Background: It has been well established that heterogeneous groups of young children with mild intellectual disability are at considerable risk of becoming socially isolated from their peers in school, home and community settings.
Method: Matched groups of young children with and without Down's syndrome (DS) were compared in terms of the children's involvement with peers, maternal arranging and monitoring of peer play, and maternal beliefs about inclusion.
Results: Despite aetiology-specific expectations for children with DS, no differences were found for a variety of measures of peer involvement focusing on the frequency of contacts and the characteristics of children's peer social networks. Maternal arranging of activities with peers was similarly related to peer involvement for both groups of children. Higher ratings of the benefits of inclusion were obtained from mothers of children with DS, but these maternal beliefs were unrelated to maternal arranging or peer involvement.
Conclusions: Parental adaptations to the aetiology-specific behavioural patterns of children and the general influence of children's experiences within a developmental framework are discussed in the context of interpreting aetiology-specific findings.