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<\/a>\u201cEach week was a little bit different,\u201d says Vivian. \u201cYou would either be one-on-one with a child, or you would just be out on the gym floor playing with a whole bunch of them. There\u2019s a wide range; some kids are more independent than others, so it really depended\u2014each week was a little different, but it was fun. You\u2019d just run around with the kids all the time and get a good workout in.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Camosun Accounting instructor Stan Yung, whose young son is autistic, also volunteers with CAN. Three years ago, when Yung moved here from Alberta, CAN was one of the first organizations he reached out to, as his son was already diagnosed as being on the spectrum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAt that point, I started volunteering with them just to get a feel for who they were, and I was able to see firsthand how they worked with young kids, and how young kids who are special needs really had fun and flourished,\u201d he says. \u201cSo, I ended up putting my kid in as soon as he became of age, and he\u2019s been participating in Canucks Autism Network activities ever since he turned four-and-a-half, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the parent of an autistic child, Yung says the network is invaluable to him. He says that it\u2019s difficult to integrate into everyday life with a child on the spectrum, pointing to enrolling in sports programs as an example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy child, firstly, he\u2019s non-verbal, and then secondly, his motor skills are not the greatest, and so he would not survive in an organized sports setting, so an organization like the Canucks Autism Network is invaluable. I\u2019ve mentioned this to other parents, where you can bring your kid to a CAN activity and they can do everything, and everyone accepts them there, and so you don\u2019t have to worry\u2014you don\u2019t have to be self-conscious about your kid\u2019s behaviour or anything like that. Everything is accepted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yung says the network allows the opportunity for his son to relate to and interact with another person, although he admits it was tough at first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was really challenging at the beginning because on many of the Canucks Autism Network sessions my son would just sit there,\u201d says Yung. \u201cHe refused to participate with other kids, or other caregivers, or what have you. He just didn\u2019t want to participate, whereas over time, I think with the patience of the volunteers, as well as paid staff, with the support and patience of them, he was slowly able to kind of get into it and start to enjoy himself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a volunteer, Vivian also appreciates the opportunity to connect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe volunteer staff are just so patient,\u201d she says, \u201cand they\u2019re so kind, and just seeing them interacting with the kids\u2026 Again, because I didn\u2019t have a lot of experience, I would just kind of see what other people were doing, and it was just so amazing to see these kids who don\u2019t necessarily have any experience with sports just running around, playing soccer, and just smiling and laughing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
April 2 is the 12th annual World Autism Awareness Day. According to the National Autism Spectrum Disorder Surveillance System\u2019s 2018 report, one in 66 Canadian children is on the autism spectrum. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Camosun student and instructor have been volunteering with an organization that brings team-sports opportunities to autistic children. The Canucks Autism Network (CAN) currently helps support over 4,000 young autistic people living in BC and relies heavily on volunteers. One of these volunteers is fourth-year Sport and Fitness Leadership student Teresa Vivian. Vivian heard about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,229],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-march-20-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17411,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17409\/revisions\/17411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}