This is a great tip in general, but especially so from an autistic perspective - we generally communicate much more directly, and you should trust that if we've asked that specific question it's because that's specifically what we want to know lol
Makes me wonder if I'm on the spectrum or if ADHD people normally do this too. Or if this is an engineer thing.
The flip side is I normally don't trust other people to ask me precisely what they need and want because all too often they try to solve a problem but don't come up with a great one and would be better off telling me what they're trying to accomplish so I can come up with a more optimal solution. (Also if I am not sure about the best solution, I will try to state what I'm trying to do)
On Android there's a phone symbol at the top of the messenger that you can just tap to call. I'm not familiar with Apple products, but if they have something similar that could be helpful too.
Grandma writes down her grandkids numbers into her address book that she's used for many decades. It worked when she had a rotary phone, it worked when she had a cordless phone and it still works when she has an iPhone. If she ever decides to get some other brand of phone she will have no problem calling her gandkids because she has a system that works independently of whatever new technology comes around.
Meanwhile her grandchild will find it difficult to adapt to a phone from another company because they'll have to figure out how to export their contacts and import it into the phone, and then adapt to a different interface. They will likely just continue use phones from Apple no matter how much the charge for them, regardless of their reliability or quality. Too much hassle to change.
Now it's debatable which way of using the phone is better, but there are some real advantages to how grandma does it.
So just give her the damn number, so she can write it in her address book and she can dial in that number when she wants to call you. Her way of using a phone is not necessarily worse than your way of using it.
There is no button to call, onley facetime so that means gram is writing to her via email account and not a phone number account, that means you are the one who is wrong because she doenst have your number
There's a chance this grandma wiped grandchild's butt when grandchild was a baby. Perhaps also tried to catch the occasional random baby puke in her hands, instead of letting it spill on the floor. Or on someone else's car seat. Grandchild should have just typed those numbers in.
Thought my mom (77) how to disassemble her notebook and clean the fans and just got her to use my nextcloud for chatting and sharing stuff. I'm really proud of her. Then again she had roommates who built a computer from relais in the 60's and still has her basic programming class certificate from like '82. Just shows how important it is to keep up to date and your brain will thank you.