Kids only Recess can be an daunting experience for some children. We developed our outdoor recreational groups in order to provide a successful environment for children who are having difficulty during play time. The children will be exposed to various recreational and leisure activities including sports activities, board games and several other recreational games found on a typical school playground. The goal of the groups is to help children gain confidence and independence in a group setting. Foundation skills such as joint attention, referencing, reciprocity, emotion-sharing, self-assertiveness, conflict resolution and communication are addressed. Older children learn more complex social capabilities e.g. Perspective taking, assertiveness, compromise, conflict-resolution, conversation, communication, non-verbal communication and humor. Motor skills are also a large part of play and socializing. We structure our activities to encourage the children to work on building core strength, increasing motor planning, bilateral movement, increasing coordination and sensory integration with a focus on regulation. Peer to peer interaction is always our goal and the main objective is for the children to be first comfortable (calm & regulated) and then engaged. This is not a group for parents looking to gain "compliance" and have their children learn to follow direction/commands. Although we have a strong behavioral influence and it shows in our coaching via the ability to provide structure and our understanding of functional analysis, these groups are meant to help children learn to regulate in a group setting, interact with peers, create ideas and develop their social muscles.
Update - We are not holding a summer social for summer 2009. We look forward to bringing it back the following summer.
An outdoor recreational group for children with high functioning autism, Asperger’s Syndrome and related developmental delays. We are running a group in the Carlsbad area on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Click here to view the flyer