Camp Acceptance: Kids with autism find friends who get them

Azalea McDonald made a friend at camp last summer and cried when it was time to go home. How strange, she says in a puzzled voice, because before camp started she thought she’d be homesick.

Her younger brother Alphonzo, “Fonz,” can’t wait to go back to camp to show off his new moves – he can dribble a basketball between his legs – just like his favorite Charlotte Hornet, Kemba Walker.

Their little brother, Chaz, got over last year’s fixation on bugs. This year he’s into monkeys and with a little mischief in his smile, wondered if his parents would mind if he brought one home from camp.

As far as the family knows, Camp Royall has no monkeys. Instead, it offers kids and adults with autism a chance to swim and hike, go horseback riding and on hay rides, and make friends who don’t think they’re weird.

This year, The Charlotte Observer’s Summer Camp Fund will send nine children with autism to two camps designed just for them. They’re among 550 Charlotte-area kids heading to 19 camps thanks to donations from readers and the community.

NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick, the honorary fundraising chairman, has issued a challenge to raise $200,000 during this year’s campaign.

The fund’s main focus is to send low-income children to summer camps that let them connect to nature. Swimming and reading are important to promote water safety and to keep kids from getting behind academically.

For children with autism, a specialized camp offers an outdoor adventure with friends who don’t find their quirks odd and won’t bully like others may do at school and on playgrounds.

“As soon as you walk in, you can see the glow on their faces,” said Debra Bradshaw of Indian Trail, whose daughter, Taylor, loves Camp Royall. “They’re around children like themselves, they’re not embarrassed – they fit in.”

Here’s the thing about autism: Kids may look healthy on the outside but their brains work differently. Some might have a high IQ but find it hard to connect with others; some are severely impaired and can’t speak. And some grow adult bodies while their brains remain locked in childhood.

Having a child with autism is expensive. You may live in a nice house in a middle-class neighborhood and end up spending more on therapy, medication and special diets than your monthly mortgage payment.

It’s also stressful on marriages, and when couples break up, it adds more financial pressure, says Camp Royall director Sara Gage.

“Our families are saddled with extra bills … it can be quite a struggle,” Gage said. “Some have houses going into foreclosure – everything is piling up on them.”

“These scholarships are critically important. They wouldn’t be able to do it otherwise,” said Heather Hill, director of Camp Lakey Gap. “On top of all of the other things that are necessary, they can’t afford this.”

Both camps say part of their mission is to give families a break from caregiving demands.

“It’s respite for them while providing campers an experience that’s fun, safe and accessible,” Hill said.

Most camp counselors are college students majoring in autism-related fields such as special education, speech pathology, occupational therapy and psychology. Many come back each summer.

The camps usually pair a staff member with a single camper. For more highly functioning campers, the ratio is one to two. At night, staffers sleep outside of rooms to keep the kids safe inside.

A camp with that care level is more expensive than most. Camp Royall, near Pittsboro, and Camp Lakey Gap, in Black Mountain, each charge about $1,700 a week per camper.

Looking forward to camp week

The McDonald children of Charlotte are considered high-functioning. It wasn’t always so.

When Nancy Hyman and Susan McDonald became foster parents, Azalea was 5 years old and didn’t speak or know her own name. Fonz was 3 and like his sister, didn’t speak or communicate. The women discovered they had another little brother. Chaz was then 2 and living in a different foster home.

They adopted all three children. Hyman quit her job in retail management to become a stay-at-home mother to the siblings, and their fourth adopted child, Zac, who is not autistic.

With extensive, expensive therapy and committed parents who work with them, Azalea, Fonz and Chaz function and speak. The entire family looks forward to camp week.

“We’re very appreciative of the scholarship money. We would not have been able to send them to camp without it,” Hyman said. “It’s going to be the highlight of their summer.”

The children go to Myers Park High School.

Azalea, 17, loves to talk about pretty clothes, painted nails and jewelry. She sounds like an older woman when she checks out a visitor’s outfit and says: “Well, don’t you look pretty today!” – then becomes more childlike as she sits in her room to play with her dolls.

In anxious moments – many children with autism have a great deal of them – she calms herself with Hyman’s mantra: “Go with the flow.”

At camp, she hopes to reconnect with her friend so they can talk and giggle and swim.

Chaz, 14, is the comedian, though sometimes unintentionally. He sees things quite literally, and when he shares his thoughts, people laugh. Like the time a teacher told him his writing looked like chicken scratch, which set Chaz to pondering: “What is as sloppy as scratching a chicken?”

He likes that people think he’s funny.

The last time he went to Camp Royall he collected bugs in a container that he carried everywhere. This year, with his focus on monkeys, he said, “I really don’t know what I’m going to do there. It’s not like they’re going to let me carry a monkey around.”

Fonz, 15, is the sweetly earnest family jock. He loves the Carolina Panthers and the Hornets and aspires to be a point guard. At Camp Royall, he played one-on-one against a bigger 18-year-old. “I might have beat him,” he said. He’s sure to blow the competition away with his new basketball-handling tricks.

He also rode a horse: “Horses are very nice. They just let you walk and enjoy the ride.”

maryedeangelis@gmail.com

This story was originally published May 16, 2015 at 5:56 PM with the headline "Camp Acceptance: Kids with autism find friends who get them."