Matthew Sumida: Good Bye Danny

Monday, October 5, 2009

Good Bye Danny

It was a very sad day for us today! :(
We said good bye to our Danny.
He has been Matthew's ABA therapist for 2 1/2 years. He started working with Matthew in March 2007. We were reminiscing today about how things were back then......it was not an easy time. No eye contact, constant stimming, maladaptive behaviors and tantrums that could not be believed. Danny was there through all of it, encouraging us and working with Matthew. Danny has been such an wonderful influence in Matthew's life and is largely responsible getting him to where he is now. I can't imagine how things would have been without him. They have such a bond and Matthew loves Danny so much, we all do. I hope he knows how special he will always be to us.

The scratch on Matthew's nose was a spill he took in the backyard today. He cut his lip (a surprising amount of blood) and bumped his head too. Poor little guy was left with scrapes on his little face and a fat lip. Of course he got lots of love and sympathy the rest of the day! :)

These are some photos of Matthew with his cousins from this weekend. Matthew adores them and is very interactive with them.

I love seeing the boys together. Matthew is so happy and playful with them, Matthew talks about them for days after! We love you "Adew" and "Zachawy"!

1 comment:

Theresa said...: Matthew's nose :( Kisses to that cutie!; October 6, 2009 at 7:36 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.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Good Bye Danny

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Matthew Dean

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