Meeting Another Parent at the Park

Several Saturdays ago I took the 2 younger boys and my baby girl to the park. Samuel's helper was with us. It is so nice to have help for Samuel while we are out in public! It is impossible for me to take the kids to the park or on other errands without attendant help.



As my little girl played a cute little red-haired boy came up and touched her. It was as though he really liked her arms, he kept touching and rubbing them. My baby girl wasn't too amused! Then the little boy flapped his hands wildly and jumped up and down a little. "This looks very familiar," I thought to myself. I was quite sure he had autism. His Dad appeared a short while later. I could tell that he had been searching for his boy and he was quite exasperated. The little boy picked up someone else's bottle of water to take a drink. Dad yelled but by then the little boy was off on other adventures. Dad chased behind him. I wanted so bady to talk to his Dad, but even as the parent of a child with autism, I was stumped as to a good icebreaker to begin a conversation with him. ("Hi, I see your boy has autism..." ??? "Hi, I know how it is, chasing such an active little guy.."????) The icebreaker ended up coming from my curiosity when I saw the little boy was wearing a monitoring device around his ankle. My husband and I have thought about getting one for Samuel.

Anyways, the Dad and I ended up talking for the remainder of our visit at the park. His son is four years old and does indeed have autism. Dad is no longer married to his son's Mom. She lives with the little boy in another county and that is where he goes to school. He admitted that he doesn't have to deal with things on a daily basis like his ex-wife does, but he seemed to really enjoy talking with someone about his son. He had lots of questions, and we both shared stories about the funny things our guys do. I really enjoyed watching his little boy. He was cute and I could tell he is smart as a whip! Even though there are lots of differences between them, seeing this little guy brought back lots of memories of when Samuel was an active pre-schooler.

If it hadn't been for Samuel's helper keeping me on track, I could have stayed and talked another hour to the Dad at the park. It was best things wrapped up though, he was struggling to talk to me while he watched his son at the same time. I had the luxury of someone helping Samuel!