A Different Kind of Normal, Part 4
Written By Charlotte Meryman
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His Place, His Pace
Jimmy is dancing. It's a kind of hop-step, a jig in which he stamps his stockinged feet sporadically and clasps and unclasps his hands. He has an audience, a ring of cross-legged grown-ups and kids sitting on a bright blue carpet, clapping a lively beat, cheering him on.It's circle time at Whole Children, in Hadley, Massachusetts, a place where Michelle and other parents of children with special needs find common ground. For Jimmy, it's a place where everything moves at his pace. Of the handful of children in the circle, several fall somewhere on the autism spectrum, and a number have physical delays that make it hard for them to control their bodies.
Through the din of clapping and singing, teacher Christine D'Agostino asks brightly if Jimmy would like a partner. Jimmy immediately points to 6-year-old Madison. She's an exuberant slip of a girl, with silky blond hair, wearing a flouncy flowered shirt. Madison jumps up, face alight and arms akimbo, and the pair dance face to face in a hula hoop placed on the floor. They're old friends.
Like Jimmy, Madison was born with a rare chromosomal disorder, in her case Emanuel syndrome. Also like Jimmy, she cannot talk and has trouble directing her physical movements. She is a bit more outgoing than Jimmy. His autism tends to draw him toward private pursuits like computer games and books. She's more apt to make eye contact, to tune in to others.
Apart from that, Jimmy and Madison navigate the world in such an uncannily similar way that their parents bonded as quickly as the kids did. "Madison was more like Jimmy than anybody else," says Michelle. "Everything we were dealing with, they were too." Lisa and her husband, Gregg, share tips with Michelle and Jim on all sorts of things: toilet training, adaptive tricycles, therapies. Inspired by Jimmy's success using his talker, Lisa and Gregg are trying to get one for Madison. The two moms even joke about buying adjacent houses when the kids are grown — with an in-law apartment in between for Madison and Jimmy. For now, they meet at Whole Children.
"This is one place Jimmy isn't so different," says Michelle. From the first, "it felt like home." Michelle has joined the center's board of directors, and she's bent on starting a branch in Springfield, closer to her home — and accessible to many more families.
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