A Lesson Learned from Harry Potter: Good vs. Evil

Jack and I have been reading Harry Potter for the past few months. I read to him at bedtime, after his shower, while he's eating his snack. He's not much of a reader on his own. Don't know if it's because he has trouble reading or he just doesn't enjoy it, but he enjoys me reading to him.

We're in the last book of the series now, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." I warned him that it would get very dark and some of the characters would die. I knew it was a story about good versus evil, but it's been a few years since I read it myself, and I had forgotten some of the plot lines.

The other night we read a part about the Ministry of Magic (the government agency of the magical people, aka witches and wizards) passing a new law that required all "Muggle-borns" (those witches and wizards with non-magical human heritage) to register with the authorities. Some of the Muggle-borns were being carted off to Azkaban, the wizard prison, simply because they were not "pure-born" witches or wizards. This stopped me in my tracks for a moment.

Jack is in the 6th grade. So far in his education he's studied Ancient Rome, Greece, Egypt, South America, the Renaissance, the American Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and California history, but I don't recall them learning any modern day European history yet. Hmmmmm.

"Jack," I said, "have you ever heard of the Nazis? Or Hitler?"

"I know Hitler was a bad man and he killed himself." So he knows a little.

I told him that in the days leading up to WW2 when the Nazis first came to power, anybody who was Jewish or had Jewish relatives was required to register with the government and wear a yellow star sewn on their clothes to identify them as a Jew. And later on, Hitler started taking all the Jewish people he could find--including moms, dads and little children--to prison camps where most of them died. I tried to explain to him that 6 1/2 million Jewish people were killed by Hitler and the Nazis.

"Well, that's just wrong!" he said, with 11-year-old indignation.

"Yes, it was. It was very wrong." How do you explain such evil to a little boy? Do I even want to? Maybe not just yet. At least I can teach him to judge the people he meets by what kind of people they are, by what's in their hearts, and not by the color of their skin, their religion or where they may have been born. There are some good lessons to be learned from Harry Potter.

Social Skills & the Autism Spectrum

We were riding in the car the other night, talking about the Harry Potter movie coming out next week. We've been reading the books together, and we're into the fifth book now. We've watched the first four movies, so I was asking him if he wanted to go ahead and watch the other movies so we can go see the new one, or if he wants to finish reading the books first. He decided he would rather finish the books first (which will take a while--they're big, thick books!), and then watch the movies. A little disappointed that we wouldn't see "Deathly Hallows Part 2" together, I asked him if he'd mind if I saw it with my friend, without him. He thought for a moment and then said, "No, you can go. Even though you haven't seen all the movies, you've read the books so you should be able to figure out the story. You might have trouble knowing who the characters are, though, since you haven't seen all the movies."

Wow! Pretty impressive logic coming from my 10 year old. "You're a pretty smart boy!" I told him proudly.

He looked a little stunned for a moment, then responded, "Thanks! I know not to take insults to heart." Ouch. We were on our way to a social event, after all, and he's had his share of hurtful remarks, both intended and unintended. There was that familiar ache in my heart again. How can everyone not love my sweet boy the way I do?

"You know," I went on (always a mom who sees a teaching/reinforcement opportunity), "sometimes people say insults cause they're only playing with you. Like when people trash-talk when you're playing a game. It's not always meant to be hurtful. Sometimes people say little 'insults' cause they like you. They're just being silly and playful."

It's hard for him to know the difference between someone really being mean and just joking around. He used to come in the house in tears several times a day, because some kid in the neighborhood said something mean to him or he just didn't understand the social nuances. For the past year he's just stayed in the house, rather than deal with the meanness. The other kids see him as an easy target, and think it's funny when he cries or gets angry when they tease him. We make playdates with his school friends, he enjoys activities with the junior high group at church and we have one special little girl who lives a couple of blocks away who plays very nicely with him (we love her!).

I worry about his social skills when he grows up and has to go out into the world without me. Will he be that "weird guy" at work, the really smart computer geek with no clue how to carry on a conversation? Will he have a girlfriend? (At this point, girls are still yucky--at least in "that" way.) He's convinced that he and a couple of his buddies will have their own video game company. He's "not going to work for anybody else." Okay. We'll see how that goes.

Later that same evening, as I was bringing him back from his swim party, we saw a group of the kids from our street standing in a bunch on the corner. Kids out playing on a summer night. Except my kid is always the outsider. He waved at a couple of them as we drove past in the car. "Did they wave back?" I asked him.

"No," he sighed, "but at least they didn't run away."