Autism 
3 Comments Autism Abounds at the Playground
We were at the park the other night with the kids. It’s funny how Adrian will run into people he knows and the rest of us don’t know them because they are people from around his school. I’ve met his teachers and some of the aides but apparently not everyone because a lady I’ve never seen before started waving and saying “Hi Adrian!” and I had no idea who she was. It was pretty funny. I talked with her for a few minutes and she asked if he saw the Spiderman movie because she knew he was asking about it constantly. Then we went to his school open house all of the teachers knew that he had seen his movie so she must’ve told them about our little visit.
While the kids were playing on the playground a dad brought his son over to play. I could tell almost immediately that there was a special need involved with this little boy. I believe he had autism. Lincoln was very interested in him and they were about the same size, I think the boy was a little bit younger than Lincoln. Well this little guy started kind of squealing pretty loudly and Lincoln did not like it at all, he was covering his ears and getting upset. He started trying to cover the boys mouth which did not go over well. He started screeching louder which agitated Lincoln more. Of course I ended it right away and told Lincoln to keep his hands to himself or he wouldn’t be playing anymore and I apologized to the dad. Not long after we decided to let the kids swing in another area of the park, which was the plan from the beginning because Sanura only likes to swing these days and we’d been playing for a while.
I felt almost like I wanted to say something more like that I understood or something. I wanted to be encouraging in some way but nothing felt natural to say. Hopefully he didn’t think we left the park because of his son, that wasn’t the case although I was feeling nervous about how Lincoln would react to the boy.
I guess even families dealing with special needs sometimes don’t know what to say or do when they’re around another family who is dealing with special needs.
Having two kids on the spectrum and possibly a third would be mroe difficult than i can imagine. i am going into occupational therapy in college, so i am always interested in stories about kids that are on the spectrum. my mom is an opcupational therapist so i have seen some kids that she’s worked with. i lvoe seeing how my mom works with them and their reaction to certain activities that she has them do. it is interesting to see the reactions of kids on the spectrum, when they are around other people. i think it would be very difficult to take an autistic child to the park, let alone two or three. i hope that the other family understood why you moved away, but i feel like you were able to handle the situation very well. i hope that when i start to work with kdis on the spectrum, i am able to adapt to their quirks, and react accordingly.
Good luck to you and your family,
Chelsea
That is so true. As they say, “when you’ve seen one kid with autism, then you’ve seen one kid with autism.” They are all impacted by the diagnosis differently and being around another child with autism can be just as unfamiliar as being around a completely different special need (such as when we are visiting our unsighted friend my daughter’s age).
I am elven years old and I want to be an Applied Behavioral Analysis consultant (ABA) I love this blog!! I am very interested in autism.