Betwixt and Between

Think that's what I should rename this blog.

So today I took her to this social skills/recreation program. My big concern, which I'd expressed before I took her there, was that she's extremely verbal and "passes" quite nicely. Would there be anyone similarly situated (I hate saying "high functioning," like there's some kind of caste system for autism, but she does need peers to play with. That's the goal, right?)? So I take her there, and the program is really great: the ratio of staff to students was probably greater than 1:1. There was an art therapist, a music therapist, a recreational therapist, a certified Special Olympics coach, a board-certified behavior analyst, two other therapists, and a student volunteer thrown in for good measure. Oh, and a high school science star who's writing a paper for the Intel science competition on prompt dependency. They're on the grounds of this nice Quaker school near here, and they have the run of the place.

My daughter has a great time: there's arts and crafts, monkey bars, barbeque. There are plenty of adults to ooh and aah over how cute she is.

But.

Practically all the kids there were verbal. One or two seemed somewhat social and would return a conversational volley or two. While most of them struck me as somewhat cognitively impaired, there was at least one boy who was very bright. He spent most of the time by himself.

My daughter totally grooved on the adult attention. When they would ask if she wanted to sit with one of the other kids, OTOH, she'd politely say no and continue to monopolize the adult's attention. I don't think she realized some of the other kids weren't really talking, just that they weren't too fun to play with.

And I felt...guilty there. There was my kid, hula-hooping around for swear to God five minutes before the thing fell, swinging from the monkey bars, doing cartwheels, and there were some of the other kids. Not doing that.

But here's the problem we run into with activities or programs. The ones that are for more advanced learners don't usually have people who know much re the disability: I've been to the local social skills programs, and they weren't of much value. The teachers and staff weren't doing much to promote conversation or target skills: it was sort of like "Let's all sit around and be nice to each other," and my kid is nice. And she has social skills. She's just not savvy. And the final nail in the coffin: my daughter didn't seem to enjoy them much.

And yet: the people who really "get" my kid are usually working with much more impaired kids, and I get this "what are you bothering me for? Your kid looks great" vibe from them.

So we beat on, boats against the current. We keep looking and identifying and evaluating and testing and shlepping to therapists....