Finding Peers for Playdates

For many families, finding peers for playdates can be one of the most challenging aspects of intensive early intervention programs. The process often involves approaching other parents that you don't know at all, and having to explain a fairly unusual set of circumstances.

Providing a letter or email that preschool teachers, Sunday school teachers or daycare providers can share with other parents can be a relatively easy and effective way to make first contact with a new family. A PALS parent wrote a letter that we think is very eloquent and effective for these situations, and she agreed to let us share it (identifying information has been changed to protect client confidentiality):

Dear Parents of Andrew,

Our son Jason goes to preschool with Andrew 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 4 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 aides ever since.  Aides accompany Jason to preschool to help him transition 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 neurotypical 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.  Our consultants have seen the greatest results with kids 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 aides 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 playdate session with your child at our home once a week.  Jason’s aides would facilitate the playdate (and let me tell you, your child would very much look forward to these weekly playdates at our house as the aides come up with all kinds of fun activities for our children to do each week). By the way, all consultants and aides that work with Jason are required to pass Department of Justice fingerprint background checks.

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 aides can be 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,
Malia 

Jason’s Mom