I was 15, and he was 2.

The rector at the church recommended me to the family as a babysitter who liked atypical kids. His mom picked me up with him in a carseat in the back. He seemed atypically quiet.

The information about him trickled out as she glanced nervously over at me.

He was autistic. He didn’t speak.

When I was 12 and 13 I had “apprenticed” at a nursery school. An almost nonspeaking autistic boy and I had sat under tables for a few months. Every so often I had commented on the world around us. Eventually he had started commenting back. The adults seemed surprised, but it made sense to me. In a busy classroom the only one who had time to be still enough to build a relationship was the superfluous “apprentice.”

So I shrugged.

He had an intellectual disability. I still thought that meant “slow.” I had sat for babies. If he was a bigger baby (he disabused me of that notion within an hour), I could handle it.

I nodded.

At the house there was more. She told me his bedtime but warned he wouldn’t sleep for me. He still nursed to sleep.

And then: “He has seizures. Do you think you can handle that?”

I pointed out that she was obviously quite thorough. I was sure she would tell me what I needed to know. And she did. I learned about absence seizures; he had several an hour.

I had never seen a parent so anxious as her husband shepherded her out the door. I was young; I did not understand it yet.

It was the same as any other babysitting job, really. We played. I fed him. Within the parameters of what his parents had said was okay, I followed his lead. Sure, we paused for seizures. But every child is an individual.

Within the year I would sit for an older child who could become violent when overwhelmed. We would spend some time relationship building before I would try things like taking him to a public pool alone. He’d melt down sometimes in public. It wouldn’t always be easy, but we would manage.

The 2-year-old, on the other hand? Well within my comfort zone.

At bedtime I took him upstairs. He was a big wiggly kid and he didn’t seem eager to have his diaper changed, so I changed him on the floor so we could relax and play as I did it and not worry about falling. Once his pyjamas were on, I tried soothing him on the bed but his mom was right: he was having none of it. We went back down.

The tail end was a bit rough. He was very tired and he cried and pawed at my chest. I tried to comfort him, but I could not satisfy him.

When his mom came back she looked at me through tears as I handed over her red-faced, tear-streaked son. I felt terrible. She asked me to wait as she put him down. I chatted awkwardly with his dad.

When she came back she asked me if I was sure about my rates. I shrugged. My material needs were met; this was pocket money for luxuries. Many of the families I sat for didn’t have a lot of spare cash. Tips were fine, but not necessary.

She seemed so upset.

Finally she told me that I was the first teen babysitter she had ever used. Usually it was special ed grad students at ten to twenty times my prices. And this was the first time she had come home to find him in a clean diaper and pyjamas. The grad students said changing him was too hard.

That, I think, was my baptism into the realities of disability service provision.

I spent a lot of time with that boy from then until I graduated high school. I loved him, and his mother was nurturing to me too. The mothers in the park would stare at us, so I played with him an extra lot in hopes he wouldn’t notice. I stayed with him while his mother gave birth to his sibling. I miss the family, even now.

Maybe my life would have turned out different if I had been sophisticated enough to know that it was hard to support him. As it was, that lesson still hasn’t sunk in.

I’m still a big believer in amateur support workers. When the prejudices aren’t formally educated in, they aren’t as forceful.