Waterford — The gathering of kids in a classroom at the Waterford Country School, with egg-dyeing and cake and stickers, was not a party, Brady Canoza insisted.

“It’s more of an event,” the 9-year-old said matter-of-factly, arranging the dye and eggs on the table with an Easter bunny mask covering the top half of his face.

Brady, a precocious kid with high-functioning autism, was talking to his mom, Corine Canoza, last fall about the trouble he was having making friends. Brady goes to school in Montville, where he lives, and is well-known at school but is rarely invited to play with other kids or attend parties on weekends.

Canoza said she had looked for groups that would connect her with other parents of kids who might get along with Brady, or at least understand his quirks and habits.

“I really wasn’t finding anything,” she said Sunday. But Brady knew what he wanted.

“Brady said, ‘Yeah, I would feel better if I could connect with other people,” Canoza remembered.

So they made it happen.

With just some craft supplies, baked goods and free access to the Waterford Country School facility through a friend at the school, Canoza and Brady formed what they think is the only group aimed at getting southeastern Connecticut kids with autism and other special needs together, in person, so that they can spend a couple of hours twice a month not feeling the isolation that Brady talked about.

“Some people think that autistic people don’t need a group,” Brady said.

Not true, he argued, and the parents who showed up to Sunday’s Easter party agreed.

Nicole Jordan moved to the area seven years ago, when her husband was stationed at the Naval Submarine Base.

She now lives with her son Brandon in Ledyard, and Jordan said in those seven years she has struggled to find a year-round and affordable place to bring Brandon to play with other autistic kids.

“There’s really not that much,” she said.

Canoza said families from all across Connecticut have shown up to the events. One mom who came with her son from New Haven said she had looked everywhere for something like Brady’s Brigade.

There are summer camps, which only last a few months, she said. And there are after-school programs and extracurricular activities that cost an arm and a leg, she said.

Canoza advertised the group and its twice-monthly events on the Brady's Brigade Facebook group, in online forums and even in places like Brady’s dentist’s office.

It has slowly grown, new parents coming tentatively with their children, hoping that just for an hour or two, they and their kids can be themselves. The kids don't mind if their new friends have tics or don't make eye contact, and the parents trade tips about where to find a good doctor or how to function when your child only lets you have just three hours of sleep a night.

Tori Lankerd sat at a table littered with kid-safe scissors and pieces of construction paper, keeping an eye on her son Liam, 4, who was diagnosed a year ago with autism along with a sensory processing disorder and an anxiety disorder.

At school or around strangers, Lankerd said, “he’s a little more hesitant to try new things.” At Brady’s Brigade events, she said, “he’s not expecting to be judged. They’re experiencing the same kind of things, and the same struggles. There's no correct way to play."

At a public playground or in a playgroup with non-autistic children, Liam might feel under pressure to keep his emotions and outbursts under control. And Lankerd said she feels the eyes of other parents on her, especially if Liam has a sensory meltdown — a severe reaction to a twisted sock, for example — and it looks to the untrained eye like a temper tantrum.

Those kinds of meltdowns are a symptom of Liam’s autism, she said, but “people walking around the store don’t know that.”

The people who come to Brady’s Brigade events do, though.

“They can be themselves,” Brady said. “It’s OK for them to be themselves.”

At one point Sunday afternoon, a child lay down in the doorway, and adults and kids alike calmly stepped around him instead of trying to make him move. Two parents chased a child with bright orange curls around the field at top speed, and no one batted an eye. No one yelled, and no one cried.

After the Easter egg hunt, Brady sat in a circle with several other kids as they assessed their loot. An egg with a Tootsie Roll in it was considered a success. Eggs with stickers in them got an “eww” from the circle.

Logan Beelendorf, whose younger brother Adrian had been lying in the doorway, smiled mischievously as he squeezed one of the plastic eggs, making the top fly directly at Brady’s forehead.

Brady threw his head back in faux-whiplash, then giggled with his mouth wide open. Soon the egg-tops were flying everywhere.

Watching the kids play, Canoza remembered a conversation she had with Brady when they were planning the first of the events.

“I’m your mom, and I don’t really understand you,” she had said to Brady, trying to see why he wanted a group of playmates so badly.

“No,” he said.

“But other autistic kids understand you?”

“Yep," he had said.

“Okay then.”

m.shanahan@thday.com