Our Life With An Autistic Child: Week 141

Christmas! It finally arrived and Ryan could not have been happier. He was so excited for the day that we had to tell him to not come out of his room until 6:00 AM and he had to come get us first. Santa does not wrap his big gift and we wanted to catch the look of surprise on their faces when they came down the stairs. The big gift this year was a Nintendo DS. They have been asking for a DS since the summer and Santa brought them one. They were both thrilled.

However, with the holidays came lots of non-gluten free food. It is tough to keep Ryan on a schedule and his diet with the long break. He cheated a lot on his diet and we paid for it. His behavior was extremely wild. As a result of his wildness, his play became very rough. He almost sent Dawn to the emergency room when he crashed into her knee. He did not mean to hurt Dawn he was just so wild and rough he hyper- extended her knee. Dawn ended up spending the majority of the morning on the couch icing her knee. We also had to be on alert every time Ryan was near Jack. Ryan just wanted to play with him but his play was so rough we had to be watchful and constantly remind Ryan to calm down.

We took the kids to the dentist this week and Ryan has four cavities. We were shocked. Ryan is so diligent at brushing his teeth and his diet is normally very good. What we came to realize is that a great deal of the GF/CF food is high in sugar. This is added to make the foods taste better and is something that we were not careful of watching with him. So now we are being mindful of the sugar intake and also flossing is now recommended to help make sure he does not have any further cavities.

We also had an appointment with Dr. Cowan. Ryan has not been to him in over a year and the doctor was surprised to see how far Ryan has come in that time. He made good eye contact with the doctor when he shook his hand to say hello. When the doctor called him over to the table we were at and it required Ryan to walk away from the train table, he did it without complaint. Ryan even read for Dr. Cowan. When the doctor stopped him half way through Ryan asked if he could finish reading the book to us. Ryan sat down at the table with us and read the rest of the story. Dr. Cowan was very impressed and was happy with his progress.

One area that Dr. Cowan wants us to focus on is labeling Ryan's emotions when he is having that emotion. For example, when he is bored, he wants us to tell Ryan that this is what bored feels like and move on. He feels that we need to help Ryan recognize his own emotions before he will be able to recognize those emotions in others. The other area is to start Ryan on a Phonics reading program. Ryan is too literal in his letters and does not know the sounds that the letters make, especially when they are put together. For example, sh. Ryan reads the s sound and then the h sound. He does not see them as one sound together. He is doing much better with his reading but he is a little behind and we are afraid that the gap is only going to get bigger as the years progress. Overall, it was a very good appointment.

We sometimes forget how far Ryan has come and it is nice to see others recognize that progress. Through all the struggles that we have had with Ryan over the past three years, we sometimes forget to stop and take a look at how far he has come. One of the biggest reasons for Ryan's success is Dawn. She has put so much time and effort into helping him that I do not know how she has the energy to keep going. I know of many people that would have accepted the first neurologist's suggestion and brought their 3 year old to a pediatric psychiatrist to have them put them on medication. I hope someday Ryan will realize just how much his mom has done for him and how much Dawn loves him.