Baby steps

Being the mother of two children with autism can bring many things. Happiness. Joy. Sadness. Exhaustion. Frustration. Surprise. Enthusiasm. Today I felt a mixture of a few of these.

I, occasionally, babysit 3 neighbor children. They are really cute children. Their ages are 5, 3, and 20 months. You'd think that would be a difficult task, but it really is very easy. They answer to their names on the first try. When I ask them a question, they answer me. Appropriately! When I ask them to do something, they do it. This really knocks me over. I'm simply not used to any of that. They don't scream and yell at me. They don't hit me. They don't spit on me.

I have to be careful when I babysit, because I can become sad and frustrated easily. If I stop for a moment and compare my children, I can get overwhelmed. Like any mother, I sometimes can't help it. When I thought, today, that the 19 month old has so many words and my almost 3 year-old doesn't have any, I about cried. I have a good friend that gave me a nice text and helped me out.

Then, came the joy part of the afternoon. The 5 year-old girl was putting together a large alphabet puzzle and having trouble finding some letters. Braedon walked into the room and noticed what she was doing. He immediately said and found the next letter she was looking for and handed it to her. They repeated this until the puzzle was done.

Now, it might not seem like a huge deal that two children were putting a puzzle together, but it is a GIANT deal to me. Braedon did something with another child!! I could have lived off that for weeks, but then it got better.

He walked up to her, looked her in the face and began to talk to her! TALK TO ANOTHER CHILD!!! Sure, it wasn't coherent and I'm pretty sure he was reciting lines from Mary Poppins. That doesn't matter. He was trying to talk and interact with another child.

Just when I was feeling sorry for myself, I'm lifted up to cloud 9. It's all about tiny baby steps!