Starting to Express What is in His Mind

We arrived yesterday evening and in the past 2 days I have not taken any pictures, but something strange is happening to Jonathan and I want to make a quick log to be able to go back to my notes.

I am finally starting to learn what is going on in Jonathan's head. Because his expressive language has been so delayed, he in the past was never able to express why he felt happy or sad, or why he wanted something or why he did some strange movement, etc. Everything is a puzzle that we are trying to solve. Some behaviors we are trying to correct without knowing that the kid was doing it for a reason (perhaps) in some cases (not all cases).

A couple of days ago, I was pleasantly surprised when I asked Jonathan a "why" question that he was able to fully answer. He was happy running and playing with the kids. All of a sudden, he stopped, sucked his thumb and lightly touched/rubbed his right ear with the tip of his right hand fingers and after a few seconds he moved his right hand to his left ear and gently rubbed his left ear lobe and repeated the movement again on both ears and stopped, took his thumb out of his mouth and kept playing. That is something that he does often but I never understood why. I asked him and he said that when he touches his ears he feels happier and he feels better. Undoubtedly that is his way of regulating his body when overwhelmed. He doesn't flap anymore, or make strange movements with the palm of his hands anymore when he is overwhelmed. He just touches his ears gently. What a fantastic way to self-regulate. I always thought it was the thumb sucking that regulated him or that he did it because he was bored and didn't know how to play or express himself. But it is the ears. Fascinating.

Yesterday and today Jonathan has completely transformed. All he wants to do is play with Vanessa (and Nico and Christian yesterday during the trip back when we met for lunch and in the morning) and his language is amazing. Truly amazing. And his facial expression changed. He was so excited when Vanessa called him up to show him what she did and very excitedly told Vanessa what a wonderful thing she did. He is talking in full sentences. Something happened. I cannot pinpoint what did it. HBOT, chelation, B12 shots, Yasko, combination of everything. But I wholeheartedly believe that HBOT has been the catalyst. The word combination and sentence construction is still a problem, but he is trying so much to talk and in many many occasions he speaks in full and appropriate sentences, in other occasions he invents words or mismatches tenses and pronouns, but he is no longer feeling overwhelmed by his barriers. He keeps trying until he gets it right or we guess it.

We went out to a computer show and I told him that I would get him a game for the PC and he was so excited. He picked the one he found most interesting (Blue's Clues Kindergarden) and the expression of happiness and the cute little dance that he did when he asked "can I have this one Mom" and I said yes is priceless.

When I took him to bed tonight, he and I had a long conversation about why he doesn't like to go to bed alone (scared in summary) and also that he wanted to be able to see the sun rise through his window. Perhaps he has tried to tell me that in many occasions but he couldn't express himself. Today he expressed himself so well and told me that he wants to see the sun rise on Monday and Tuesday and every day of the month. That is when I realized that he probably wanted that before. I opened the window and told him to lay down and wait and he said "I'm going to wait mommy. I am going to wait for the sun to come out" with the nicest and happiest of smiles I have ever seen in his face.

He has had some detox moments like tonight he started crying because he lightly hit his elbow and told me that he couldn't stop crying and when I asked him why he couldn't stop, he told me "I don't know. I can't stop crying. I need to cry more". It didn't hurt anymore, but he couldn't stop crying. But that detox behavior is completely tolerable given the wonderful improvements that we see every day.

These were just a few samples of what the last 48 hours have been. I need to start taping him again.