Adelle

I have been working all summer toward finally getting the details worked out to be a Big Sister with Big Brothers/Big Sisters. I did it before we had kids and found it very rewarding. I chose a girl from my school who has autism. I had referred her to the program two years ago and she never got a Big Sister so I said, "What the heck! I'll be her Big Sister!" She doesn't like the term, however, because she already has a real big sister. So tonight was our first outing. I was pretty excited and though I know her well, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. When I went to get her, she refused to come out from the other room while we did more paperwork. Then she came out and told her mom she wasn't going. Her mom explained that she had hoped someone else would be her Big Sister. I understand because I had to work with Adelle on her social skills and she doesn't really like to have her social skills corrected. But we were able to talk her into going. She got in the back seat and buckled up. I couldn't talk her into getting in the front seat. She answered my questions with really short answers sprinkled in with sports statistics which is her conversation fallback. We got to the house and she smiled at the dogs but they were pretty hyper. Someone had left the TV on so she took the controller and told me we were watching baseball. I sat down and she sat down and started watching. Joel's laptop was open so she asked if she could go to Espn3. I said yes and then it was like I wasn't in the room. I tried to get her to fill out an interest checklist and she checked all the sports and handed it back to me. I asked her if she wanted to make cookies or go for walks sometime...She said ok without enthusiasm. I told her 5 more minutes and we'd leave. We went to the gas station and she kept telling me she was going inside to get something to eat. I told her she needed to stay with me. She watched me put the gas in and then asked if she could wash the windows. She worked so hard but they were really dirty so she kind of just pushed the dirt around. I told her she did a great job! Just before she got in the car, she pulled her pants down and completely exposed herself and was touching something down there. I got out and ran around the car and told her to stop. She got in the car--whew! That is as "out there" as she gets and it happened on our first time out! So then we went to get ice cream. She really wanted "supper" which I had to be firm about. We got ice cream and actually had conversation as we ate on a table out front. Then we went to the park but she was disappointed that there weren't swings. On the way back to her house, she announced that she should come live at my house forever! I said that I thought her family might miss her. She said, "They'd get over it." She said we need to get together 7 or 8 times next week. I made arrangements to get her next Wednesday and walked her to the door to tell her mom she'd been good. I am really hopeful that just getting out and doing some different things will be good for Adelle. I know I'm looking forward to our time together.