This is my niece. Don't you love that smile? I love that smile. This is a happy kid, in general.
But not always. She can get very frustrated and angry. But we all can, can't we? Sure.
There was a time when this smile was somewhat hard to come by. There was a time when I would come into her house and ask for a hug and get a very terse "NO!" and she would run away. (Ok, she was two at the time. I didn't think much of it).
Then there was the time, when she was about 18 months old, and we stayed over at my brother- and sister-in-law's for New Years and she woke us up crying. Every. Single. Fucking. Hour. At 5, I was ready to get dressed and go home. Her parents were not impressed. With me. Who can blame them? No one wants to hear that their family is frustrated by their child's nocturnal crying. Especially when they have been dealing with this pretty much her whole life. (Don't most kids sleep through the night by age One? What is up,with this kid?)
Then there were the arguments at family gatherings in which my niece would cry and cry and cry and cry. Pretty much a tantrum. At every meal. In fact, the first picture I have of her, when she was a mere 2 days old, she's crying (ok, but she was only two days old at the time, but still...). Not understanding what was going on, often we complained that we didn't want to listen to her tantrum during our meal. I admit, we were not at all understanding of what my brother- and sister-in-law probably dealt with at home Every. Single. Day.
One thing they found out early on was that dairy seemed to be an issue. So, they eliminated dairy from my niece's diet. No milk, no cheese, no ice cream, no yogurt. As time has gone on, they've found what her limits seem to be and she is able to tolerate small amounts of dairy, usually if it's cooked.
This also helped make radical changes to her behaviour. Mealtimes became far more pleasant.
I will admit, I didn't always like my niece. But then, I didn't understand her.
This past year, my sister-in-law pushed for more aggressive testing for my niece. They went to several sleep studies where it was pretty much determined that she either doesn't secrete melatonin, the chemical responsible for our sleep-wake cycles, doesn't secrete enough or, if she is secreting melatonin, her body isn't using it effectively. So, the doc prescribed melatonin for her to take before bedtime. I guess she's been on it nearly a year. WHAT a difference!!! Once she started sleeping, her defiant behaviour changed and she stopped (for the most part) having tantrums.
But something was still up. Socially, things were not good at school. Academically, she was struggling some in her French Immersion school. She still seemed relatively happy, and my two years if unemployment allowed me more time to spend with her and her mom and sisters. Honestly, the worst part of having time with my sister-in-law and nieces was that I wasn't working.
During the past two years, with all that extra time, I got to see my niece in a bit of a different light, and we started to forge a real relationship.
Then the results of the testing came back.
According to the testing done, my lovely, funny, sweet niece is on the Austism Spectrum and has ADHD.
What does that mean to ME? In terms of how I deal with my niece, absolutely nothing. She's my niece, I love her, and there is nothing anyone can do to change that. But it also means I question more. I ask her mom what new ideas they've gotten from their support group. I ask her mom if a certain behaviour is part of her diagnosis, or just part of her.
But mostly, I ask for hugs. And I get them.
