Extreme Special Ed (Surfing Board Not Optional)

That’s how professional surfer Izzy Paskowitz describes Surfers Healing, the one-day surf camps for autistic children that he’s been holding for over a decade all over the US. Paskowitz’s own 17-year-old son, Isaiah, is autistic and there’s no place like the water for him. The Daily Yomiuri reports that families are starting to come from around the world—from Japan, for instance—-to attend a surf camp.

Charlie’s a good swimmer and simply loves being in the water and especially in the ocean. Last summer, he got his first surfing lesson and, when we go to the Jersey Shore in August for our annual beach vacation at the house we’ve been renting for a couple of years, we hope to schedule him for more lessons. We’ve signed Charlie up for a surf camp in early September. As Paskowitz says:

“Once they get in the water, something kind of magic happens……The children need to do some physical things without words to stay on the surfboard, to hold onto the rails when we go through white water. Some of the kids who have worked with us over the past seven years, you could almost see that when they see us stand up that they’re ready to stand up, that they remember the sequence of getting up really fast.”

Apparently, they don’t start out that way, according to Izzy, who says 80 percent of first-timers fight and resist their instructors. “From an outside [point of view], it looks like fighting, it looks like resistance, like we’re forcing them. But in reality, it’s their anxieties and doing something completely alien to their lives, which are really all about school and therapies and all that. So that’s just the way they communicate and the way they behave. Their parents are like, ‘Just go for it, don’t worry about their crying.’ And we don’t, because most of the instructors have dealt with super severe kids, like my son. So, it’s no big deal. We’ll take out anybody.”

……

“it’s not the surfing that is magic, Izzy says. “It’s the water. The surfing part of it is our way of giving these kids something to do.”

“This might be just as wacky as some other alternative therapies. [But,] anybody who has had a s—-y day…you go jump in the water and tell me that you don’t feel like your head is much clearer, tell me you don’t feel better, that your thoughts aren’t clearer.”

This past week, Charlie and I went swimming every late afternoon at the YMCA pool and not only is he ready for the waves (and Charlie, at least last year, prefers swimming in rougher water). The pool and the water more generally are one of the very few places where Charlie can hold his own among other (non-autistic) kids. He’s as good and even a better swimmer than most other kids and so is able (in his way) to interact some socially and to be with other kids, in a place where he excels.

I guess that’s some of the “magic” of the water that Paskowitz refers to.

Counting down the days till we’re back at the beach house…….