Excerpt from ‘Developing Chess Talent’ by Karel and IM Merijn van Delft
Chess is a suitable sport for many children and adults with an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Scientific research on this subject is lacking, also on an international level. Experience indicates that chess stimulates social, emotional and cognitive development.
A ‘super championship’ for Jaap de Vries
‘Mate’, Jaap de Vries (9) announces firmly. After an attack on the enemy king, Jaap manages to score his third full point during national championships for chess pupils in Gouda. ‘My rating is rocketing sky high!’, he shouts.
Jaap is not very keen on a conversation with a total stranger. But this changes if he is allowed to play a game of chess with him. Then he talks incessantly between moves. ‘If I play chess, I keep learning more and more. It’s a fun sport, actually.’ Jaap wants to learn to play good chess.
‘This is a super championship!’, he says.
Jaap is suffering from Asperger’s Syndrome. Because of this, he has few social contacts. In between tournament rounds, he plays games on his
Nintendo. In fact, this is precisely what does allow him to make contact with other children, who come to him to see what game he is playing. ‘If you share his interest, he is open for contact’, his mother Annemieke has noticed. ‘These games look individualistic, but for Jaap they are an opportunity to make contact with other children.’
Jaap takes in sounds much more strongly than others, says his mother. ‘His brain does not filter away these background sounds.’ That is why he
wears custom-made earplugs when he plays chess with other children. He keeps his kinetic unrest under control with a toy snake that he can fiddle with.
Jaap plays chess every week, in the youth section of De Wijker Toren. Trainer Jan Sinnige teaches a group of four beginners. ‘Jaap has a good contact with the other children of the group, but not with children from other groups of the youth section’, he says.
‘At the chess club he can gradually build up contacts’, Jaap’s mother tells me. ‘He has no friends in the neighbourhood. At the chess club he feels at home.’
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