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The Freedom to Be Odd
by Cammie McGovern

For every parent of a child on the autistic spectrum, the dilemma is familiar:   your child needs help learning to socialize, and navigate what is, for him, the Byzantine world of ordinary children playing ordinary games at recess, yet how do you do it?   How do you ask thirty-five children running around a playground to stop what they're doing, explain a game of tag, and start again, slowly, without too much noise, so this one boy can   join and finally learn the concept that eludes him so mysteriously:   tag, you're it.

The answer, of course, is you can't. Even in a school that has been mainstreaming children with special needs steadily and successfully for almost twenty years, and the general population of children is blissfully accustomed to wheelchairs, walkers, and sign language interpreters, autism presents its own special challenge.   These kids may look fine, but for most of them, the art of play with other children is monumentally complicated.   For one thing, children's play often takes place in chaotic settings, outside where there are lawnmowers and airplanes to grab your child's attention and pull it away.   There are also extraneous conversations, the distraction of laughter and crying, all of it impossible for your child to block out. Not all play requires talking but some of it certainly does.   There are rules to establish, some back and forth. For children to whom language has come late and remained a perpetual stumbling block, the quick chatter of children is often impossible to keep up with. So where does one go to learn these basics: How do you tell a joke? Suggest a game?    Ask other children what they are playing and if you can join?  

Three years ago, a group of six other parents (primarily mothers) and I started a center called Whole Children to run after school classes for children with special needs.   At the time it was a lark.   We'd met in a summer gymnastics class and we liked each other, liked the relief of being with other mothers who shared the same problems.   We wanted to make the gymnastics program year-round with its own site, full of the sensory equipment these children need and often crave:   swings, trampolines, parallel bars, balance boards, a ball pit.   Truthfully, I joined the effort as much for myself as anything else.   Having a child with special needs can be isolating in a way that is hard to describe to anyone except another parent who knows all too well. At the time, I actually thought we wouldn't use the center all that much.   Ethan is reasonably coordinated for a nine-year old boy.   Though it certainly couldn't hurt, his most acute needs weren't going to be addressed by a gymnastics class, I presumed.

And then to my surprise, I watched Ethan on his very first day at the new center, crawl along the ground to keep an eye on a girl he'd just met, who had cerebral palsy.   Though she could walk unsteadily, she did better holding a hand.   For awhile, her mother stayed by her side and then, about halfway through, Ethan surprised everyone.   He stepped over to the girl and offered his hand.   They stayed together for the rest of the class, as her mother and I watched from the sidelines.   Toward the end of the session, her mother shook her head.   “She's trying to keep up with him.   He's getting her to do things I probably couldn't.” The passing remark caught my breath.   We had spent Ethan's whole life emphasizing the importance of being with “typical” kids, using them as “models,” prompting him through play dates and games he's never much enjoyed or seen the point of.   Finally it occurred to me:   When had Ethan ever been better than another child at anything?   When had he experience the joy that comes from helping someone else?

Over the last year and a half, what I have seen continues to surprise me:   Ethan seems to recognize intuitively what he shares with these children and in their presence he relaxes more.   Just as the children with CP arrive at the center and slide out of their braces, leave their walkers at the door, Ethan sheds something too:   the weight of conforming his body and controlling its natural impulses.    He bounces happily from one end of the room to the other.   He connects with other children, not in the ways he's been taught to do at school, with high fives and socially appropriate questions.   Here, he says hello by grabbing an elbow and kissing it; by getting down on the floor and examining someone's shoe. “Its' got holes!” he announces when he stands back up, as if he's never noticed before what defines a sandal.   And maybe he hasn't. In the hard work of getting through his school day, when is there time to look at a girl's clothes and take in the specifics?

In the year and a half that Whole Children has been operating, we've begun offering more classes: music, art, yoga, woodworking, recess games.   From a parents' perspective, all of these classes are targeting weaknesses, integrating therapy to build up skills in the guise of play.   What I see as I watch Ethan interact with other children his age who are learning to walk, to balance on one foot, to hold a pencil, is that he is quietly and steadily making gains on the skills that have for so long eluded him. He notices other children now, hears what they say to him, well enough now to answer about fifty percent of the time.     

There's an irony to this discovery.     In America, we have spent the last twenty years in a battle to end segregated classrooms for children with special needs.   As the beneficiary of this fight, I can see the countless ways that it's important for all children to have equal access to the same education.   There is a world, after all, populated primarily by people without disabilities.   To live in it one day, with some measure of independence, will require a lifetime of practice that must begin when children are young.   Given that philosophy, it's counterintuitive to argue that segregated recreation is an answer, and yet, having watched how it works, I would say that it is.  

For years, we tried valiantly to sign Ethan up for the same activities his typical peers were doing and all of it felt vaguely forced.   Swim lessons were a trial, beginning soccer league an exercise in watching him pluck at grass blades and retreat to a pile of   sand he could sift through his fingers.   We'd cajole and prompt him with ludicrous rewards:   “Kick the ball once and you can go back to the sand,” we'd scream from the side.   He would nod, do as he was told, and return to his real pleasure.

At Whole Children the experience has been entirely different and looking at that difference has taught me something about the point of play.   Ideally, in its truest form it   should come from the child, reflect who he is and take place—hopefully, if it's possible—apart from adults, with all their well-intentioned direction, prodding, cajoling and prompting.   If play is the beginning of measuring the world and finding one's place in it, it shouldn't be hard and one should feel successful.  

These days I watch Ethan with his friends at Whole Children, the regular crowd he knows well enough now that he moves away from me and stands with them in the lobby, waiting for class.   Today, one boy is trying to teach the others how to make an armpit fart, surely not a skill any adult would prioritize, but Ethan is fascinated, working hard to get the trick of it.   When he fails after five minutes, I hear him say something entirely new for him:   “Listen to this, guys.”   I hold my breath, try to imagine what might follow.  

He then clears his throat and sings, in his beautiful perfect pitch:   “Twinkle, twinkle, little poop.”

The whole group laughs, one boy so hard he falls on the floor.