Anyone who thinks they’re “drawn to water” hasn’t met Sophie Hart.
The 12-year-old will stretch out her arms and twirl in a rain storm, play in mud or with pieces of ice, and spend three hours splashing in the bathtub. On beach vacations — the only kind her family, from Bethel Park, takes — she spends six hours at a time “riding waves” with her mom, Amy Hart, screaming, “Make way!” like the lyrics in Disney’s tale of nautical heroism, “Moana.”
For all of those reasons, Mrs. Hart was ecstatic to find out about a program called Surfers Healing in summer 2019. The nonprofit uses surfing and the “weightlessness and rhythms of the ocean to offer a therapeutic experience” for those with autism. It was a perfect match for Sophie, who was formally diagnosed with the neurobiological difference just before kindergarten.
The next registration for the free national program opened at midnight Pacific Time on April 4, 2020. Leaving nothing to chance, Mrs. Hart set her alarm for 2:59 a.m. and called within seconds of the registration period’s opening. Participants are chosen via lottery, but first-timers, such as Sophie, are given preference. Four weeks later, Mrs. Hart received an acceptance email that opened with “Aloha, Sophie!”
Mrs. Hart’s shrieks of excitement were soon replaced with “devastation” when the entire program shut down for the year due to COVID-19. But last month, the Hart family got their turn to experience a Surfers Healing session at Ocean City, Md.
Most Hart family vacations are at Delaware’s Rehoboth Beach, but, as they learned last month, Sophie is an equal-opportunity beach lover. As on all vacations, Sophie repeatedly wandered toward the hotel room’s sliding glass doors to peek outside, causing her dad, Mike, to joke, “She’s just checking to make sure the ocean’s still there.”
But on the morning of Aug. 18, the usual view was replaced by patches of colored tents, spiky surfboard noses and crowds of people gathered around them. Surfers Healing sessions run all day for a week at Ocean City, with each child scheduled for a 30-minute slot to ensure proper supervision. At 1:30 p.m., it was Sophie’s turn to find out what all the fuss was about.
While she communicates her immediate, concrete needs well — such as the desire for a particular food that she can pull out of a cabinet — future events, such as an upcoming surfing class, are difficult for her to conceptualize. Only when a Surfers Healing volunteer instructor approached with a life vest did she understand that this was a water event for her. “She never even looked back at us,” her parents both recalled with a laugh.
Processing everyday sensory information can be difficult for people with autism. Surfers Healing, which was founded in 1996 by a professional surfer whose son is autistic, aims to use the motion and sounds associated with the ocean and surfing to soothe those sensory differences, although each child experiences the session in their own way.
Some of Sophie’s classmates never sat on a board, preferring to splash at the edge of the water instead. Others sat on a board but never made it into the water. But Sophie didn’t even pause a beat before lying down on a surf board.
Her parents, with some other family and friends, watched her eagerly, but what they could hear — louder than crashing waves and the buzz of onlookers — provided the most entertainment. “You could hear her giggling as she hit the waves,” Mrs. Hart remembers. “She seems to have dozens of different laughs,” Mr. Hart explained. But the one he heard that day is her happiest: It’s a “faster pace,” where “her whole body is chuckling.”
Although she refused to leave the water during the surf session, even when instructors offered breaks, she did walk out to collect her Surfers Healing T-shirt, medal and lei.
Sophie has trouble discussing past events, too. But when the session ended, and Mrs. Hart asked if she had a good time, she answered, “So much fun, yes!” In the next breath, she asked to play at the hotel’s pool, where the Harts stayed for the next seven hours, surrounded by families just like theirs.
Because Sophie participates in Miracle League baseball, Special Olympics basketball, special needs cheerleading and dance, music therapy, baton twirling classes, and now Surfers Healing, Mr. Hart is constantly asked how his wife, who teaches dyslexic children for a living, finds programs like these.
“I think it’s because when Amy says prayers with Sophie at bedtime, hers get listened to.”
Abby Mackey: amackey@post-gazette.com, Twitter @AnthroAbbyRN and IG @abbymackeywrites.
First Published: September 19, 2021, 10:00 a.m.
