Matthew Sumida: Sing-a-long

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Sing-a-long

Today was the pre-school Sing-A-Long at Matthew's school as well as pajama day. The kids were so cute that I could hardly contain myself. They walked out of their classes holding a rope in a line and then sat in the courtyard and each class sang a song. Matthew's class sang "the Hokey Pokey". Most of them did not get it quite right but they were all adorable and I could see Matthew's mouth singing and his smile. As soon as I upload the video I will post it, it is certainly the best little movie we have ever seen!

Miss Freeman, Matthew's teacher

Danny, Matthew's ABA therapist and best friend

To see Matthew excited to be at school and to be able to be around kids and tolerate so much stimulation is wonderful. Having children in close proximity and the noise that comes with that would have put Matthew into a meltdown a few months ago. I started tearing up when for a moment I watched my beautiful son look like any other kid. I know the issues he has and the difficulties he still faces but his accomplishments take my breath away. He is extremely smart, curious, funny and sweet. I am so proud of him and look to the day when autism, GFCF, biomed, therapy, etc. are a part of our past.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...: He is so cute and becoming such a big boy. It is so cool to see how great he is doing and his personality coming out. To know Matthew is to love him....
We all do!; October 30, 2008 at 4:30 PM
Trojan Fan said...: Good Job little Matthew! Happy to hear about all of his progress. He is your miracle boy. Love to all of you.; November 4, 2008 at 10:12 AM

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Matthew Dean

We started this blog because we wanted to be able to keep our loved ones up to date on Matthew and the wonderful progress he is making. It has been a crazy time since receiving Matthew's diagnosis of moderate to severe Autism in February 2007.
Autism is classified by the World Health Organization and American Psychological Association as a developmental disability resulting from a disorder of the human central nervous system. It is considered to be a neurodevelopmental disorder. It typically begins before 3 and is lifelong. It is characterized by varying degrees of impairment in verbal & non verbal communication skills, social interactions, and restricted, repetitive & stereotyped patterns of behavior. Children w/autism often fail to respond to their name, are unable to speak or have delayed speech and often avoid eye contact. They tend to engage in repetitive movements like rocking, spinning, hand flapping and in self-abusive behavior such as biting or head-banging. All behaviors that Matthew was exhibiting regularly. At the time we sent letters to our loved ones, we described what autism was and that there was no cure for autism. Well...... that is not the case. You can recover from autism and to that end we are pursuing a combination of therapies. Matthew is in an intense intervention program consisting of ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis), Speech Therapy and Occupational Therapy. He is in this program for between 6-8 hours daily. He is also on a gluten-free and casein-free diet which he has been on since February 2007. We began biomedical intervention in June 2007 as well and homeopathy in April 2008. We read stories all of the time about these parents who start the diet, biomed or other modalities and see a miracle before their eyes. We have not had that experience but with each added intervention we see improvement..... 10% here, 8% there. We know that we will reach that 100% mark and that day will be the second best day of our lives, the first being when our little angel was born! We will update this as often as possible to that you can celebrate Matthew's success with us.

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Sing-a-long

2 comments:

Matthew Dean

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