I want to talk about my grandson here because he turned out to be a wonderful young man even though he had a lot of autistic traits from the start. He didn't make eye contact as a baby, he would just turn and stare at the nearest light source, like a window. He was a little late reaching milestones like crawling and walking and wasn't potty trained until he was 3 1/2. It was almost impossible to get him to smile for a photo. We would have to pull all kinds of antics to get a little smile out of him. Mostly he was just intently interested in the camera. He was a little late in talking and his first word was his own name. He loved to be read to. He especially liked nursery rhymes because they were so silly.
He could put together 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles when he was 5 years old. When he played with toys he would focus his attention on a single part of the toy like he was trying to figure out how that particular part of the toy worked.
He couldn't draw because he couldn't put enough pressure on a pencil or crayon. We were concerned the summer before he started kindergarten because he would have to learn to write, so we got him activity books to practice putting pressure on a pencil. Mostly he liked the dot to dot books. He would sit for hours and finish an entire dot to dot book at once. At first his lines were so light you could hardly see them, but gradually he was able to put more pressure on the pencil. It paid off in another way too. His kindergarten teacher told me he was really good at number sequencing.
He had a strong desire to learn to read when he was in first grade. He told me he really wanted to lean to read. He would stop and try to read signs he passed. When I asked him why he wanted to read so bad he told me it was because he wanted to be able to read the jackets on video games when he went to a video game store.
He would have meltdowns a few times a week. We didn't know they were called meltdowns. We called them glitches. They were like tantrums but were never directed at other people. This is one example: we once took him to a store and the parking lot was so crowded that we had to park further away from where we normally parked. When we walked into the store, he froze, staring at the floor, unable to move because we parked in the wrong place, so we took him back to the car and drove around the parking lot until we were able to find a spot in the area he was expecting us to park. after that he was OK.
His handwriting was so bad that his fourth grade teacher suggested he bring a typewriter to class, but when we asked his doctor about this, he couldn't figure out what was wrong. He never learned to ride a bike but his friends didn't care. When they played with him they didn't ride their bikes either. He was obsessed with star wars all through elementary school and middle school. Star wars was everything to him. He wouldn't read a book unless it had anything to do with star wars. When he started high school his obsessive interest changed to Japanese anime culture.
He wouldn't talk about things involving emotions, but would give a thumbs up, thumbs down or thumb to the side for neutral and he refused to shake hands. If you asked him a question he had no answer for, he would say nothing.
He is a wonderful young man now. He will be completing high school next year. He is the sweetest boy in the world. We never for a minute thought there was anything wrong with him. Everything was right with him. He has always been a delightful boy with a quirky sense of humor and a unique personality.
01 Jun 2013, 9:48 pm
