Ayaan Turns a Corner with Help from Kidz Time
by Taskeen Hamidullah-Bahl
It’s dawn on a Saturday morning. The neighborhood is quiet, except for the chirping of a few birds. From a deep slumber, I hear the hardwood floors down the hall creaking, tentatively. Footsteps, at first hesitant, grow bolder as they approach our bedroom. Then, in a sudden rush of movement, two figures enter our bedroom; they jump onto the bed and begin yelling in unison: “Wake up, wake up… is it time to go to Mr. Randy’s class yet?”
This is a pretty typical routine for our family on Saturday. The surreptitious figures are those of our five-year-old son, Ayaan, who is on the autism spectrum, and his three-year-old sister, Ayesha. “Mr. Randy” is the music teacher in a three-part recreation therapy program for children on the autism spectrum. The program, known as “Kidz Time”, includes music & movement, creative visual arts and games, and is only one of a myriad of services offered by SPARC, Inc. – Special Program And Resource Connection.
SPARC, in its 21st year, is a nonprofit organization based in Westchester County, providing therapeutic, social and recreational services for youth, teens and young adults with developmental disabilities. While residents of Westchester County have access to a plethora of services for young people with disabilities, what makes SPARC so unique is that its focus is on social skills and leisure activities, using a, “therapeutic recreation” model and integrating many related allied professional services. Programs offered at SPARC range from the more traditional music and art therapy to the more distinctive adaptive horseback riding. Do you envision your teenager working on his/her social skills over dinner at a local restaurant? There’s a program for that (“Dinner Friends”). Or perhaps your child with disabilities has expressed an interest in golf and could use some one on one instruction in the sport? There’s a program for that too (“Intro To Golf”). SPARC even has a program for those interested in Hollywood-style film production – workshops which allow young adults to learn technical film production, while at the same time improving their social and imaginative thinking skills.
When Ayaan was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder shortly after his second birthday, my husband and I felt overwhelmed by the list of things we were advised to focus on: there was speech therapy, ABA/behavior modification, occupational therapy, social skills sessions, not to mention biomedical and naturopathic therapies. At age two and a half, Ayaan had absolutely no words, did not gesture or point to communicate his needs and had periods of severe hyperactivity. Following the autism diagnosis, we discovered Ayaan also had severe gastrointestinal issues, which are not uncommon in children on the spectrum. At first, it was just a game of survival – figuring out what we needed to focus on to help Ayaan with basic life skills. So we went the usual route of dozens of hours of ABA, supplemented with speech therapy and sessions at a sensory gym every week. In addition to this, there were regular visits to a GI and a developmental pediatrician and occasional visits to a neurologist.
But a couple of months after his third birthday, after years of early intervention and bottomless parental distress, Ayaan turned a corner. While he still needed help with enunciation and had speech syntax issues, he had gone from a silent child to one who, thankfully, would not stop talking. What was missing from his regimen of therapy sessions was an opportunity to work on his social skills, a critical area for development in most children on the autism spectrum.
My husband and I enrolled him in a variety of costly therapy classes teaching social skills, and while they helped, Ayaan wasn’t actually having fun or making progress socially, in addition to feeling sad to leave his sister behind as he went off to his weekend sessions. As his attachment to his sister grew over time, this temporary separation became harder and harder for both the siblings. So when my husband stumbled upon Kidz Time, it seemed to us like a gift from heaven: finally, here was a program that would be inclusive of our family.
As a two career family with a hectic schedule, rather than taking Ayaan away from us during those precious weekend hours, we could share and enjoy sibling and family participation. Over the past year or so, Ayesha and Ayaan have looked forward to spending Saturday mornings together at Kidz Time where they interact socially with other children on the spectrum while learning about rhythm and tempo, playing games, building puzzles and creating art, all under the supervision of a team of caring professionals who are trained in therapeutic recreation and who have significant experience working with children with various types of disabilities. Play skills don’t come naturally to these children and SPARC helps them learn through activities that are natural and enjoyable.
While he is busy having fun, Ayaan is being introduced to important skills that are adapted to his pace of learning, that he can practice week after week, until he begins to absorb them into his repertoire of independent abilities. Since the class roster is determined by developmental level as opposed to age, Ayaan has an opportunity to interact and learn from children of all ages. For Ayesha, it is an opportunity to see there are others like her brother, who may have special needs and others like her, children helping, loving, coping and thriving in a family supporting a child with special needs.
SPARC, currently in its 21st year of service, provides these types of services to over a thousand individuals monthly. The available services can be provided via private, one-to-one instruction, in weekend and evening teen groups, at group homes, as part of early intervention programs and in after-school settings for youth of all ages. For more information, visit call (914) 243-0583.