Penpal Program for Kids on the Spectrum and Siblings

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My sister and I know from experience that childhood is a time of life where kids on the autism spectrum and their siblings can feel very isolated. My thought was, what if kids could talk to other kids in their same situation? Penpaling can be less intimidating than talking to someone in person (at least, with a parent's help), and penpaling gives kids a place to feel special and less alone in their experiences. I've penpaled myself with a couple of other siblings of kids on the spectrum, and it's gone really well so I decided to turn it into a program.

If you contact me ([email protected] or via the contact form on this page http://www.autismspectrumexplained.com/ ... ogram.html ) with your child's first name, grade level, gender (if you think they'll enjoy being paired with someone of the same gender), whether or not they have autism, and a parent's email that will be monitored, I'll hook your child up with another child who is similar to them (via another parent-monitored email).

The bonus? Your child will be working on writing and reading comprehension!

I take safety VERY seriously, so here are some rules to help keep this program safe.

1. By entering your child into this penpal program, you are promising to only allow communication to flow through a parent's email, and to have a parent read every new email from a penpal or to a penpal prior to allowing a child to read or send it. That's just to keep things safe and make sure kids aren't talking about inappropriate things.

2. If at any time you think that what the children are talking about is unacceptable and you want to cut off the program, stop allowing your child to receive their penpal's emails and email me. If it's something specific to your family's beliefs, etc, I will attempt to smoothly transition the child to another penpal or even to penpaling with myself. However, if a child is making threatening or bullying remarks or saying anything at all unsafe, I need to know so that I do not inadvertently and unknowingly transfer them to penpaling with another child.

3. If you notice, in reading the emails, that your child is saying some bad things about autism or is confused about it, etc, please shoot me an email and I'll make a guest appearance in their communications and clear up whatever issues arose. The last thing I want is for this program to inadvertently reinforce stereotypes or negative images of autistic people.

4. This program is for children only. No one over the age of 18 is allowed to participate, although I'm considering opening up a separate adult penpal program in the future.


If you're interested, send me an email!

I thought Wrong Planet was the autistic penpal program.

WrongPlanet isn't quite penpaling and it's rather more intimidating and hard to learn when you get into younger kids...and it's a lot less parent monitored/controlled. WrongPlanet is awesome, don't get me wrong, but this program still serves a unique purpose.

Also, to be honest, it was originally planned for just siblings (because, as a sibling, I can tell you there really aren't so many resources for us) which WrongPlanet is definitely not made for, but I decided to open it up for kids on the spectrum, too.