Don’t measure your children’s progress by how much language they have. It takes a “typical” child almost three years to learn language, so if your child doesn’t immediately start speaking after starting medical treatments that doesn’t mean the interventions aren’t working.
After you address the immune issues, you still need an intensive rehab program to catch your child up on all he/she missed. The medical treatment only makes it “possible” for our children to learn what they couldn’t before. There are many rehab programs like Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) Floor Time, RDI, Son Rise that all work once our kids can learn. Pick the one you like and stick with it.
And keep talking to them even though they give you no indication they are hearing you and never respond. All I got was that blank stare. Ryan gave me nothing — not a look and not a smile. The lights were on, but nobody was home. I continued to talk to Ryan anyway. I didn’t realize until after he improved that he had learned so much from our one-sided conversations.
Sometimes, parents mistakenly perceive actual development as a new behavior issue. They think their kids are getting worse. An increase in behavior problems can actually be a good sign. Also remember the longer your child has been ill, the more you will need to directly teach them before they start learning like other kids.No matter what their chronological age, children pick up where they stalled out and must go through the same developmental steps. At first, it looked like the things we were doing medically were causing real behavior problems, but in reality my son was just starting to develop again. Once we treated the multiple medical conditions and specific hidden viruses that were the root cause of Ryan’s autism, Ryan resumed his development at the same age he stopped. Unfortunately, two-year-old behavior didn’t look so good in a five-year-old. And an older child who is two years old developmentally is much harder to deal with than a zoned out kid who doesn’t care about anything.
NOTE FROM MARCIA HINDS – Megan and Ryan’s mom:
Ryan became an aerospace engineer, because he received proper medical treatment combined with behavioral, and educational interventions. To preview my book, “I Know You’re In There – winning our war against autism” go to Amazon or my website www.autism-and-treatment.com
Contact info for Marcia:
Phone: 805 796-8213 Email: hindssite@verizon.net or marcia@autismandtreatment.com
There is more info to help on my website.
