did she say?

She said, “Oh look, there are pink swans,” and he used the communication device and he typed out, “That's not a pink swan, that's a flamingo,” and so that became their own... I think if I got that right, that became their own inside joke, and he would always type it out or press it on his device when they were hanging out with other people and try to tease her, and so that kind of reciprocal teasing and ideally I... being able to tease each other, being able to get annoyed if someone's being annoying and figure out how... I feel like these kinds of things are more authentic and what we should be... If kids had more time to hang out together, they would develop inside jokes and they would give some natural consequences or feedback like, “That's annoying. Let me get a word in edgewise,” or, “Let me talk about something next,” and yeah... Sorry. We didn't talk about social skills and... Can I end on one last thing about social skills?

So many... The way that social skills are often taught are with teachers, speech pathologists, an adult in a separate class in a very careful, structured way. You say this and then they say this and then they... And if you went to any cafeteria or any playground at recess at any school in the country today and looked, you would not see any of that. What happens is so much quicker and not really always according to that ideal give and take, and there's lots of negotiating and someone jumps in and people have different communication styles and skills and social capital, and there's just all sorts of negotiation. Sure, you need to learn how to take turns, and if that's something, you can work on that, but having the chance to be in those natural settings and practice skills is way more important than kind of perfecting them in this adult directed special ed room, and I would urge all of you to talk to teachers in schools about this because it doesn't happen that way in real life, and so students need to be there.

They need... So generalization is, of those skills, often struggles because it's so different than what was practiced in the special ed room, so teachers need to notice that and students need to figure out, okay, how do I communicate? What are my strengths and needs? What's my social capital? How does this work? And as a teacher I would... If we need to talk to students about slowing down and being patient and how this person communicates, we do that so that they don't get left behind, but that's where the friendship work really happens.

Thank you. No, that's so important too in thinking about IEPs, right? When that's the answer to socialization of teaching our kids what they're supposed to do, everything that you've laid out today, so many different examples of how to do that in the organic day in intentional yet organic ways, so really to make sure that we're thinking and we're bringing that to the table if no one from the school is. Let's approach it in all these different ways, and you can write that into the IEP. There's not one way and it's not always just about... And sometimes, like you said, there are things about consent and safety and things that of course we want to be working with our kids, or maybe they have speech goals that make sense to make sure that they understand expressive conversation.

That's not the same as going into a different class with an adult and learning a formalized way of speaking, of... like you said, of... I had to laugh when you were like, “Go listen in a cafeteria, it's like, whoa.” Yeah, exactly. They're not... It's a free for all, so I think that's... --Right. Right. So figuring out how to, yeah, be in that free for all is much more important in many ways. And then if you need some skills to be in there, that's fine. Social skills are not the answer to friendships, social skills and friendship skills or friendship goals can be in the IEP as related but separate things. Right.

And not always... Yeah, not just looking someone in the eyes, right, because we hear a lot of those repetitive goals, and so everything that Zach has talked about today, right, that can be your IEP goal, not looking at somebody and saying, “Hello,” in the face when that in itself can make a lot of people shut down and then not want to socialize. So, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Dr. Rossetti, for joining us today, for not only sharing what you've gained from your research and your professional experience, but from your brother and from your lived experiences and from your family with Todd, so thank you so much.

As we said at the beginning, we know this can be a really emotional topic for families because we see all of the parts of our kids and loved ones, and too often others don't, and it is painful how little people can know our kids despite being with them every day, so it is time to move our society beyond high fives, and if we remove those barriers and make those pathways of intentional inclusion in all the ways that Dr. Rossetti laid out, it starts creating a culture and an expectancy of belonging. The hope would be that it would then also lead to organic and genuine friendships. And so one of the quotes from Zach's research that I really love is, “Friendship is having someone understand your quirks and just going with it,” because we know the people that are closest to us, they know our quirks and they love us despite them or because of them, and these are the things that make us unique, and our kids deserve that same respect, right?

Because at the end of the day, we don't just want someone, like Zach said, to sit next to our kids at lunch. We want someone who looks for them when they walk in the room, or who misses them when they're out, who wants to be there not because anyone asks them to be, but because they're friends. So if you need guidance on how you can write friendship and socialization into your child's IEP and get help from your school, check out our Undivided platform. If you need that 1:1 support, our Undivided Navigators are here to help. So thank you again to Dr. Rossetti and to all of you. Our mission is to support you so your children can thrive, and we want you to thrive too. We'll see you soon. Bye.