Matthew Sumida: Another HOT weekend

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Another HOT weekend

We went to our nephew Justin's house for his birthday this weekend. Matthew is giving the birthday boy a kiss.

It was a scorcher (111 degrees to be exact) so the kids played in the water to cool down.

Initially Matthew was a bit reserved. He is very social with adults and older kids but can be very aloof with younger children, especially ones his age. He eventually warmed up and was chasing Devin around the house and reaking all kinds of havoc.

Matthew and his "Gwama".

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We had a swim/play date with Brenna and Kiran today and the kids had a blast. The water felt so good!

Matthew's little pals......

Look who is getting so brave and swimming to Daddy!

We topped the day off with some yummy cupcakes. Matthew asked Brenna to go into the backyard with him and then asked her to sit on the bike and he wanted to sit on the back....sooooo cool! I love seeing those times when he initiates with peers.....we have worked so hard for that. Funny the things that now bring us such joy. I look forward to the time those moments become a way of life.

2 comments:

Theresa said...: What a good little swimmer. Very cute.; July 21, 2009 at 7:27 AM
Ms. to u said...: Awww. Little tadpole.
XOXO; July 23, 2009 at 3:17 PM

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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, July 19, 2009

Another HOT weekend

2 comments:

Matthew Dean

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