The Po Show

To Be Me

After one of Matthew's particularly bad days at school last month, his therapist showed him a book she had, entitled To Be Me. It's about a 10 year old boy in the fourth grade, who has Asperger's. He talks about how he loves race cars (often all he can think and talk about are race cars), and how he often has a really hard time with the kids at school. Once, he says, a girl didn't want to be partnered with him. "I don't want to be partners with him," the girl said. "He's so weird." Then one day the boy puts together a presentation for his class, explaining to them what Asperger's Syndrome is (in very simple terms). They all begin to understand him better, and he's much happier.

Matthew was very enthusiastic about the book, and the idea of telling his class about Asperger's. But he was very hesitant about how to go about that. I ordered our own copy of the book, and we told the school psychologist about it.

At our school, they've implemented a positive discipline system called PAWS (Practice respect - Accept responsibility - Work together - Safety matters). Each time a child is "caught doing the right thing," they are given a bookmark sized certificate. These PAWS can be turned in for rewards, but not the typical plastic crap kids usually get for these types of things. They can choose privileges like "wear your slippers to school," "say the Pledge of Allegiance over the PA," "lead the Halloween parade," etc. Matthew got 10 PAWS, and chose (after a lot of deliberation and help from the school psych.) "choose a story to be read in class." He decided that he wanted the To Be Me book to be his choice.

Prior to this, his teacher had heard about the book from the school psych., and he purchased his own copy (which was amazing of him, since it was $30). When Matthew chose his PAWS reward, he wanted to tell Mr. Fried about his plan, but he was nervous about it, so he had a "meeting" with him and the school psych. With a bit of help, he said there was a book he wanted to have read to the class, and he shared the title. Mr. Fried reached into his bag and pulled it out. Matthew was SO surprised and pleased and Mr. Fried told him, "Oh, this is my FAVORITE book!" Matthew said that he was still nervous about sharing the book with the class, and having them know he had Asperger's, so they told him that it was completely up to him, that they could do it whenever he was ready.

That was a few weeks ago. Today I got a call from the school psych., who said, "I have some good news!" I told her I'm always up for good news :), and she said that this morning Matthew had chosen to have the book read. She decided that she didn't want to make him additionally nervous by showing up, but she heard about it afterwards from Matthew and Mr. Fried, who said the kids were very attentive. You could have heard a pin drop, it seems.

Then after the reading, a boy named Jack raised his hand and said, "Matthew, if I ever teased you, I'm really sorry." Several other kids also told him they were sorry, and he said, "That's okay."

Matthew then went down to the school psych. to tell her all about it. She said he was just glowing, he was so happy. She said she cried, she was so happy for him. He said that he wanted to have the book read to his class every year, and she thought that was an excellent idea. She told him that since he was in inclusion, there would probably be other kids in his future classes who had some learning differences, so they would probably welcome having this explained to the class, that it was okay to be different. "Absolutely!," Matthew enthused.

I had to pick Matthew up early from school because he had a really bad stomachache (probably the combination of all the excitement of the morning, and all the garlic bread he ate last night giving him a gas attack). Mr. Fried brought him down to the office and told me that the reading had been "tremendous." He said he was so proud of Matthew and that it had by far been the BEST thing that has happened (for himself, not just Matthew) all year. He said he would see that the book was read to all the fourth grade classes, and that all the teachers at school had a look at it. He is absolutely incredible; there are no words to describe how grateful I am to him.

It's a wild ride, the roller coaster that is our lives, but it felt great to be up one of the peaks.