Finding Play Dates - Approaching Other Families

For many families, finding peers for play dates turns out to be one of the most challenging aspects of maintaining an EIBT program. The process often involves approaching other parents that you don't know at all, and having to explain a fairly unusual set of circumstances. Sabrina Pedeupe, one of our parents, wrote a letter that we think is very eloquent and effective for these situations:

January 26, 2009

Dear Parents of Eric:

Our son Jason goes to preschool with Eric at KinderCare on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. We have a special request to ask you, but first let us tell you a bit about our son Jason.

Jason is 5 years old and just before he was 2 years old, he was diagnosed with autism. Jason has received in-home therapy services from a team of consultants and tutors ever since. Tutors accompany Jason to preschool as aides to help Jason as he transitions from activity to activity and intervene where necessary. One of the most important components of his program is the socialization skills he is learning and one of the best ways he can learn this is by interacting as much as possible with other normally developing children. Jason gets a lot of social interaction from the 3 mornings a week he attends school, but we are interested in arranging to have in-home play date sessions as well. Where our consultants have seen the greatest results with a child like Jason is if they can have these play dates with children they attend school with.

This is the special request we have of you. Two of the tutors who accompany Jason to school, Shea and Nicole, have observed Eric interacting well with Jason and while we understand your child may attend the full time day care program at KinderCare and therefore you are full-time working parents as well, we wondered if there is any way we can arrange to have a play date session with your child at our home once a week. Jason’s tutor would facilitate the play date (and let me tell you, your child would very much look forward to these weekly play dates at our house as the tutors come up with all kinds of fun activities for our children to do each week).

If you are interested, please contact me at my cell phone number 555-4454 to arrange a time where we can all meet and then discuss a time that would work for Eric to come for weekly 30 to 45-minute play date sessions. The tutors can be somewhat flexible as we come up with a time that works best for all of us.

Thank you for your time and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Sabrina

Jason’s Mom