Child Labor

Pull on the right, now left. Pull on both. Nice!

I recently took the little dude out fishing. For those of you that don't know, he is autistic. His name is Austin, he's 11 years old and loves to be in the boat. Focus is a little bit of a challenge for him, which makes it tough to watch an indicator floating down-stream and then set the hook when it moves. But he can cast and he gets a drift and on occasion, he does catch fish. It really doesn't matter to him how many fish he catches though, he just loves being on the water. A couple weeks ago I learned something very cool about him--he loves to row.

In the past I just moved the boat out to the middle of the river and let him sit in the rower's chair. While fishing from the front of the boat, I would reach back and help him push or pull on the oars or sometimes I would just let us drift and we would spin circles as we floated aimlessly down-stream. A couple weeks ago, after catching a couple fish, Austin offered to row for me. We were coming up on some good streamer water that I kind of wanted to fish, but with just the two of us, it wasn't going to happen anyway so I pulled the boat out to the middle and let him sit in the chair.

At one point, Austin asked, "How do I get it to go straight?"

"Well," I said, "Pull on one oar until the bow is pointing downstream."

Austin pulled and the boat swung around. "Now pull on the other oar so it stops swinging."

As Austin straightened the boat out, I noticed that his attention hadn't left the boat or my voice for a few minutes, which was rare. As the boat started to swing left with the current, Austin said, "It's turning!"

"Ok," I said. "What do you do?" Austin instinctively pulled on the right oar to stop it from swinging and straightened the boat out. "Nice!" I said and for the first time, we actually floated straight downstream, albeit in the middle of the river, but I wasn't getting dizzy and we weren't in danger of hitting anything.

We came to a bridge and Austin got a little anxious. He said he was afraid of hitting it. I instructed him to pull on the left oar until we were pointing the right way and then on both oars so we were in the middle of the river and far from the bridge pylons.

"See?" I said, "no problem. You got this."

We floated about another quarter mile, far away from any hazards until we came to one of my favorite streamer banks. It's a good bank because there's lots of big rocks creating pools for trout to hide in but it also makes for a little tougher rowing. Curious as to how Austin would handle it, I instructed him to pull on the right oar and then on both and he slid us closer to the bank. He was absolutely awesome. He concentrated so hard on keeping the boat parallel to bank and although we flew through a lot of water, he avoided every rock and he kept us close enough to the bank to fish the entire time.

Last week I took Austin and a friend out. We floated the same water and again, after catching a few fish, Austin wanted to row. He jumped in the chair and grabbed the oars. When we came to the bridge, Austin became very quite. There's good fishing along the bank above the bridge and I wanted to fish it but that meant we had to sneak right along the bridge pylon. I instructed him to slide over to the bank and he did. I fished the rocks and of course, missed a big brown. The pylon was getting closer.

Looking back at him, I could see how hard he was concentrating on not hitting the bridge. "Pull on the right, now on both. You got it buddy."

We missed the pylon by a few feet. The water isn't all that swift through there so I knew if we got real close I could push off the bridge with my hands and all would be good. But Austin didn't know that and instead of freaking out, he pulled the boat away from the pylon and steered us clear. It was pretty cool to say the least. We kept floating and eventually, we switched it up and Austin fished again ending the day with a nice rainbow.

Who knows what Austin gets out of being on the water and rowing? But adventure therapy has been something I've done with kids for a long time with so-called normally functioning kids with self-esteem issues, adjudicated kids and kids with developmental or cognitive delays and I've definitely seen where getting them out to experience the lessons offered in nature can increase confidence and practice skills in a different environment that seems a little more interesting to them. There are so many of us right now sitting on our hands waiting for the season to start, looking for something to do. I'm not trying to be a hero here, but I would challenge anyone out there to use their skills to potentially affect someones life during this time. You never know, they might affect yours in ways you'd never imagine.

Keep 'em where they live...