Recovering Jonathan!

1 in 68 U.S. children has autism according to the CDC. Parents are given very little hope when their children are diagnosed. Doctors believe that there is no cure but only improvement through Occupational, Speech, ABA and other educational therapies. However, after 8 years of “biomedical” interventions, Jonathan has shown such tremendous progress towards recovery that we have decided to share our experiences with the world. Read his story at the end of this page.

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

(HBOT 29) Nice Come Back **

Jonathan had a very good night sleep - 9 straight hours. I slept well too :) We both needed it.

This morning he seemed a bit more connected. His mind seems to be traveling a thousand miles a minute though. As I was giving him his supplements, he asked what day it was. I told him Tuesday. But he was really looking for the number. Today is May 1st. He asked me to change the calendar because today is the first day of May. So I did. After that, Daddy took him to school. Everything went well.

When I went to his classroom in the afternoon to pick him up, I could not find him in the room. He wasn't sitting anywhere near where I normally find him. Suddenly, he approached me from behind. He was playing in another area of the room and he spotted me first. He seemed again more connected. His ABA therapist also left positive notes on his notebook regarding his behavior today. As we left the classroom, he told me that he was the "line leader" and I needed to follow him to the car. Very cute.

He spoke more than in the past 3 days together. However, I still have to know what to ask him. When I asked him what he did today, he told me he didn't want to speak anymore. I can tell that he cannot find the words to express himself and out of frustration he prefers to be quite. I did notice that his humming behavior returned.

On our way out, as I was pulling out of the garage, he asked me to turn the GPS map on. When I did, the screen background was dark. He told me "I want it light, the map, I want it light". By the time I realized what he was talking about, I was out of the garage and the screen automatically sensed that it was daytime and turned the background white. He noticed that change and asked me "mommy, why map dark before?". I was shocked to hear such a question. I was a true "why" question. I explained that inside the garage it was dark and the map thought it was night time. But since it is daytime, it turned back to white. Then he said "ah, when inside the tunnel map is dark. Outside in daytime the map is light. Ok". This to me is a major accomplishment. He did this type of reasoning yesterday with Abuita as he noticed that she has a box of gummy bears in her apartment and told her that "Abuita, spiderman in Abuita's house. No more buy in store". Again, he is making logical connexions in his brain, reasoning.

HBOT Day 29

Today's session went well. He again had trouble with his right ear. It hurt a great deal today. About 30 minutes into the session, Jonathan was bored of watching Barney and started a game with me. He pretended that he was a spider (with his hand) that came to eat me. Then I changed it and added my hand was mommy spider. We ate, and slept, and visited the zoo and did many things. After about 10 minutes, we both got bored and he went back to watching the movie.

When we finished, we went to the restroom and he started to pretend that his tooth had fallen off and I had to catch it and help him put it back. I am not sure what that means. On the way home, he told me that he was hungry and wanted spaghetti with meatballs. He is really starting to clearly identify his feelings in a very precise manner. We stopped by Tony's Pizza and bought spaghetti.

When he finished dinner, he pretended that he was the hungry caterpillar and created a game with Vanessa where they ran all over the house eating all kinds of fruits until the caterpillars had eaten too much and then went into a cocoon and later became beautiful butterflies. They really enjoyed playing like this. Jonathan became creative and Vanessa imitated him. After a good 20 minutes, they started playing with other pretend toys. Jonathan lost interest and asked if he could play with my PC. Given all the pretend play he had done in the afternoon, I granted it.

Jonathan pretending the caterpilar (him) is inside a cocoon Jonathan pretending the caterpilar hatched and he is a butterfly flying

My brother is not staying with us for the next 2 days. I am not sure if that influenced his behavior at home. I will monitor it on Thursday night when they return.

Supplements Adjusted:

Added: