O
ne kid Mike’s been working with for quite sometime is Dimitri. He is one of Mike’s favorites and he is interesting because he is very intelligent for his age and for his condition. Dimitri has aspergers, an autism spectrum disorder, that restrains people from social interactions. He wasn’t
“You have to find out what motivates a child.”
“When I would start working with a child, I’ll take a huge bag of all different kinds of balls, ropes, a lot of things. With Dimitri, he was unique in the fact that he could think like an adult, but he had nothing in common
the kid who liked to play with others and he preferred to stay indoors to play chess and be on the computer. People with aspergers often display intense interests, and with Dimitri’s situation, that interest was adult games. He was always alone and he wouldn’t step outside to introduce himself to the world. Dimitri certainly didn’t like sports, he was never the kid who was physically active. Dimitri’s parents con-
tacted Mike, and his task became to get Dimitri more engaged socially through sports and other forms of interaction. At first it didn’t seem to matter as Dimitri still wasn’t interested in playing sports and socializing, but then Mike came up with a strategy to incorporate board games with playing sports and interacting with kids.
with kids his own age.” It was so challenging and stressful for Mike to get Dimitri to go outside more. “I went home and thought: “he loves chess”. So on paper, I drew chess patterns but they were more like pass patterns that a receiver would run.” Mika Peterman, Mike’s daughter, added: “We went to Dimitri’s house one day and my dad had mapped out all of these football plays that we could do out on the field. He did it in a more geometrical manner so
that Dimitri could relate to it and actually execute these plays. Dimitri was immediately glued to these patterns and that is what got him out of the door.” Since then, Dimitri has waited for Mike every Friday with a football in his hands waiting to go play.