Trampoline Weather

We've had a lot of trampoline weather around here lately - it's been wonderful!  Warm without being hot; sunny; the kind of weather that makes you just want to be outside.  Here, it is not baseball weather, or any other team-sport weather.  Kids with ASD don't "do" team sports very well.  But trampolines?  They're ... perfect!  They bounce!  For a sensory seeker, they provide the input they need. And without driving a sibling/parent/uncle crazy! And there's the added advantage of exercise, which many of our kids are less than wonderful about getting regularly.  Why?  Maybe because they are "clumsy," and therefore tend not to do very well in traditional physical education situations.  Maybe because the sensory input from traditional physical education environments can cause sensory overload (think: the echoes of sound in they gym; the crashing of bodies into each other (inadvertently) during games of basketball/dodgeball/etc.; the buzzing/blinking of florescent lights; the constant changing of situations, placement of people, expectations, flying balls, need for split-second responses and decision-making).  Maybe because there is so much unstructured social interaction that occurs, and there's so little adult oversight that our kids become extremely anxious at the mere mention of "gym."

It was such fun to watch "my" boys on the trampoline - my son and my grandson.  Jumping, playing some kind of game they made up - was it Star Wars? Pokemon?  It really didn't matter.  They were having a blast; they were outside, and they were ... interacting!  I didn't want to mess with what was happening, so I stayed a safe distance away.  I couldn't tell whether they were making eye contact (not a strong suit for either of them),  but they were looking in each other's direction - at least some of the time.  They were laughing together.  It was like ... any other pair of kids?  No.  It wasn't.  It was like them.  They interact differently from other kids.  Sometimes it's really obvious, sometimes it's subtle; it's always there.  But they understand each other in ways that other kids don't.  My son has other friends - not many, but a few.  One, he's had since he was younger than my grandson is now.  His friend is not on the spectrum, and they understand each other well - yet it's different from how my son and grandson understand each other.  There's something so heartwarming about it.  

Have you ever watched two siblings, and the parents can't understand what the younger one wants, or is saying, and the older one "just knows?"  It's a lot like that, except these two aren't siblings and my grandson is old enough to be able to speak for himself.  In fact he does speak for himself most of the time. But when he's upset, or confused, he can have trouble finding the right words to describe what is going on.  His emotional vocabulary is limited.  Neither boy likes speaking when upset; both tend to become mute.  So watching them jumping, laughing, playing, relating - some things just fill a mother's heart with absolute joy!