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I turned around and grinned at her. “See? I told you. I knew you could do it.”
The sparkle in her eyes matched the brightness of her smile, and I held out my arms to hug her. She giggled and squeezed me tightly.
“What do you think of the book?”
“Um.” She leaned into me. “I don’t know.”
“Would you like to try something else tomorrow?”
“I think so.”
“Okay.” I checked the time. “We still have to do some writing practice, but I think we can take five minutes to search for a new book.” I pulled up the e-book store website on my laptop as Olympia pulled a chair over. “Let’s see… what about this one?”
“What’s it about?”
I read the summary to her, and she shook her head, but I added it to a list just in case. We went through several books until one about fairies in a far-off land caught her attention, and after I’d checked to make sure it was appropriate for her reading level, I purchased it using the card Alexander had given me for her supplies.
I was a little jealous of her book budget.
“Are we done now? Is Mrs. Berry here? Can I see the bunnies?” Olympia asked, fidgeting.
“Nope.” I slid her the handwriting workbook and a pencil. “Mrs. Berry won’t be here for another thirty minutes. Until then, we’re doing some work on your penmanship.”
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 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.
