The result of The Boy’s idea pitch, campaigning, and success!

The Boy attends ESY in the summer.  If you are not familiar, ESY stands for “Extended School Year” which is a program that helps students who would otherwise flounder with the crazy transition from summer back to school.  His school district does an amazing job with this program (it’s like school-lite), to the point that it is the highlight of his year.  Every year, they have a new T-shirt, with an uplifting slogan, and he is such a fan of ESY, that this year, Santa got his hands on a boatload of ESY T-shirts from previous years to give to The Boy.  It was, hands down, one of his favorite gifts.

As I’ve mentioned before, The Boy, and plenty of other kids on the spectrum tend to have “obsessions” with characters from TV and movies, pieces of clothing, and even colors.  The Boy has had an on-and-off love affair with pink over the years.  And near the end of last school year, he wrote a very eloquent letter to the director of ESY, asking if she would consider ordering pink T-shirts for the students that summer (2011).  She responded back with an equally eloquent (say THAT 5 times fast) letter to let him know that the color had already been picked but for the following year (2012), she thought they could let the students vote, and that he would be allowed to campaign for pink.

And so… With the help of his teacher, The Boy developed a campaign slogan (“Think Pink!”), printed the slogan out on slips of bright pink paper, and “canvassed” all of the classes before the vote.  Sure enough, PINK WON.

He just got his pink T-shirt yesterday, and he was geeked.

I couldn’t be prouder of my little go-getter.