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LEGO Fan Clubs Help Kids With Austism


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The Age down in Australia has an interesting story about the impact playing with LEGO has on autistic kids. Rob Deakin started a LEGO club in 2011 and has received a lot of positive feedback from parents on the effect playing with bricks can have on developing social skills for children who don't fit in with sports, scouts, or similar activities. You can read the whole story <a href='http://www.theage.com.au/national/health/fairfield-lego-club-inside-the-brick-helps-children-with-autism-to-build-bridges-20140222-3391h.html' target='offsite'>right here</a> to learn even more about the program and its benefits. It's great to see our favorite toy being used to help people the world over!

 

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I have autism spectrum disorder/Asperger's Syndrome as well. I can definitely relate to some of the kids mentioned in the article, even though I'm sure some of the people who this club serves have much greater social and interpersonal challenges than I have. Hopefully this will go a long way to help them feel accepted by their peers, establish lasting friendships, and learn what it feels like to be a part of an accepting community. And hopefully the non-autistic kids in the club will learn to appreciate their peers who have difficult expressing themselves socially and emotionally, so that in the future there will not be such a stigma against people with autism as there is today.

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I too have Asperger's Syndrome, but my experiences were and are rather different than those of the kids featured in this article. The early years of my life were not marked by difficulty with socialization as much as they were defined by having little to no social experiences at all. My family lived in a town of less than 900, and as such I had few opportunities to play with other kids my age. Lego served as a way to express my imagination and creativity, and to an extension much of the lego media as well. Lego Island was the very first computer game I ever played, and its colorful cast of characters inspired me to create my own "lego island," which was the host of many such adventures that I inserted myself into. You could say this was all coping, and you would be right, but looking back I believed it did help me through the many difficulties of my early years. Since then, my family has moved twice more, and I have long since experienced the joys of friendship, and stopped buying lego sets entirely several years ago, but I still have much fondness for the toy that brightened up my childhood.

I have slept for so long. My dreams have been dark ones. But now I am awakened. Now the scattered elements of my being are rejoined. Now I am whole. And the Darkness can not stand before me.

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I had read abut Inside The Brick before, actually, and was considering contacting Rob for an interview just recently. I'm not autistic, nor do I have any social disorder, but this is certainly a noble thing to do and provides great opportunities for children who don't have the same social opportunities as many others.

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Meiko - @georgebarnick

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