Meg Evans megevans.com It’s June again — that time of year when we wake early to birdsong and a bright sunrise, our days are long and pleasant, and summer camps are getting underway for school-age children. For parents who have an autistic child, a major consideration in choosing a camp is how well it can meet the child’s needs. Many families choose an inclusive camp, where children with and without disabilities participate equally and often are paired as buddies to encourage them to spend time together and develop friendships. The games and activities in such programs generally are cooperative rather than competitive, so that all of the campers can have fun regardless of their skill levels, and no kids are left sitting on the sidelines. Inclusive camps often are promoted as having educational value for autistic children, in that they provide an opportunity to interact with non-autistic peers and develop…
Tag: summer camp
Shannon Des Roches Rosa www.thinkingautismguide.com www.squidalicious.com Summer. Now there’s a word that terrifies parents of school-aged kids with autism. We do not necessarily associate the word with “break.” For us, summer means potential implosion of carefully orchestrated school, services, and respite schedules — and the resulting scrambling and scraping to make new arrangements. My son Leo’s last day of fourth grade was Friday, and I am fretting. He is in such a beautiful space in his wonderful new school — progressing on his IEP goals, excited to get on the school bus every morning, arriving home trailed by email reports of successful, action-filled classroom days. Getting him to this point has taken months of routine-reinforced effort. I’m worried that summer will undo it all. Children with autism work hard to gain skills during the school year, and that learning can quickly slip away without ongoing, reinforcing learning opportunities. This means…
Chris Pierce is the Director of Via West, part of Via Services. It’s an organization over half a century old that provides early intervention services in a clinic setting, and offers a camp experience to participants ages five and up, including people in their 70s and 80s, at their Via West campus in the Santa Cruz mountains, just a few minutes drive from the heart of Silicon Valley. The client needs range from autism, to mild physical or cognitive impairments to those with more significant mobility issues and medical concerns. Chris how did you come to be a camp director and why do you think camp is so important? It was an integral part of my personal child hood. My father was a founder of an adult special needs program back at the camp he started outside of Chicago, Illinois. It’s been in my DNA from day one. I was…