She sighed. “This is silly. I can type on a computer.”
We’d had this argument for the last four days. She always lost, but it didn’t stop her from trying.
“You can type on a computer,” I agreed. “But you can’t type everything, and handwritten notes and letters are far more personal than those written on a machine. At some point, you’ll need to write someone a note, and you’ll need a pen and paper for that.”
“Okay, okay.” She changed seats and sipped from her water bottle. “How many pages?”
“We’ll see. I’d like you to work on joining letters today.” I opened the book and flipped to a page with ‘th’ written in numerous ways, some solid and some dotted for her to trace. “This is a common combination and a good start, plus it’s quite an easy one, look.” I took another pencil, turned it upside down, and moved it in the motion.
“What if I get it wrong?”
“Then you keep trying until you get it right.” I patted her shoulder. “I’ll be right here if you need me.”
“Okay.” She looked at the page. “Then can I see the bunnies?”
“Then you can see the bunnies.”
***
I didn’t spend as much time tutoring Olympia as I’d thought I might. She got overwhelmed and stressed out easily, and that usually meant we had to split our work into two sessions. That hadn’t been the case today, and she’d enjoyed the writing so much that she’d continued on past the allotted half an hour.
Mrs. Berry, her nanny, was a kindly older woman whose own children were grown and in university, and she was one of the genuinely kindest women I’d ever met. She loved Olympia as if she were her own flesh and blood, and when she’d come into the room to take over from me, she’d made a big fuss of Olympia’s writing.
The look on Olympia’s face made the hard work worth it.
After visiting the baby bunnies, they’d both gone into the village to get some cake for lunch. Mrs. Berry had insisted that such good writing deserved such a good treat, and I’d smiled the entire time as they left.
Olympia loved cake.
Mrs. Berry rewarding her today would make my job easier tomorrow—she’d be more responsive to writing if she thought there was cake at the end of it. It was a slightly dangerous precedent to be setting, but hey.
Sometimes, you had to do what you had to do.
They’d invited me to join them, but I’d politely declined. Teaching Olympia could be tiring, especially when she was in a distracted mood like she’d been until the very end of our lesson today. Anything from a speck of a dust to a plane flying overhead could throw off her focus, and that was part of the reason why I’d declined cake.
Who in their right mind declined cake?
A woman on a mission, that was who.
I had friends who worked with children with extra needs, and I knew there would be some I could contact who might know of resources I could access for Olympia. Focusing and calming exercises were the ones we needed most.
I emailed a few of my friends and then went on my own search. Of course, what Olympia truly needed was her autism assessment. There was no doubt in my mind that she would be diagnosed, but her problem was that she was a girl.
Diagnosing girls with autism was one of the most difficult things in the world.
So many girls slipped through the net because they masked their symptoms and struggles. They didn’t always have the issues boys had making friends—in fact, a great deal of their signs were vastly different to boys, and the diagnostic criteria was based on studies carried out on boys.
Girls were being left behind, and that was why it’d taken Alexander this long to get her diagnosis. He’d been fighting for five years for someone to listen to him, and I hoped they’d get their answer by the end of the summer.
I found a few calming exercises including an app that had meditative music on. That was touch and go with Olympia’s sensitivity to noise, but it was gentle and soft enough that she might just find it helpful.
Besides, I wasn’t sure it applied to music.
The girl was always listening to music, but she couldn’t do that during lessons. We’d tried. We’d ended up having an impromptu dance party.
When the app downloaded to my phone, I took to my lesson plan to work on that for the remainder of the week. It was hard to make things like reading and writing exciting, but I hoped I was doing it.
“Oh, you’re here.”
I jolted at the sound of Alexander’s voice and pressed my hand to my chest. “Goodness, you scared me.”
He chuckled and walked into the living room. “Sorry. Am I interrupting you?”
“No, I’m just planning out some things for our lessons.” I saved what I was working on and closed my laptop down. “How was your meeting?”
“About as exciting as a bout of haemorrhoids,” he replied dryly. “I did get a call from the psychologist, though. About Olympia.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Good news?”
“Yes. They’re visiting next week to conduct the assessment.” He rung his hands together. “It’s a very strange feeling.”
“I imagine it is after so long, but it’ll help her so much, Alex.”
Sitting down, he nodded slowly. “I know. You’re doing a wonderful job with her. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.”
I smiled. “Well, you’re not paying me to do a shoddy one.”
“That’s true.” That put a smile back on his face. “Where is she, by the way? How was your lesson today? Did she behave herself?”
“That’s a lot of questions.” I laughed, tucking my feet beneath my butt on the sofa.
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine.” I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself laughing. “Yes, she was perfectly behaved. Our lesson went very well—she did great with her writing, and she actually finished a chapter of a book despite stopping halfway through and having a moment.”
“She went back to it?”
“Of her own accord. She isn’t a fan of the book, though, so we did take a gratuitous five minutes to find her something she was more interested in.”
“Well, if she went back to a book she wasn’t enjoying, can you imagine what she might do with one she is?”
“Exactly. Although I do rather suspect we’ll be hearing about fairies and talking rabbits for the next two weeks.”
His lips curled up. “We hear enough about baby bunnies as it is. I doubt ones that can talk are that much of a stretch.”
That was very true. The baby bunnies she loved so much were a happy accident in that both rabbits Alexander rescued for her were supposed to be female.
Evidently, one was not female.
Poor Annie the male rabbit. She wouldn’t change his name, either.
“So where is she?”
“Oh. Believe it or not, she was enjoying writing so much she did an extra page when Mrs. Berry arrived, so she took her for cake for lunch as a treat,” I said.
Alexander tilted his head to the side. “That seems like a dangerous precedent to be setting.”
My thoughts exactly.
“What are your plans for the rest of the day?”