“Have fun” should not be a rule

A lot of summer camps, youth groups, and other activities have a “have fun” rule.

The implied message is usually: This is a fun place. If you’re not having fun, you’re doing something wrong. Fix your attitude and have fun doing the fun activities.

Sometimes “have fun” rules are explicit. Sometimes they’re more implicit, and come in forms like: making people sing a song every day about how much they love camp, announcements about “we’re all having so much fun!”, or whatever else.

The problem with this is: nothing is fun for everyone. People have the right to feel how they feel about things. It’s really degrading to tell an unhappy person that they should just feel some other way.

“Have fun” rules are especially problematic for many disabled people.

Because — most programs are not fully accessible, even when they think they are. Most of us expect to encounter activities that are inaccessible in ways that make participation impossible — or that make them no fun.

And often, initially fun activities are ruined when someone treats you in a degrading way or says something awful about disability.

Being left out when everyone else is having fun is bad enough. When there’s a “have fun” rule, it’s even worse. Not only are you hurt by the exclusion, you’re told that you’re violating the rules by being hurt and unhappy.

“Have fun” rules make it really hard to solve these problems, because they make it risky to admit that you’re not having a good time.

“Have fun” rules make problems harder to solve, even when the problem has a straightforward solution. All the more so when the problem is complicated. (Or only has a partial solution.)

“Have fun” rules actually make things a lot less fun.

A thought on making difference ok

One issue with accommodations and modifications in school, is that it can often be hard to avoid stigma. Kids don’t usually like being singled out or doing things conspicuously differently. Also, nondisabled kids often resent it when disabled kids are allowed to do things that they are not allowed to do.

Further, one frequent objection to accommodations is “but if I let one kid do this, then all the other kids will want to.”

Sometimes that’s true — and, often, the best solution to that problem is to just let all the kids do whatever the thing is. Sometimes there’s no good reason to restrict access to something. Sometimes changing the rule works better than making exceptions to it.

One way that something works to correct this problem is to make some of their accommodations available to other kids who would like to try them. The kid who has a documented need for accommodations probably isn’t the only one who would benefit from them.

And even aside from that, it’s good for kids to explore the world and experiment with different ways of doing things. This is a good way to learn that difference is normal, and that doing things differently is a basic fact of life.

For instance, if one kid needs to use manipulatives for math, maybe try making manipulatives available to all the kids.

If one kid needs a large print worksheet, maybe make a few large print copies and let kids try doing it that way.

If one kid needs to chew stuff, maybe make things available for other kids to chew.

If one kid needs to use fidget toys, maybe make them available to all the kids who would like to try it.

If one kid needs to type, and you have the resources to make that available to other kids too, maybe let them try doing assignments that way. And let the kids that works better for continue to do it.

And, beyond that, it helps to get in the habit of providing different ways to do things even when there isn’t a kid who needs them as a specific accommodation.

Not in the sense of “take a walk in the disabled kid’s shoes”, this is not a disability simulation. The point shouldn’t be empathy building, and it should not be presented as being about the disabled kid. The message is “there are a lot of legitimate ways to do things, and it’s ok to experiment and figure out what works for you, even if most people don’t do it the same way as you”.

You can’t always do this, and you can’t always do this for everything. When you can, it helps, a lot.

The basic problem with social skills education

Human interaction is really, really complicated.

No one understands it all the way.

Almost every rule has major exceptions. Anything stated in a clear way is going to be oversimplified in some way.

There aren’t rules so much as cultures and traditions that everyone finds their own way to work with.

The most anyone can really say most of the time is “this is sort of how it works a lot of the time” or, “this is probably going to be the case for almost everyone, if not absolutely everyone”. It’s hard to be honest about that, especially when you’re talking about an extremely important area of interaction like physical boundaries.

In addition, people will tell you all kinds of things they wish were true. One example is how people will teach kids “tell an adult” even in situations in which adults are unlikely to care about bullying. Or “tell them it hurts your feelings” because they want that to work.

Writing this blog, I understand more and more why people do things like that. It’s hard not to. But, it’s important. Everything is more complicated than I’m describing; even when I’m mostly right. (And sometimes I’m not.)

I’m saying things that I think are true, as well as I can describe them. But, don’t just believe me. And, particularly, if you think it’s more complicated than I think it is, don’t assume that I’m right and you’re wrong.

Short version: Social skills are skills, and they’re complicated and to a large extent different for everyone. All descriptions, and especially all rules, are approximations are best.

All communities have predators

No place is inherently safe; every space ends up having predatory people in it.

Well-run communities/organizations/schools/whatever have things in place for dealing with this. And, from time to time, abusers hurt people, and the communities actually use the things they have in place for dealing with abuse.

And they will be able to tell you what those things are.

And if the community has been around for a years, they will be able to tell you about instances in which that has happened. (In general terms; they don’t have to (and usually shouldn’t) reveal identifying details).

If a school or business or something gives a training on harassment, and they can’t tell you what’s happened in the past when abuse has happened, and they only say “we take that very seriously”, it’s a major red flag.

If a community/school/whatever tells you that abuse can’t happen there because of how great people are, or how much training there is, or anything like that – that’s an even bigger red flag.

The safest communities are those that recognize that no space is safe all the time, and that it’s always necessary to be on the lookout for abuse.