Urban Grind is a popular coffeehouse right near our house. It's renowned for having not one, but TWO playrooms full of toys. (OK, they're grimy and the voices inside of the toys don't work anymore, but still. It's really a treasure for stressed-out mommies, grandparents and parents like me who want to get together with other grownup friends with kids and actually talk while our kids play).
I met my friend Paige and her son Parker, who is 3 1/2, at Urban Grind today. The kids had a lot of fun playing, although not together -- I think that Rachel doesn't know Parker well enough to quite know what to make of him. I told Paige he looks like a baby rapper because his pants were falling below his diaper. She's trying to toilet-train him but it's not going well.
We had a nice conversation -- I barely saw Rachel for about an hour, she was so busy finding toys to play with -- when I went into the next room to fetch her and a bigger girl started snatching away every toy Rachel tried to play with. Before she could make a fuss, I brought her back to the room where Paige and I had been sitting.
As I ducked to try to get into the low door, the little girl blocked my way, even after I said "excuse me." Then she tried to shut the door in my face. I guessed she was about 5 or so. "Stop that," I said sharply, then pushed past her to go inside.
Her mother followed me.
"She has (this next part was a bit garbled)...autism," the mom said. "She's not always sensitive to what's going on."
"Oh," I said sheepishly. "I'm sorry. Thank you for letting me know."
Paige saw and heard the exchange. I told her I felt awful, and she did too, but we had no way of knowing.
Think of this, Paige said. That mother has to explain dozens, if not hundreds, of times a day about her daughter. She has to tell everyone why she behaves oddly.
And yet I noticed that she had a smile on her face the whole time.
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