Well the New Year has begun and it has been very busy for all of us here in the Tennessee household. I (Tim) have been busy with work since they have released money to our account and are allowing us to do much needed upgrades to our systems. Terri has been working a good bit as well and this has not left her much free time. Matthew has been going to school and continuing his piano lessons. That's a short summary of this family update on the family as a whole.
I thought that at this time I would spend some time talking about Matthew and our ongoing dealings with his autism and how things have been changing for us and him. This update can also be found under Matthew's story as it is our update on his progress.
It has been my wife Terri who usually writes these life experience articles here about Matthew and how we deal with his autism. But this year my wife asked me to do this for two reasons, one being the time is takes to write this up and since she has been a bit busier recently it has made it more difficult to sit down and do. The second and most important is it comes from a different point of view, that being a male and how I perceive the problems and the achievements.
This last year we saw tremendous growth from Matthew, he finished kindergarten at the top of his class mastering all of the academic functions a child of his age should. He has grown dramatically on a social level with his communication with his peers as well as with us blossoming into full length conversations.
I have often asked myself if this progress is due to his natural abilities or does this diet that my wife put him on really make a difference. I will be the first to admit that although I know food can alter a persons behavior in some minor fashion, I did not think it could alter it to the point that it has in Matthew. So this paragraph is for any of you who feel that a modified diet and vitamin therapy won't have any effect on your Autistic child. Get over it and take a hint from myself, it works and in our case it works extremely well. Now let's not kid ourselves here, this is a lot of work and Matthew has been very fortunate to have a mother who was willing to learn about his dietary needs and find out what works for him. This is where I must give my wife Terri all the credit as she has been the one to prepare the foods and monitor his progress with vitamin regimen.
So lets take a look at what I have seen my son do this last year.
The first thing that pops to mind is watching my son recite the Pledge of Allegiance in front of 200 plus parents and friends. Did he do a perfect job? nope, his shyness worked just like a child of his age does but he did complete it. The program that the kindergarteners continued with was full of songs and dances. I honestly never thought that I would see my little boy do the Macarena, but he did and he did it well.
Another notable observation was how he works with his classmates, this was really brought to our attention during the beginning of his first grade class. Matthew has a desire to be first at what ever is done in class. This has caused us to have to work with him a bit and to help him understand that he does not always have to be first, but this also lets him work directly with his peers by helping them complete assignments such as math or spelling questions on his own. This is direct interaction between him and another student with Matthew as the tutor.
And then there is the social interaction of just being a kid. Matthew plays with his friends at school as though there were no differences between them. Albeit some of Matthew's conversations appear scripted, he attempts to be as spontaneous in a conversation (yes I said a conversation) as his peer would be towards him. This has been an area that has been improving as the year has gone by. As far as playing games with other kids Matthew seems to handle that quite well.
This past summer we started having Matthew take piano lessons, the purpose was to see if there was an activity he could learn and carry with him throughout his life. Now we know that it is common for autistic children to embrace musical instruments or music in general, and Matthew had shown the same interest. We were pleasantly surprised to see how well he took up this instrument and how attentive he has been to a formal learning structure.
All of this has been possible since we started Matthew on his diet and vitamin therapy. If we had not started this change in his life I really don't think we would be where we are today. So many of the characteristics that are attributed to autism have been either masked or removed from Matthew since our first diagnoses of this condition. Now by no means do we believe that this is a cure, but the diet has modified his behavior in dramatic ways. Right now in school Matthew has an aide that accompanies him as well as other special need students in their peer classroom, this is where Matthew spends his day. When Matthew has what we call a meltdown he is sent to the transition room, this is a room for the special needs students to go when they require a break from the peer environment or other special activities geared toward these particular children. When we first started the diet Matthew would be spending some time in this room everyday, you could count on him having at least 1 meltdown episode a day. Today Matthew goes to his first grade class with his peers and only visits the transition room when he has a serious upset, which rarely happens. In fact when Matthew does have a meltdown today it makes red flags pop up and we search to find out why it occurred.
When Matthew was born I had a vision of a father/son relationship where we could do activities together like going to the ball game or fishing together or just playing games at home with one another. When we realized that he was not developing at a normal pace and especially when they diagnosed him with autism, I thought and saw that all of those simple pleasures were beyond my grasp. However since we have instituted this diet and vitamin therapy all of those hopes and dreams I have had with my son are now coming true. As it is today Matthew and I spend at least an hour a day playing games, watching TV or doing other activities together. Matthew will watch me and help me out when I work on computers or even clean the house. He finds items of mine like my shoes, puts them on and proudly tells me how he looks just like me. And as any parent can attest, there is nothing that makes you feel more proud or warms the heart than when your child comes up to you and tells you that they want to be just like you.
Here is something else that is worth mentioning. Matthew takes an assortment of vitamins and he does not like to take pills. In fact it is near impossible to get him to take a pill, so Terri devised a method to administer these vitamins. What she does is take the vitamin capsules and open them up into a little cup, she then gets an oral syringe and puts some Gerber baby applesauce in it. She then takes the vitamin powder and pours that in to the top of the syringe. Next she will use a coffee stirrer and mixes the ingredients together in the syringe, and when finished mixing puts the cap back on the syringe. At this point we can now give Matthew his vitamins without him going ballistic on us. This has worked for us ever since we started the diet but it does take time and it does cost a bit, with a big cost being the syringes. After a couple of uses the syringe starts to break down and gets gummed up so it is only good for about 2 rounds of vitamin administrations. Currently we use 2 syringes per administration and he gets 2 administrations a day. So if you do the math that is 14 syringes used per week, and multiply that times 4 and that gets you an average of 56 syringes used in a month. Terri orders these syringes from a medical supply company and usually gets 2 boxes of a 100 count at a time. These 200 syringes with shipping cost us an average of $64 shipping included. And let us not forget the cost of the vitamins and soon you see your bill really start to add up.
So today March 4th 2003 we just got another batch of syringes in from the medical supply company, and wouldn't you know that all of the sudden Matthew wanted to take the vitamins in pill form. So Terri has made an agreement with him, that if he takes his vitamins in pill form the rest of the week, she will take him to Chuckee Cheese Pizza on Friday. And tonight was the first night of this agreement and Matthew was so proud that he took all of his vitamins just like mommy and daddy do. This is a great step forward for him and we can only hope he keeps it up.
Now there is of course so much more I could write about Matthew but I want to get the site updated tonight so we will call it a night and I will write more later.
Tim