This month's blog article was featured in the August 2025 issue of our digital newsletter, Aspire Wire.
By Scott McLeod, PhD
Executive Director, Aspire
This summer, Aspire has over 150 participants in our camp, teen, adult and work program. I have the luxury of dropping in on each program regularly. What do I see on these visits? At camp, the children are engaged in endless activities: swimming, playing music, enjoying impromptu water games. At the teen program, there are huge jigsaw puzzles laid across tables and endless discussions about current memes, movies, and other bits of highly detailed minutiae. One teen asked if I were the author of the definitive book about comics: No, I’m not that Scott McCloud. The young adults play the New York Times Connections-like homemade version of the game: The “Connections” are based on the interests of persons in the group. So, they are making Connections using Connections in the Connection’s group….! Interns are getting a taste of work in sites all over the metropolitan area.
So, clearly there is a lot of fun and learning to be had. Harvesting vegetables at Hale. Cooking in a commercial kitchen in Newton. Having lunch with young autism research students at Lurie.
Staff are having fun, too. When record heat threatened cancellation of an extended day at Camp, I was told: “The staff and kids are excited about it and we really need to reschedule, not cancel.”
All of this is a wonderful outcome of what our staff has spent many months planning, planning, and planning for. But there is a key observation that I want to share. To borrow a phrase from a few decades ago, and not from Scott McCloud, the participants were “letting it all hang out”. The absence of anxiety was profound. Our participants are comfortable in our programs. They are and feel accepted by staff and peers for who they are. They dress, behave and connect in wonderfully quirky ways and that quirkiness is not simply tolerated but embraced.
There are some times when I drop in when kids are getting ready to climb into the bus for some activity. When I see them in the hall, chatting, laughing, joking with staff about a stuffed baby avocado (real example!), I am so pleased with the comfortable interactions and lack of “masking” or attempting to play the role of a neurotypical person.
The great unmasking is one of the many wonderful aspects of success of our summer programming.