I had specifically stopped writing blogs about Dominic because he’s a teenager and I really want to respect his privacy and autonomy. If he were neurotypical he would be mortified at the things I write about so it’s a grey line. We are, though, doing some new things that I want to track. And I have yet to find a better way of keeping track of the details in the Big Picture than blogging.
So – to catch you up to where we are
- Dominic is a freshman in high school, in public school’s significant special needs classroom. He has a caseworker and a bevy of paraprofessionals who work with him. We don’t actually get a lot (frankly any) visibility into what he is doing in the school setting
- Currently we are working with Dr Sonia at Covenant Integrative Wellness as our MAPS doc, Catriona Muir as our homeopath, Dr Kelley at Watford Wellness Works as our hands on Chiro / general wellness person, 2 speech therapists (in home), 2 occupational therapists (1 in home and 1 in center), and we’ve just started working with a different type of teacher (I’ll tell you about that in a minute)
- Dominic’s talking a LOT more. Everyone feels like we are on the precipice of a cognitive jump. (hence the new type of teacher), so here we are to record it. Dominic’s also much more present and wanting to participate in things (like sledding and bowling and going to ride the polar express before Christmas). I’ve connected with another mom whose 9yo and Dominic get along really well and we are doing all kinds of fun active stuff (I promise I’ll share those posts too because they are excellent check points for us). Play is becoming huge for him.
- We are FULLY in Puberty. There’s shaving, and body hair and cracking voice and pimples everywhere. We are OUT of braces and into a night time retainer. His teeth are BEAUTIFUL.
- I’m actually allowing myself something I don’t often – to get a little excited and have a little hope. I find if I let myself do that too often, it hurts too much if nothing happens. Well. Things are happening.
I just checked and I blogged exactly once in 2019. Its my goal to get at least one post a week up in 2020 as we navigate these changes. The last protocol I actively documented was when we started Bemer. We plateau’d on those so have moved on. Here are our current protocols
- Diet: We remain (mostly) gluten, dairy, soy, and artificial crap free. We are looser than we used to be because Dominic doesn’t appear to be reactive to most dietary infractions anymore and we can let him have something usually not allowed and mitigate with activated charcoal
- Detox: We are using the Ioncleanse 2-3x a week, FIR Sauna upon request (he seems to have phased past this)
- Homeopathy: Our Homeopath has an Asrya machine. This is a bioenergetic screening system that uses hair/fingernails/saliva to see what a body needs. This has been a game changer because it removes the whole dart board method. This particular homeopath is having great success with brain sarcodes and teenagers with autism who also have cooresponding cognitive injuries and when I heard about her, every hair on the back of my neck stood up at the very existence of brain sarcodes. Dominic is proving very responsive to the gentle energetic healing that is homeopathy
- Chiropractic – he gets adjusted 1-2x a week and usually manages to tell Dr Kelley what needs to be adjusted. They have a very sweet friendship (actually she’s the only adult, parents included, that he likes to snuggle with. I’m convinced she’s magic – he hugs and kisses her spontaneously and its just really beautiful). And we find that when his body is in alignment he’s way more compliant.
- Nutritional supplementation: Based on genetics through Dr Sonia
- Kelly Dorfman’s Dyspraxia protocol - we have loved this particular protocol for many years. I usually pulse it on and off but right now Dominic is doing so much cognitive shifting that I’m pouring as much fat as I can into him.
- The Socks. We are still wearing our Voxx Technology. It seems to help us both.
And that leads me to what we’ve just begun. In our chiropractors office there is a small, kitchen table type private Autism / ADHD school. The teacher is an adult with autism herself. About a decade ago she and our chiropractor ran the Brain Balance program Melillo developed on the teachers non verbal preteen son. Within a matter of 3 weeks, he was talking so much that she was asking for an off button. Over the following decade, she has adapted the Brain Balance exercises based on how her brain and body feel while and after doing them AND based on the same feedback from her students.
I don’t make big changes in Dominic’s routine, providers, plan of care, etc, rapidly. I’ve known of this school since the beginning of the summer and been getting to know the teacher, the kids, the energy in there since. In December we decided to ask for one on one tutoring over the school winter break. We discussed minutiae and ended up agreeing to do 90 minute sessions 9 times over 2 weeks, with her doing both Brain Bridging and focusing on reading. As per usual, the changes we are seeing out of the gate are nuanced and they are things like being able to get him from on the sofa in pj’s eating pancakes to showered and out the door in 20 minutes (this is a kid who will not be hurried). Its him not only leaving the tv off while I was dozing on the sofa, but snuggling under his own blanket and getting a nap himself. Its my friend who is a SPED teacher and I going to lunch with him and him trying to interact with us (vs simply shoveling all the food on the table into his mouth. Which he did as well. Just sayin’)
So when we realized we were seeing these little things, we figured out a way to continue. Dominic will be going directly to Ms Rachel Mondays and Fridays for an hour after school (while I sit in the waiting room and read a book or chat with people). When public school gets out for the summer, he’ll take a week off then he will join in full day school with Rachel and the other kids for 10 weeks. School is from 9-3 daily, which are the exact hours I had been hiring summer nanny help for AND happens to be the same exact price that I was paying said nanny for. So that takes care of the summer. What we’ll do beyond summer, I don’t know yet. A lot depends on how the first 2/3 of 2020 go
So – upcoming posts that I’ll be sharing
- Doing fun stuff with friends (videos! Pictures! Oh my!)
- Video of the activities he’s doing with Rachel (she recorded the entire hour yesterday, I’m teaching myself how to cut it down into decent sized chunks and hope to have those available really soon because I want his public school teachers and assorted therapists to see it)
- Speech and OT stuff
- Random anecdotes and stories I was posting on facebook only.
- Probably some advocacy stuff because ya’ll know I just can’t not. I kind of have to. And in that vein, I’m over at TMR today, with an alternative first aid kit.
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