Loving & living with a special needs child

8.21.2002

Something really bizarre that I got off of CNN: Autistic Child's Mom Tries to Buy Him a Friend


LONDON (Reuters) - A British mother who offered to pay other children about $7 an hour to play with her four-year-old autistic son received a gentle rebuke from the British Autistic Society Wednesday.

Part-time nurse Emma Upfold, 25, stuck an advertisement in a shop window in the central English city of Leicester seeking playmates for her son Jack, whose condition makes it difficult for him to make friends.

"It was a last resort really," Upfold told BBC radio.

"Jack has very poor eye contact and communication skills and finds it very difficult to interact with children his own age and I thought this was worth a try to help him make friends," she said.

But a spokeswoman for Britain's National Autistic Society disagreed.

"We would rather do things in as safe a way as possible and you certainly wouldn't want somebody acting in an inappropriate way with an autistic child," the spokeswoman said.

"Our group matches adult volunteers with children, which can help autistic children learn to improve their communication skills," she said.

Autism, a condition marked by sometimes severely limited physical and emotional responses to other persons, affects about 500,000 people in the United Kingdom.

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