Maddie loves music. Her favorites currently are One Republic’s Counting Stars and Imagine Dragon’s Demons. This is actually mellow from what she liked when she was born.

When Maddie would get very upset as a baby, we tried all types of music to calm her. Lullabies, James Taylor acoustic stuff, even classical. None of it stuck. Then one day she was upset and I turned on MTV2 to try to drum her out. Funny thing happened, though. She became transfixed by the White Stripes Seven Nation Army. I Tivo’d that song and we played it over and over. Maddie has never liked kiddie tv programming for the most part, but the first thing she ever liked to watch was this video.

From there we started playing White Stripes while driving, whenever she became upset. She would instantly become quiet and fall asleep within a minute, in her car seat. I played around with this and she added Weezer to her playlist. Her favorite from there became Green Day’s American Idiot. We would play those videos for her while she would drink her bottle, as it was the only thing that she could really focus on. From these initial bands she moved onto Nine Inch Nails, Digital Underground, and OK Go. These groups had songs with a strong beat. I’m convinced she loves the beat because it connects with her heavy sensory needs. Just watch her ROCK out when she is listening during this video.

We had no idea that Maddie was on the autism spectrum when we discovered that as a baby she had eclectic music tastes. I just thought I had the coolest little girl on the planet. Which is still how I feel about her.