Other members of the congregation witness signs of your child’s distress and interpret them as unruly behavior, wondering why you can’t get your child to behave in church.
And that’s not all. The conditions in an ordinary religious education class also are likely to prove unsettling to your child, and the instruction ill-suited to reach them.
Parents of autistic children with such reactions sometimes just give up on the idea of regular Mass attendance, says Schmid, a parishioner of St. Joseph Parish in South Lyon, but her parish hopes to develop some innovative solutions to bring them back.
It is estimated that one in every 150 children has some form of autism. But Fr. Stan Tokarski, St. Joseph’s pastor, wonders about that figure.
“It seems to me, from my experience, it’s probably more than that,” he said.
In response, Fr. Tokarski said he believes his parish is doing “something groundbreaking” by trying to come up with a sensory-friendly space for worship and a catechetical program tailored to the needs of autistic children.
“I believe they are God’s children as well, so we can’t keep them away from church,” he said.
The effort to launch the All God’s Children Autism Ministry is still in an exploratory phase, he said, as the parish seeks to gauge the extent of the need and investigate similar efforts in other parts of the country.
He envisions the ministry serving the entire Northwest Wayne Vicariate and perhaps beyond, if St. Joseph is the best place to bring autistic children.
But coming up with some way of meeting their needs is the right thing to do, “whether there will be five children or 50,” Fr. Tokarski said.
He described Schmid, who is spearheading the effort to establish the ministry, as “a go-getter.”
“Having the experience with her own son makes her very dedicated to the cause,” Fr. Tokarski said.
Schmid and her husband, Paul, have three children: Clara, 10; Paulie, 6; and Frankie, 4. Only Paulie is autistic, having been diagnosed two years ago with Asperger’s syndrome, a “high-functioning” form of the condition.
“Children with Asperger’s tend to be very intelligent — in fact, Paulie skipped ahead a grade in school — but have a lot of social difficulties,” Schmid said. “They don’t really understand how to get along with people, and there can be sensory disorders that cause a lot of different things to upset them.”
To illustrate, Schmid described a trip to the local Costco.
“There tend to be a lot of things he would find overwhelming. He would hear the buzzing of the bright fluorescent lights and the shuffling of people’s feet, and smell the fish from the back of the building.”
All those stimuli can result in difficulty hearing, seeing and even balancing, causing anxiety or panic.
And the situation is similar in church.
One solution could be something akin to a cry room, where families with autistic children could be present, but in an environment with subdued lighting and lower volume, Schmid said, though she adds it should have one-way glass so the children are not on display.
Another possibility could be to bring the Mass into some other room in the parish complex via closed-circuit TV.
“The first thing is to get the people back to church,” Schmid said. But her ambitions extend to religious education classes tailored to the needs of autistic children and even a sensory-friendly vacation Bible school in the summer.
She would also like to see a support group for parents.
“I’d like to see a program where they could bring their children to, say, a parish gymnasium once a month, so the parents would get to go out and have a date.”
