Last Friday, our co-founder Saskia Maas spoke about InterActing at the National Autism Congress. Head trainer Jake Lefebvre and class assistant Tristan Bannerman stopped by to facilitate two improv-based exercises with the audience to experience what InterActing students learn each week. The session concluded with three InterActing students Aidan, Tennessee and Daniel performing a short improv show to cheers and applause.

The NAC is an academic conference for autism-related professionals, from psychiatrists to psychologists, neurologists as well as teachers, school doctors and therapists.

Saskia shared how she and co-founder Pim Donkersloot started Child Center InterActing five years ago. Saskia is convinced that flexibility is a muscle you can train. She also believes that if you treat a child the way he is, he will stay that way. If you treat a child the way you want him to be, you bring him to that destination.

That is exactly what she wants to achieve with InterActing. We help young people with autism become more socially resilient and confident through improvisational skills. We teach them to interact spontaneously in a playful way. and to build on each other’s ideas. And most importantly, they have fun and have a place to make friends.

This approach is strongly supported by research done in the U.S. by NAC’s special guest, Professor Matthew Lerner of Stony Brook University in New York, who gave a keynote on rethinking social outcomes across the spectrum and life course.

He also endorses the fact that the ability to connect with peers and develop friendships is one of the most crucial and complex developments in childhood. Although this ability develops easily in most children, youth on the spectrum experience persistent social challenges. His research focuses on understanding mechanisms of and developing interventions for social and emotional functioning (particularly peer relationships) in children and adolescents on the autism spectrum. He has used improvisation as well as a tool for developing social skills and understanding.

Saskia and Matthew spoke at the conference about collaborating on future programs and research with Professor Sander Begeer of the Free University and Dr. Kirstin Greaves-Lord of the University of Groningen.