As an only child, Madeleine DelVicario grew up without many games or playmates in the house for her puzzle-loving brain. When her son Nico Walker was born, she met her playmate in crime.
“We’ve been playing since forever,” DelVicario said, grinning.
Together, the mother and son play classics like Boggle and others outside the typical board game shelf, like Forbidden Island Desert, The Captain Is Dead and The Castles of Mad King Ludwig. In the past few years, the pair joined board game clubs in Greenfield and Westfield.
Now, she and her son are inviting others to the game table with “Aurora: A Group for Neurodiverse Connection.”
After its first session on Jan. 17, the group will meet from 1 to 4 p.m. every other Saturday until March 28 at the Sunderland Public Library. Sessions are split into two activities: group discussions and a board game to finish the three hours.
“The group is about helping folks who are neurodivergent just make connections with each other,” Sunderland Public Library Director Katherine Umstot said. “Especially folks on the autism spectrum and with other neurodivergences can really have a hard time connecting with people socially, so the group is intended to teach social skills but also to give time to build those skills and connect with other people who are neurodivergent.”
DelVicario said her whole family is neurodivergent. While she has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), her son falls on the autism spectrum.
“We’re a whole ADHD household,” DelVicario laughed.
She described her son Walker, 25, as a social butterfly since the beginning, inviting the entire class to his birthday parties and hosting weekly board game battles with friends in high school. When Walker started college, DelVicario pictured the same busy social life for him.
“I think we expected that he would find his people at school, and he didn’t really,” she said. “It’s really challenging to be somebody who really thrives with lots of people and lots of friends and struggle with making friends and finding the right people.”
With board games on the brain, she imagined a path for helping her son and other neurodivergent individuals have conversations and form friendships with the help of a few fun puzzles.
“We can host a great game night, this is something that’s in our wheelhouse. How can we make this happen?” DelVicario remembered thinking about three years ago.
While earning her master’s degree in social work at Westfield State University, DelVicario, an experiential learning coordinator at the Jandon Center for Community Engagement at Smith College, said she learned about the power of group peer support. Instead of one-on-one conversations with social workers, a dynamic she described as a “sometimes curated experience,” or advice sessions, group peer support clears space for relaxed connection, where people can bond over their shared experiences and learn from the differences.
In a comfortable space of shared understanding, cycles of shame and embarrassment can loosen and break, she said.
“I think there’s real power in being in a space with other people and being able to say out loud the thing that maybe you’ve been hiding or keeping to yourself. I think that can be really healing,” DelVicario said.
She recalled conversations with a coworker who also has ADHD and started the “ADHD Work Party” for Smith students.
“Even at this point in my life, hearing her talk about things that she’s done or experienced, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I do that too! I’m not alone!’ There’s some joy in just connecting with someone who gets us, but also, I can feel this release of stress or shame or whatever it is that I’m still holding onto,” she said.
DelVicario leads the meeting discussions, diving into questions that come up when navigating social connections, like “How do you distinguish nourishing relationships from those that are challenging in a bad way, that are more draining and destructive to you?” Other potential conversation starters include managing disappointment, navigating differences in needs and building a connection in the first conversation beyond introductions and small talk.
She noted that future discussions will depend on the specific group members, who she hopes will grow their confidence and comfort enough to bring their own topics to the club.
Instead of lessons outlining steps for members to take to change their behaviors or mask their neurodivergence, DelVicario and Umstot stressed that the discussions will be “strengths-based.”
“There are such strengths associated with being neurodivergent, and I think that in this capitalist, structured world that we live in — like the way schools are typically set up or the way an office job is typically set up — maybe forces you to look at things that are hard for you more than the things that come easily to you, so I really want to highlight what’s great about it, and acknowledge that there are challenges,” DelVicario said.
“Everyone has something to offer and we can all learn from each other,” Umstot echoed. “This kind of program just fits in perfectly with our mission … Libraries are for everyone, and we really like to make sure that folks feel like that, and also that folks feel like they’re an important part of the community in general.”
When the conversation slows, the board game boxes open.
Members will play cooperative games, DelVicario and Walker’s favorite. Instead of the typical competitive games where participants face off, cooperative games take a team of participants putting their heads together. Group members can focus on the puzzle in front of them and connect by working towards a common goal.
“Having fun is very important to me,” DelVicario stated, wearing a camo print jacket lined in hot pink fleece over a tee shirt with the words, “good trouble.”
“This self-care movement for me has been a little bit about finding what feels like play,” she explained. “For me, that can be like trying a new recipe when I have time and capacity to do that, or it can be meeting a friend for dinner and chatting, or it can be playing games.”
She said the “Aurora” in the group’s name, “Aurora: A Group for Neurodiverse Connection,” came from her idea to celebrate play and color. Like the streaks of electric color in the Aurora Borealis, she described the name as a distillation of “brightness in the dark,” and a nod to her son’s love for colors with more personality.
“[Walker] thinks the world is just too flat and gray,” she said. With a smile, she remembered a comment of his, “Why are cars just gray and black and light blue and whatever? Where are the more interesting colors?”
To register for limited spots in the group, visit https://calendly.com/sunderlandpubliclibrary/aurora?month=2026-01