Matthew Sumida: Happy Boy

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Happy Boy

It was such a warm afternoon we thought that we'd head over to the park. Matthew loves this new park and had a great time with Daddy. Mark had been gone all weekend and Matthew really missed him, he asked about Daddy several times over the weekend. When Mark got home today Matthew was so thrilled he said "I am appy (happy). Appy (Happy) to see Daddy." No doubt it was the sweetest sentence Mark has ever heard!

Look at that beautiful smile! I love this precious face.

1 comment:

Theresa said...: Very cute!
Hope you father-in-law is feeling better.; May 18, 2009 at 10:02 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.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Happy Boy

1 comment:

Matthew Dean

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