DA: Program Encourages Students to Eat Together at Lunch

[Ron Obvious]

Today's Dear Abby:

DEAR ABBY: Schoolchildren, especially middle school or high school students who may not be socially adept, often eat lunch alone because they don't know what to do when it comes to joining other kids at the lunch table. My grandson, who is on the autism spectrum, is one of them.

(snip)

It's lonely to eat lunch by yourself. Please encourage your readers to consider this. -- SOMEONE WHO CARES IN SAN DIEGO

DEAR SOMEONE WHO CARES: I'm glad to do that. The pain of social isolation can last far beyond the elementary and middle school years and color a person's expectations of rejection into adulthood. Much of it could be avoided if parents took the time to explain to their children how important it is to treat others with kindness.

In recent years, attention is finally being paid to this. A national organization, Beyond Differences, started a program called "No One Eats Alone" that teaches students how to make friends at lunchtime -- which can be the most painful part of the school day. It's their most popular program, and schools in all 50 states participate.
http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/2017/3/12/program-encourages-students-to-eat-together

Popular with whom? Not with us loners! For Christ's sake, what an absolutely awful idea! I suspect I would have gone stark raving mad had this sort of thing been in place when I was in school. I used my lunch breaks to unwind and read, not to to be forced to socialise with kids I didn't want to be with. I had more than enough of that during class.

Adults, please let kids be kids and work out their own social order.

It's the common, everyday prejudice of the extroverted speaking here. At least a lot of the commenters below the line get it.

[LWolf]

1. I have a group of my students,

leadership students, who make sure that nobody eats alone who doesn't want to. If someone is by themselves in the cafeteria, they will sit and eat and chat with them, get to know them, and help them connect with others if they need that.

I also have some students, introverts who NEED down time, who eat lunch in my room so that they don't HAVE to interact. They choose. They'd rather sit in my room with a few others around the room than in a crowded, noisy cafeteria.

Both of those needs...to be accepted by people, to make friends, AND to be alone, are served, and should be. People sitting by themselves in the cafeteria aren't always by themselves because they are introverts. For some, it can be an excruciating, isolating, exclusionary experience that they dread each day.

It's easier to provide for both of those needs in my small, community-oriented school than it is in big industrial-sized schools.

[Ron Obvious]

2. Delicately handled, that could certainly be a positive, I agree

I think I was annoyed by the "nobody eats alone" bit, but if a programme like that could distinguish between "loners" and "failed joiners", that could certainly be a positive. I don't know many extroverts who could tell the difference, though.

Actually, I could only imagine the horrible vengeance my classmates would have taken on the unfortunate kid they would have been forced to befriend. Being held by their ankles and flushed down the toilet would have been the least of it.

[LWolf]

3. The small school environment helps.

These kids, for the most part, have been together their entire school career; they all know each other, and they get excited about new students; they generally welcome new students enthusiastically. Because they know each other so well, they know who likes time alone, and who doesn't; both are accepted.

The only students who really need help tend to fall into one of these groups:

1. New students who are afraid they'll be bullied;

2. New students who bring behaviors that are likely to create trouble;

3. Some autistic or other students who haven't developed, for what ever reason, the ability to interact successfully with others.

[littlemissmartypants]

4. I used my vampire voice to scare off the botherers in HS.

"I vant to be alone." I would say, as I gestured the closing of my coffin. Too much togetherness can be exhausting.

In actuality, I pictured them as the energy sucks, draining the life out of me. I have to have alone time. I have to recharge my batteries.

For some of us this is a flirtation with torture. It's intrusive at best. Childism at worse. Failure to recognize any person's right to bodily autonomy is wrong, imo.

for the post Ron Obvious.

for the disrespectful imposition in the lives of these developing human persons. Next thing you know they're "encouraged" to pray or join yearbook club when all they really need is to hang out with the art teacher, or to sit alone on the steps, under a tree and write poetry.

Thank you for the post. ♡

[Still Blue in PDX]

5. As someone who was very shy and socially awkward as a child, I like this idea.

It took me somewhere between 40 and 50 years to figure out that I really am an introvert and like being alone. I spent a great many years feeling lonely because as an only child in a dysfunctional family, spending a lot of time hiding out, I didn't have a chance to make a decision to be alone or not.