Today was the last day of one of the Monster’s day camps.

We were fortunate to find out about a speech and language camp run by a local university, and had the Monster there three days a week in a program that gives him at least some social exposure to other children as well as therapy sessions that our insurance will cover.  Unfortunately, because it is staffed by students from that same university, it’s not a whole-summer program – it ran only six weeks, and ended today, four weeks shy of the start of school.

I’ll admit that I’ve had some curiosity about the things that he’s doing over the summer as substitute therapies.  I went last week to watch the gymnastics that he’s in to get an idea of what LISS is paying for, so I went along today with the wife to see the end of his last day of camp.

I like that I saw many of the activities that were familiar to me from other programs he’s been in – there’s the same kind of structure, the same kind of PECS feedback for activities, and a very good teacher-to-student ratio.  (From observations, it was about 1.5 students per staffer.)  There was a good variety of activities on their schedule to make sure that they have a mix of experiences that touch on occupational therapies, group and individual speech therapy, etc.

The problem was our being there.  As other parents with kids on the spectrum know, predictability and patterns are all part of these disorders… and there’s a well-known pattern to our child.  If we show up, and he’s at camp, it’s time to go home.  So our child, who the instructors said was compliant and reactive all summer, suddenly was very non-compliant and intent on going to the car.

I think that, in the future if I’m going to observe his classes when he goes to school, I’ll do so as subtly as possible without drawing his attention (perhaps through a window or the like if possible).

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Just a little administrative note – if you’re posting spam-type comments on my blog, I do moderate my comments before they can appear, and I’m not fooled by the obvious spammage.  Don’t waste your time and mine by inserting them, because I’m just going to delete them.  (I’ve been getting a lot lately and just thought I’d say it openly.)