Today you are ten years old. A while ago, I wrote another letter to you. I told you about how I had found life _______ after you were born and the following year, but how I loved you with all of my heart. None of that has _______.

You have overcome so many challenges and _______ so much and my heart swells with pride on every _______. I recently asked people who love you to think of a word they _______ with you and I was moved with their choices. Confident, kind, adorable--to name but a few. Please _______ these words in years to come and if you ever have _______ about who you are, I want you to refer back to this.

You see, there is another word people often use to _______ you, one that you’re not yet aware of and that is autistic (患自闭症的). If your _______ of the world around you has grown in the future, I will ________ to you what that actually means.

The way your brain works means you see the world around you very _________ You can’t often say what you feel, which makes me sad, as I want to help and try to put you ________ but without knowing what it is that is bothering you.

What I do want you to know, ________, is that despite the challenges you face, your autism can be a ________ to you and every word used to describe you is entirely accurate. Finally, I want to say, the most ________ word to describe you was this---“perfect”--you are and always will be.

Love,

Mummy

Last year, I was lucky enough to work at an office near my mother’s house._________, I stayed with her for a month. During that time, I _________ her out with the housework and contributed to the groceries.

After a week, I started to _________ the groceries were running out pretty quickly.___________, I began observing my mother’s daily routine for two weeks. To my _________, I found she would pack a paper bag full of canned goods and _________every morning at about nine. She took the food to the slums(贫民窟) and distributed it to street _________.

I asked around and _________ my mum was popular in the area. The kids looked up to her as if she were their own mother. Then it hit me ——why didn’t she want to tell me about what she’d been doing? Was she _________ that I would stop buying the groceries if I knew the truth?

When she got home, I told her about my discovery and __________ she could react, I gave her a big hug and told her she didn’t need to keep it a __________ from me. She told me that __________ of the children lived with an old lady in a makeshift home while others____________on the streets. For years, my mum had been helping out by __________ whatever food she could __________. I was so moved by how __________ she was. She used what was__________for her to help others in need. And I was so __________ of her.

I __________ to buy groceries for my mum. But now, I always add a(n)__________bag for her other children.

In the clinic, I asked if Michael could be retested, so the specialist tested him again. To my _________ , it was the same score.

Later that evening, I_________ told Frank what I had learned that day. After talking it over, we agree that we knew our_________ much better than an IQ (智商)test. We _________ that Michael’s score must have been a _________ and we should treat him _________ as usual.

We moved to Indiana in 1962, and Michael studied at Concordia High School in the same year. He got _________ grades in the school, especially in biology and chemistry, which was a great comfort.

Michael _________ Indiana University in 1965 as a pre-medical student, soon afterwards, his teachers permitted him to take more courses than_________. In 1968, he was __________ by the School of Medicine, Yale University.

On graduation day in 1972, Frank and I __________ the ceremony(典礼) at Yale. After the ceremony, we told Michael about the __________ IQ score he got when he was six. Since that day, Michael sometimes would look at us and say __________, “My dear mom and dad never told me that I couldn’t be a doctor, not until after I graduated from medical school!” It is his special way of thanking us for the __________ we had in him.

Interestingly, Michael then __________ another IQ test. We went to the same clinic where he had __________ the test eighteen years before. This time Michael scored 126, an increase of 36 points. A result like that was supposed to be __________.

Children often do as __________ as what adults, particularly parents and teachers, __________ of them. That is, tell a child he is “__________”, and he may play the role of a foolish child.