My Youngest Grandson and His Progress (He has PDD NOS on the Autism Spectrum)

Tweet

My four year old grandson is on the autism spectrum and has been diagnosed with PDD-NOS (pervasive development disorder not otherwise specified). He is difficult to live with. My life, my daugher's life and his brothers lives have revolved around him for his entire 4 years. He never said a word until he was almost three years old and his first word was our dog Rosie's name. He also never referred to any of us by any name or title until he WAS three. His mother had to work with him, showing him pictures of each member of the family and saying their names over and over which eventually worked so he knew our names and his own name and tried to say the names. He didn't exactly call us by our names for a long time but if you asked him where momma or grandma was, he would run to us and point. He is almost fanatically attached to his mother. He MUST know where she is at all times and he will run from room to room looking for her plus he has to sleep with her. If he falls asleep in their bed, he will wake up after an hour or two and come crying for her. It is a difficult way to live. We can not take him in public often because there are times that he starts shrieking and will not stop. There is no ignoring him or waiting through what some might call a tantrum because he never stops and he is LOUD! This means we do not go anywhere as a family together. I stay home and babysit him so that my daughter and the two oldest boys can have a somewhat normal life. Sometimes I resent this which I think is normal because it is hard not getting to go together as a family to the park; public swimming pool; water park or to the library's storytime hour. I feel like my grandson is missing out on a lot. So when my little guy does something that is especially "normal" though I am not certain that's the right word, I get excited for him. I believe it is a sign of progress and it gives me hope for his future. My mother gave him a magnetic drawing board and he loved it from the beginning. In fact, he would sit next to me and ask me to draw trains for, ahem, what seemed like hours though probably wasn't quite. Well after seeing me draw all those Thomas the Tank Engine trains for him, oh plus the other train characters from the show and even the non-train characters, Terence, Harold, George, etc, he started drawing his own pictures. And they actually look like something a little boy would draw too. I was so happy that I had to take pictures of his drawing. He's really good at making lots of wheels on the trains. He is copying a lot of what I drew for him when I was drawing pictures for him. And then he likes to erase the pictures so he can draw more or ask me to draw more for him. We have a lot of fun together, me and my little guy. It's going to be very hard for me to see him go to pre-school this year because he is wrapped so tightly around my heart. Yes I get tired of him sometimes and I complain but I really love my family and this little sweetie a lot.