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.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Week 2 After HBOT

It has been a few days since I last updated the blog. We have been busy running around. We had a long weekend (Memorial Day holiday) and we visited several friends and family and ran lots of errands. Jonathan did absolutely great the entire weekend.

Improvements Observed in the Past Week:

Everything from last week holds:

Better eye contact

More curiosity

More energy

More empathy

Better motor skills (both fine and gross)

More conversational language

Improved Social Skills

Sensory

Pretend Play

The biggest area of improvement this week was social. He attends different schools and all his teachers sent notes indicating that Jonathan was playing more, initiating more play.

Areas for Improvement:

Social Interaction with the other kids his age: Jonathan chooses who he wants to play with. He has 1 friend at each school and from the kids in our circle of friends, he only gets along with one. The trends tends to be either kids that share some of his interests or older kids.
Speech and pragmatics: He needs a lot of work in this area.
- Jargon language: when he gets excited, he tents to use jargon to express what is in his head and emotions.
Humming: much better this week but still there
Obsessions: Playing with electronic toys (PCs or GPS) is still more interesting than regular toys.

Pictures:

On Friday, we went to a restaurant that we normally go to every week, and for the first time in a long time, Jonathan decided to join the other kids and play at the playground. The next 3 pictures were taken at the same place. He is tolerating and regulating quite well lots of sensory input.

On Sunday, we went to a BBQ and a few kids showed up. The house had a small pool and it was not ready for the kids to jump in. So they all sat by the edge of the pool and played with water. Jonathan for some reason connects very well with Alex (the kid to the right - he is 7). He likes to play with Alex and imitates him. The next 3 pictures show how much attention Jonathan was paying to Alex to try to keep up with him and learned from him by observing and imitating.