The Children's Center

I've been living here every Tuesday. I go up at 11:30 in the morning and come back sometime after dark (usually around 6:30ish, which isn't technically living there, but...close). I take our three-year-old son, and he learns how to play.

It is awesome.

After our Play 2 Learn class (which is, as I just mentioned, awesome), we walk by fences for an hour or so, wandering towards someplace that sells food so that we can eat a snack (pizza, maybe, or a tuna melt sandwich). Then we walk back to the Children's Center for our Wiggly Worms group, which gives me a crash course in sensory integration/occupational therapy. We get to play with floam, and jump on mini trampolines, and make swings for giggling children out of pillows.

Isn't it a cool building? It's a hundred-year-old school with twisted metal-ball statues and toys everywhere.

Here's my confession: I spent months after our three-year-old's diagnosis reading lists, and calling mental health experts, and trying to figure out our (apparently nonexistent) mental health benefits for children through our insurance. I got frustrated. I was glad to know more about how our son thinks, and I'm sure that helped me, but I'm so, so glad I signed up for resources at the Children's Center. We've got the Floortime Method playgroup, the occupational therapy course, a family therapist (who can probably explain autism to our six-year-old, which is trickier than you might imagine!), and lots of people who understand if our middle son starts drawing fences, or running as fast as he can along the walls, or sucking on his fingers.

I was going to write more here about how when you get a diagnosis for autism you get lots of lists, and it's overwhelming, and once you find a reliable wonderful resource it's such a relief, but my sister called, so I shall sum up: yay Children's Center! Yay!