Journal Entry from April 25, 2008

I have been thinking that Thomas is really doing well but it is hard to tell sometimes. My BIL stopped by last weekend when Thomas and I were eating lunch. He talked to him and played with him just a couple minutes while he was in the highchair. Thomas was laughing at him (my BIL is very animated). When I talked to my mom she said he’d mentioned it when he last talked to her and he said he was impressed with how well Thomas was doing. It is good to hear that. Especially from him because he is very opinionated and says what he thinks (not always a good thing, but at least he is honest).

I got the name of the GI doc that specialized in autistic GI problems. We have to wait three months, but he’s supposed to be really good and if he specialized in autistic kids, that is definitely worth waiting for. When we went to the doctor on Sunday we got a note that it is a chronic condition and that it is non-infectious and that he can stay at daycare unless he has other symptoms of illness. Hopefully that will be the end of being sent home from daycare.

This morning when I dropped of Thomas he went immediately when for the dolls and picked one up, put the “baby” in the stroller and started pushing him/her around. It was really cute. He does really well with his imaginative play.

Last night I noticed he was walking around on his toes. I’d never noticed that before, but is common with autism. I mentioned it to Sam and he said that he’s noticed Thomas doing that in the last couple weeks. When we were suspecting autism and all during the time we were in the process of getting the diagnosis I watched him walk to see if he did that but I never saw him do it. Interesting to see new things like that.

They had mentioned during his evaluations that the “W sit” (with his legs out to each side) is an indication of autism and low muscle tone. However, I never heard that we should do anything about it. M from the Play Project said that it can hurt how his muscles develop and hurt is posture long term. I never knew that. So we are trying to correct his sitting position when we catch him sitting that way.

I just ordered the Baby Babble video. It is supposed to be a pretty good video for kids with speech delay. It helps them imitate the mouth and the sounds of the words. It was made by the two founders of the speech therapy company that we will be starting with in a couple weeks. It got pretty good reviews. It sounds a little bit like Baby Einstein but lower budget and a focus on speech therapy techniques. Several of the reviews I read said that it was like having a speech therapy session at home on a DVD. And it has a parent instruction section. It is a bit pricy at $18 but I figure one session with the speech therapist is $20, so it’s like having a therapy session that you can do over and over for the same price. We’ll try it out and if we don’t like it we can always give it away.

I got the toileting visual schedule from his therapists. I think that I am going to start getting ready for this. I would like to start in a week or two. Maybe I will start by getting him to pull his pant down and pull them back up when we change his diaper. He’s good about helping get his shirt on and his socks and shoes but he doesn’t really help get his pants on. I have “H” the college student coming tomorrow so maybe we could try it then. H has done a lot of research on ABA so we’re going to try some of it with him. We both agreed that we didn’t like the idea of a two year old sitting at a table doing “trials”. But there is a lot of research behind it and so many people swear by it. I am hoping to get a good back and forth going over a couple weeks/months and then, once Thomas gets the principles and knows what is expected of him, we’ll take it into a more natural situation. We’ll give it a good go and see what happens. It can’t hurt and it might help. I’m really excited to try and H is really excited to try. She seems super nice and eager to help so I think this is a very good match. I really couldn’t ask for more.