Mastering the Essential Skills of Sportsmanship While Having Autism

Greetings!

This post was originally written for a site titled Character Booster, but I recently discovered while checking the links on my site that this site is no longer in operation. I decided to make this post available for my readers in a post linked to the original post. I will do the same for the other two written for the same site as soon as I possibly can. Please enjoy the original guest post as it was submitted to Character Booster a little over six years ago. Thank you for your understanding and continued support! ~Lorrie

I am honored to have been asked to write a guest post for Character Boost. As a parent of a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), I mostly write about how autism affects our family, the education of our son and how difficult social interaction is for him. Autism can best be described as a brain-based disorder that impairs the development of a child's social behavior and communication. I want to give others an insight into my son's extraordinary journey on the autism spectrum. Over the last few years, my husband and I have given our two boys, Vincent and Nathan, more freedom to play with and get to know the other children in our neighborhood. It has been a good experience, and experiment, in social interaction for our sons, especially for Nathan. Occasionally, there may be an afternoon when Vincent has had to escort Nathan back to the house because he has had a "meltdown". Most of the time, he is able to "self-regulate" and rejoin his friends until it is time to come in for dinner.

When the weather will not permit us to be outside, we will play some of our favorite games such as Sorry!™, Monopoly™, Aggravation™ or something special on the Wii™. If we decide to play a game on the Wii, it will usually depend on what we are in the mood for. Each of us gets to choose a game that we want to share with the rest of the family. The diversity in the skills that each of us have, the variety of sports that each of us chooses and the difference in levels of patience are something that makes our family time one of quality and quite memorable. Individual strengths, and weaknesses, make each one of us unique and special. While Vincent may be good at Frisbee Golf, Matt likes the Tiger Woods™ golf and I enjoy the 100-pin bowling, Nathan is exceptionally good at Table Tennis. Our family has learned, that no matter how much that we struggle with a certain skill set, to remember that we are there to support one another through a difficult level and to cheer each other on to success!

We are extremely proud of how Nathan has learned to master the concept of individual game rules, take turns in playing games and how important general sportsmanship is in everyday life. His slightly older brother, Vincent, has been essential in helping Nathan accomplish these motor and social skills. My husband and I are very blessed to have such wonderful children and to know that each of our boys can do, and will continue to be able to do, anything that they set their minds on.