Whole Children & Milestones
Our mission
We are a social and recreation center that welcomes families and students of all abilities, philosophies, and cultures. We want to create an inclusive environment where every child has an inclusive space to explore new interests, have fun, and grow. We are not a therapeutic program and we do not adhere to any one system or approach to teaching, running groups, or working with students.
Classes
Whole Children offers after-school classes Tuesday through Saturday throughout the year. We have four sessions, each lasting six to ten weeks, in the fall, winter, spring, and summer.
Classes run once a week, usually for about one hour. Some weekly classes are longer than an hour — so check the schedule to be sure!
The classes include social skills and self-advocacy training and lots of opportunities to practice them. We follow a learn-by-doing approach for the everyday social skills that many of our folks struggle with. We’ve found that teaching social skills within the context of interest-based classes is one of the best ways to build skills, develop confidence, and foster lasting friendships.
Our complete class catalog is available on our website several weeks before the start of each session. You can also register online and pay for classes or by calling 413-585-8010.
Younger kids
For our youngest kids (ages 3-6), our classes introduce foundational skills like turn-taking, teamwork, and friendship-building. Our small student-to-teacher ratio allows us to give each student more time and attention.
We value giving kids time for more structured play, where they can build connections and friendships.
School age
Instructors focus on creating more social opportunities for students in our school-aged classes (ages 7-12). Allowing students to interact with one another allows them to build comfort with healthy interactions.
We work toward building on or establishing social skill foundations, helping to give students the tools needed to have more fulfilling experiences at school, at home, or in the community.
Coming of age, and beyond
We believe people with developmental disabilities should have access to life-long learning, whether in music, literature, art, or recreational activities. Milestones Recreation offers weekly evening and Saturday classes to introduce students to new skills or to let them delve more deeply into an area they love.
Milestones Recreation was formed as participants in Whole Children got older. We believe it’s important for participants to distinguish themselves as adults who have grown up and have different needs, wants, and goals from their childhood. We believe this gives students the dignity they deserve, which we often take for granted.
It’s important to us to give students a chance to practice their social skills and build bonds with others in the programs and the community. We do that by mixing things up with special events, including movie nights, potluck dinners, karaoke parties, and dances, where students gather casually to deepen their friendships or make new ones.
Our events are also great opportunities for our great community to get to know our program and, most importantly, have a great time!
Social skills and relationships
We recognize and honor the importance of friendships and building a strong social network after school and into adulthood. Our classes reinforce social skills and provide fun opportunities to make new friends and stay in touch with old ones.
We offer classes in drama, music, art, yoga, martial arts, cooking and more. All of our classes incorporate teaching and practicing social skills, helping students learn to work in a group and make friends. We also have classes specifically aimed at improving social skills — language, behavior, and group dynamics.
In classes, like “Boundaries and Relationships,” we teach an important and often neglected set of social skills through our carefully developed and always expanding Whole Selves curriculum. Some of the skills we work on in class are healthy communication, perspective-taking, teamwork, community building, boundaries and relationships, confidence, self-advocacy, self-regulation, critical thinking and creative thinking, and navigating the dating world.
If you have questions about our classes, you can connect with Liana Marks, program manager for Milestones Recreation and Whole Children. Our class schedule has further details on each class.
Whole Children began as a small summer gymnastics class serving approximately 12 children with a variety of special needs. The class met on Saturday mornings during the summer months at a local gymnastics facility.
After three years of offering this individual class, a small community of families had developed. As enrollment increased each summer, this core group of parents saw an obvious need for more classes with greater variety that continued throughout the year—a center dedicated to families raising children with special needs.
The concept of Whole Children took shape, a Board of Directors was formed and incorporated, and in 2004, Whole Children opened at River Drive in Hadley.
That year, Whole Children offered 16 classes, including yoga and gymnastics, and served 43 families. In 2010, Whole Children affiliated with Pathlight, an organization in Springfield with a long history of working for and with families and people with special needs.
With the affiliation, Whole Children moved to bigger quarters at 41 Russell Street in Hadley, called the Inclusive Community Center. The site included a gym, separate movement space for preschoolers, a game room, and several more classrooms.
In 2022, the Inclusive Community Center moved to a brand new location at Village Hill in Northampton, MA with more space and new facilities. Family Empowerment and Milestones, also Pathlight programs, are part of the Inclusive Community Center. Family Empowerment offers support and information to families and Milestones is similar to Whole Children, but focuses on classes and social and community opportunities for older teens and adults.
Whole Children sprang from a group of parents who learned that, given the opportunity, our children can far surpass even our own expectations, and the more doors that are opened to them, the more they discover worlds that await their success.