Posts
Believe it or not, we are starting to think that when Tyler says "ma-ma" that he actually means me, ma-ma! He's done it enough this week at the appropriate time that many professionals and family members involved in his life believe that he's meaning what he says. This is literally music to our ears and hearts! We continue to model words at appropriate times, i.e. when going up the stairs the other day I was saying "up, up, up, up" and he started saying the "uh" sound which we haven't heard hims ay before (and we got that one on video!) .
The diet is going ok. Both boys are getting their 2 year molars so no one is really too intersted in eating. We are hoping by the end of this week that we'll have enough food options (choices) that Tyler likes to be completley gluten/casein free. It will take 3 - 6 months to really determine whether or not it will work for him but we have high hopes. The gfcf website is somehwat difficult to navigate. I've attached the link that actually has the table of contents with the acceptable and non acceptable foods broken down by category in case you are interested in specific items. http://gfcfdiet.com/NewpageDirectory6.htm
Our biggest fear for Tyler is his safety, especially when he is in the care or supervision of someone other than us. Kids with autism tend to have a high tolerance for pain, have limited fears, and they also tend to wander and can be gone in a split second. This link is a tragic story about a kid with autism who wandered away from his care facility. http://www.enews20.com/news_Autistic_Child_Found_Dead_After_Missing_from_Care_Center_05502.html
We plan to give our neighbors cards this spring that explain autism and that has a picture of Tyler in case they ever see him outside w/o one of us. It won't be long and he'll be able to open doors on his own and we want to make sure everyone around us knows that not only will Tyler very quickly jump into a pool or pond w/o hesitation but he also will not always respond to his name or any other request for that matter so we want to do what we can to keep him safe.
My biggest objective now (according to Carrie today) is to really work on Tyler's eye contact. He's doing really well with the hand pulling and now we want to see more consistent eye contact with the hand pulling. Everyone can help Tyler with this. When he reaches for your hand (typically he's not looking) pull your hands back so he has to look to see where they are, if he stil doesn't look, make a funny noise or move your hands up to your face so he has to look in that direction. Once we get more consistent eye contact, we'll start removing the prompts we used to get him to do it in the first place. He's doing so well at communicating through the hand gesture.
Sorry it's taking so lon gto get the video's up, we have just been so busy that I haven' thad time to give Steve'd the DVD's and go through them with him to show him which clips to upload. Hopefully we'll get to that soon. We are expecting a large snow storm tonight so not sure whether we'll go to the clinic at U of M tomorrow or not, If not, I won't be doing another update until next week.
