Special visitors

One of my favorite patrons I helped today was a woman who came in to sign her middle-school aged daughter up for a library card. The daughter wasn't with her, but she had her school ID. The patron told me that her daughter was special and came to the library every week as part of a program, and the people in the program had told her (the patron) that it would be good for her (the daughter) to have her own library card. I could tell from the way she said "special" and the fact that the daughter came to the library as part of a program that the daughter had some kind of cognitive impairment, so I wasn't surprised to see a girl with the newly-issued card come in later today as part of a regular group of visitors--several kids who seem to be on the autism spectrum and a few adults. It was fun checking out a book to her on her new card, even though we had a brief scare where it seemed she might have already lost the card (she and one of her adults found it on the floor of the children's area).

I love seeing kids on the spectrum for a few reasons, but one is that patron interactions with neurotypical patrons can get kind of repetitive, but you never know what a kid on the spectrum might like to talk to you about. The highlight today was a kid who spent our whole transaction telling me about his plans to ride to different stations on our local light rail line, and, when prompted to thank me, shouted "Thank you, commuter!"

Other reasons I especially like seeing kids who are on the spectrum in the library:

1. I like getting to participate in teaching interactions. The adults are often using the opportunity to have the kid practice navigating common commercial social situations, and it is fun to play along with them and help out by being a bit more direct and exaggerated than I would be with another kid the same age.

2. The public library is one of the few institutions around to support people on the spectrum that they don't have to worry about aging out of or otherwise being disqualified from. I've heard--from patrons, teachers, and from a speech therapist friend (technically she is a speech and language pathologist but I don't know if people know what that is) who works with a lot of kids on the spectrum--that lots of help for people drops off between ages 16 and 21, and there is a lot less support in place for adults. However, I do see independent adults who obviously have cognitive disabilities of various kinds and use the library on a regular basis, and I really enjoy getting to see the foundation of that being set.

3. Invariably, the adults with those kids, despite how hard they are working, are always super nice and polite.