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By Mary Platt, Mother, Advocate, and Board Member of The Arc of California
My son, Michael, attends one of The Arc of Ventura County’s Community Connection programs in Simi Valley. Michael is 30 and has autism. He has made friends at his program and even has a girlfriend now, Ashley. When the program closed (March 2020) due to the pandemic Michael ended up spending more time in his room watching movies on his TV or iPad. His group of friends, who are much more verbal than Michael, use FaceTime on their phones to maintain contact. For Michael, that’s like Zoom and he rarely participated. He doesn’t go anywhere without his phone, and he always has his iPad with him to watch movies. In May 2020, his program began offering activities via Zoom. For as much as he loves his iPad, he dislikes Zoom intensely!! We came to an agreement that he would only have to do one Zoom session per day. Anything more than that caused him to have temper outbursts and made him very frustrated.
One day in June 2020, Ashley’s mother reached out to the mothers of her daughter’s friends from the program and suggested we meet at a local park and bring our lunch. We started doing this a couple of times a month. It was great for our kids to get out of the house. We’d bring our lunch; some moms would take turns bringing baked goods or homemade chocolate clusters. Our young adult children would play music, dance, play games, go for walks around the park, swing on the swings, and sometimes do craft projects that were being done that day on Zoom at the program site. We celebrated birthdays at these gatherings. As a bonus, the mothers all got to know each other, and we’ve become good friends. These friendships have become one of the best outcomes from the pandemic! We call our group “Arc in the Park!”
For National Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month, we are sharing a series of stories from The Arc of California families. It has been, and still is, the mission of The Arc of California to be a voice for families of children with developmental disabilities. The Arc team is working on behalf of families with the Legislature and Administration to develop solutions that will address the most pressing challenges facing the disability community. We would love to hear your story!