The Ludlow Boys & Girls Club offers “Family Fun Night”, a program for families with children with disabilities.   The goal of the Family Fun Night  program was to create a place where this underserved population of families and their children feel welcomed and have a sense of belonging in a safe and non-threatening environment. The program provides the opportunity for children to help  form friendships and learn communication and social skills by providing recreational and learning experiences promoting awareness, education, and health. Siblings of participants also have the opportunity to meet others that face the same struggles with having a brother or sister with special needs.
 

“Family Fun Night” is a two hour long session that takes place once a week for six weeks. The schedule for each session is: 30 minutes of structured social thinking/experiential educational activities, 30 minutes of unstructured child driven activities, 30 minutes of dinner and social skills lessons, 30 minutes of unstructured game room activities.

Structured/social thinking experiential education activities encourage personal development and team building through the use of icebreakers, initiatives, trust activities, and debriefs. By using these experiential education activities an attempt is made to push the parents and the children out of their comfort zone, and put them on the same level as a participant. Once the participants are pushed out of their comfort zone, and their social barriers are removed, the goal is to promote growth and learning and bring everyone together as a group to complete different tasks.

 

The unstructured child driven activities gives participants and their families a chance to be directly involved in the development of activities. This is the time when the children are given free reign to use their imaginations and develop new and exciting activities. Full family participation is also encouraged during the unstructured activity time.

 

The dinner and social skills lessons are a very important part of the Family Fun Night program. The dinner is presented as a family meal which presents an opportunity to strengthen the family values encouraged in the Family Fun Night program. It also allows a format to teach table manners, and social skills that are so crucial with a video on the teaching of social skills some of which include: voice modulation, blurting, grooming & hygiene, forgiveness, maintaining a conversation. The Family Fun Night program tries to create teachable moments to help participants with the development of basic social skills.

 

The unstructured game room activities allow the children an opportunity to have fun with their peers. Children are given access to pool tables, bumper pool, building blocks, toys, board games, foosball, play food, and stuffed animals.

 

For more information about the “Family Fun Night” program, please contact Andy Brower at 413-583-2072 or abrower@ludlowbgc.org.

 

This program was made possible by funding from The Raymond E. and Mildred G. Clark Foundation at the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts and The Kimberly-Clark Corporation.