Your Granddaughter Insisted I Call You This Morning

 I get this call pretty often. On one particular morning she was distraught over the fact that her brothers had eaten all the chips and drank all the juices for her lunch. If I had not been busy on that day, I would have taken her lunch from McDonalds. I mean, it's what a grandparent does, isn't it? Tell me I'm spoiling her. I don't mind. Partly because she is my baby girl. Her parents both work, and mom is an elementary school principal. I sat for her and her four brothers from the time her mom got off maternity leave until she was three. 

Ok, something I didn't tell you about this particular grandchild. She was diagnosed with autism at a very young age. As an infant she was amazing. Normal.  She started talking (jabbering) and then stopped. I honestly thought it was because she didn't have to talk. She has FOUR brothers who would jump to get her whatever she wanted as soon as she reached and let out a grunt. I had gone through it with my youngest who had two brothers and a sister that doted on her. It tends to happen to the baby in large families. But that wasn't it. We started working on sign language, so we could communicate. 

We noticed she would "tippy toe" when she walked. She loved television and cartoons. When her favorite ones came on, she would flap her hands, walking back and forth in front of the big screen television on her tippy toes, singing the theme songs. Music. She absolutely loved music. I took her to therapy classes every day and picked her up. They also worked with us on sign language. She was talking a little, mostly one or two words. Her mom found a school where there was therapy all day. I would take her in the morning and pick her up in the afternoon. One day a therapist brought her out to the truck at pick up time and handed me her work for the day, telling me how the day went and what they worked on. I held up one of her pictures and made a comment on what a pretty picture it was. 

"I colored it by myself!!"

I cried. All the way back home, I cried. Happy tears of joy. She would talk. Boy, would she talk! Her parents put her in day care, so she could be 'socialized'. She needed it, but it broke my heart. I lost my little side-kick. That thought was so wrong, but at the time it is how I felt. This little girl was a part of me, like all my grandchildren are, but even more. I had spent so much time with her. 

If you look at her now, she is just a normal first grader. You wouldn't know she had autism. I read that children can outgrow it. Which is a crazy thought to me. Outgrow it. No. I think it is still there, in thebackground. I think they learn to cope, like so many of us with ADD/ADHD learned to cope before there was a diagnosis for it. She still flaps occasionally and has the occasional meltdown. And that's when I get the phone call....

"Your granddaughter insisted I call you this morning so she could talk to you..."