Eliza Factor, Founder of Extreme Kids & Crew.
Alt text: Photo portrait of a brunette, white woman in a striped shirt, grinning at the camera.
My children are the inspiration behind Extreme Kids & Crew. My son Felix has a grab bag of disabilities, including autism and cerebral palsy. His younger sisters don't. I wanted to create a place outside of our home where we were not the only exceptional family with the whooping kid in the wheelchair, but just another rambunctious, ramshackle family. Through my daughters, I made friends with parents raising neurotypical children, and their company was sustaining and valuable. I yearned for these same sorts of connections with people raising children with disabilities. I knew they existed. I would see them at hospitals, doctors offices, and schools, frazzled like me, caught up in what seemed to be a never-ending treadmill of appointments and bureaucracy. We were all so focused on our particular children's diagnoses, medical treatments, and insurance or lack-of-insurance snafus that there was not the time and space to explore our commonalities, to relax and be with one another.
And so: Extreme Kids & Crew, a not-for-profit arts-movement-play program dedicated to creating space for children with all sorts of disabilities to be who they are, and for families to connect with each other and their children. We are not a therapy center. We are a place where the entire family can play on inventive sensory equipment, make and listen to music and express themselves through the arts.
Extreme Kids & Crew has now been operating for over nine years. We have had nearly thousands of families from every borough of New York City take part. Children with autism, sensory processing disorders, ADHD, down's syndrome, cerebral palsy, spina bifida, epilepsy, and many others, diagnosed and not, have participated in our programming. Families come from every walk of life. What ties us together is the experience of living with and loving a child who is different.
When I started Extreme Kids & Crew. I had not realized how inspired I would be by the other parents and children I would meet, nor was I prepared for the generosity and enthusiasm of musicians and artists and other volunteers who have made our program such a creative powerhouse. I was warned that starting such a program would tax my energies, instead it gave me energy. The friendships that I have made through Extreme Kids & Crew have widened and sweetened my world. I invite you to drop by and experience it for yourself!
Visit Eliza online: https://www.elizafactor.net/strange-beauty/
Read the blog: http://brokenandwoken.blogspot.com/