About a year into my child’s social skills group, me and few other parents began to talk. There were five kids in our group. When the kids are in a session, the parents wait in the lobby. This particular facility allows the parents to leave during this time. Sometimes we go shopping or for a walk. Often, we stay. We read or write on a laptop (that would be me) or we talk. This one time we began discussing how valuable we all felt these social skills groups were for our children. And, we came up with an idea: To ask our case workers for a second group.

This summer our child had to transition with two new aides. His one on one after school aide went back to school as did one of his social group facilitators. Plus, there was the start of school, where our child has two teachers and not just one (they teach a split week). Now, you must admit that our child dealt with some serious transitions lately! Of course, we have been down this road many times in the past. And here are some things we’ve learned about our numerous aide/facilitator/teacher transitions.

Like many parents, we prepare for our child’s return to school. Because of our child’s autism, though, we may prepare a little differently than parents of typical children. During the summer, our child spent five weeks at a pilot program for kids on the autism spectrum. The kids in this program are on the mild end of the spectrum. The program was five weeks long, four days a week, and only half days. The idea behind the program is to give children on the spectrum some school structure during the summer months.