Diets, Riots, and not a whole lot of Time

I started this blog to keep a running log of how Jaden's and Brinn's therapies evolve and the results we see so that family can be updated and so that other parents with autistic kids can see what I'm doing. But when ever I get a good 30 minutes to myself the last thing I want to do is post on my blog. But here is what has happened in the last few months.

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After we paid our last dues and waited out our last hours in the HBOT I hastily removed the chamber from my parents dinning room and returned it. It is hard to tell if it helped the kids or not because, yes, they did make progress in their speech, communication, and social skills but was it because of the HBOT, time, ABA, RDI, biomedical treatments, B12 shots, or listening therapy. Who knows? but who is willing to leave out any treatment that COULD help. No one wants their kid to be the placebo in any treatment study because what if it does work.

As for instructors, I was having an instructor leave for an internship she wanted to do and about the same time we received a referral from a friend about a girl who worked at Pingree, an autism school, for two years and had to quit because she had two herniated discs because of two different incidences with older autistic kids. She wanted to work with autistic kids but with younger children and one at a time. She was perfect she hit it right off with Jaden and he loved her. But sadly after one month she was house sitting and was walking one of their huge dogs and she blew out her back. So she had to quit. So for a few weeks I was understaffed and had two instructors tell me they needed less hours. So for a couple of weeks I was doing 21 hours with Jaden, 3 hours of meetings, and 5-10 hours of Brinn's therapy and also preschool on top. Remember also I have to make all meals from scratch.

I hired a girl and she told be she wanted the job and was eager to start. But on the first day I was training her Jaden was having a tough day. So promptly the next day she emailed me to tell me she didn't want the job. So I was back to hiring. So I sent out ads, did about 7 interviews, weeded out the flaky and not-so-interested, and hired two applicants I am so far very pleased with. Let me tell you it sounds easier said than done to keep the ABA program going.

Jaden's still potty training. He has good weeks and bad weeks. We've transitioned him to standing and putting Cheerios or fruit loops in the toilet to make it fun. So far he has seem to be amused and has been staying dry. But it is always a daily battle.

We have started Jaden on a sight reading program and will introduce a phonics program shortly, as he has picked up the phonics rules on his own. He can now read over 200 words and acquires 2-4 new words daily. This is amazing to me considering he couldn't talk a year ago.

Jaden is now on a new diet. Yes, this poor kid has been on more diets than the average adult American. He can now have a few more foods but also more have been eliminated from his diet. Even though we were doing the Special Carbohydrate Diet for Jaden his BM were still mushy and fowl smelling (sorry about the details but this is all we talk about in the biomedical Dr. office). So we had blood taken and an allergy test done and sure enough Jaden had allergic tendencies to nuts (almond flour is the staple to the SCD diet), apples, grapes, chicken, eggs, celery, wheat, oats, and many many more items I'm not going to list. So basically everything he was eating was irritating his gut and intestines causing a leaky gut. So we changed his diet (still no sugar, gluten, casein and allergy inducing foods) while giving him aloe juice and chamomile tea, and a bunch of new supplements. His BMs became normal for the first time in months and then we started the antibiotics and the anti fungals. Jaden was a sweet little boy for a few weeks then after two weeks when we were done with the anti fungals his aggression and sensitivity started to return so we are going to have to put him on some natural anti fungals (garlic...).

During all this, the biomedical Dr. I was seeing left the practice and so I am now seeing the Dr. who started the practice. I personally like him better.

So Jaden can now eat potatoes, corn, and rice which has been great. But he has to eat organic and fresh vegetables. Cooking has taken up a major amount of my time and money now too.

Brinn is doing well. We just finished our second RDA with her and boy was it interesting. I thought it went okay (Brinn had some moments). But when we had our review we were basically told that we let the inmates run the prison. So Jason and I will be working on that ...or I will be working on that because Jason has been at work a lot...even on Saturdays. Poor Jason.

Brinn can now count to 10 in three different languages and we are working on having her count to 20 in English, Spanish, and German. She gets all her practice as she is on 'time out'... and she is on 'time out' a lot.

Brinn is very social and at times she seems like a normal neural typical child but she still has some communication skills we are working on. My current homework is to catch her on camera thinking when she has encountered something unexpected, which has been tough. Also, I'm supposed to record some referencing communication which won't be too bad. The third clip I'm suppose to tape is Brinn's response to setting limits in our activities (such as a space limit) and see how she responds. She will most likely respond with a tantrum but we have to just let her tantrum while we still enforce the space limit without any talking. Then if she calms down we then reintroduce our activity. Needless to say the house is not without a lot a screaming.