«Sea of Joy, School of Life» Project. Boys and girls with ASD experience life and relationships on a sailing boat along the Italian coastlines
Laura Cerri, Simonetta Lumachi, Silvano Solari
Intervention techniques to improve relational abilities in people with Autistic Spectrum Disorder are pivotal in a treatment system that is continuously developing original and creative solutions, in an attempt to create growth processes that, limiting autistic shutdowns, allows subjects to display previously hidden abilities and talents, in agreement with the evolutionary model. This perspective, according to Laura Schreibman (Schreibman et al., 2018), could reverse the whole perception of autism as we know it, thus contributing to the discovery of development potentials that are unseen at the present moment, as many experiences from research are highlighting. The «Sea of Joy, School of Life» Project clearly fits into this new field; it overcomes an obsolete and standardized behavioral vision and it widens the perspective of people with ASD, allowing them to directly take action, under the guidance of experienced conductors, while sailing in the open sea. Being on a sailing boat means to participate in setting the route; to envision destinations to reach and ports to dock in; to steer the wheel and to have a sense of the route; to see the vast landscape and to get oriented in it; to ask questions; to learn to share small spaces and to observe vast ones with other people. It means to report all of that in to the ship’s log and to develop a sense of reciprocity that stems from sharing information and from rejoicing together when the rout is completed.
Keywords
Travel, sailing therapy, emotional training, social ties, inclusion, networking.
