Autism Awareness Month

Autism Awareness month (and World Autism Awareness Day) came and went in our household with lots of awareness and a bit of autism, but with a much greater focus on something else.

Adolescence.

Sweet M is morphing right before our eyes. If we had time-lapse photography at our disposal, the physical changes would not seem that much faster than they are already. Everything is changing: height, shape, skin, hair. The one thing we wouldn't be able to photograph would be the extraordinary changes in her language development.

She is striking up conversations with schoolmates. "Hey K, what are you doing for Mother's Day?" She is keeping a diary (more on this later). She is reading two pages of the dictionary every night. And, the part that amazes me the most is that she is talking in her sleep. Yes, the seriously language-impaired girl is talking in her sleep.

This morning I awoke to her very loud and clear question: "Are you saying that's a nuclear time bomb?"

Perfect articulation. Proper prosody. Deeply weird question.

But she was asleep. Which I no longer was, so I got up to share this post with you.

Autism. Adolescence. Let's hope it's no time bomb.