From left, Adam Faze, Ashli Marino, Marlee Galper, Becca Madnick, Erin Orbach and Rachel Lohmann volunteer with the Inspired Teens program at Vista Del Mar.
Marlee Galper didn’t know a thing about autism, but two summers ago she agreed to help out at a Westside day camp for teens with the disorder. It changed her life.
“I didn’t really know what autism was at all,” says Galper, who is now a senior in high school. “I didn’t know what to expect. I was just jumping into it. I had no idea that some of them couldn’t talk, and that some of them would be really hyper and not be able to focus.”
The staff at the Vista Inspire Program, one of the many offerings at Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services, were ready with plenty of tips and advice to help get the teen volunteers ready for whatever might come up. The program brings children with autism and other special needs together with therapeutic dance, drama, voice, music and musical theater experiences.
And Galper says she found the experience exciting, even transformative, like Alice in Wonderland falling down the rabbit hole. “It steps you into a whole other world,” she says of working with kids on the autism spectrum. “You meet all of these amazing people who have all of these out-of-the-box ideas. It opens your eyes to so many new ways of dealing with problems.”
Unfortunately, fear of the unknown shapes many people’s ideas about children with autism. “I feel like people almost think autism is scary,” says Galper. But though they might not speak, Galper says these children do communicate, sometimes with their whole bodies, sometimes even through songs. “They’re not scary at all,” she says. Read on …
The title of the policy statement released yesterday by the American Academy of Pediatrics says it all – Ultraviolet Radiation: A Hazard to Children and Adolescents. 
