Matthew Sumida: Halloween

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Halloween

Last weekend was Halloween, and Matthew had such fun!

We started the day at a local pumpkin patch.

*****
In the afternoon we went to the Rao's house. Matthew walked in the neighborhood parade and then did some trick or treating. He was so cute, Lightening McQueen!

Matthew and Daddy

Are they cute or what?

Matthew did a great job and enjoyed himself completely. Mark and I loved watching him enjoy and participate.
*****
This week brought lots of changes. Matthew had had a great year so far and was moved to the pre-k at Wood Canyon. We were happy that the IEP team saw what we have known, Matthew is amazing and capable! We feel bad that he is having to make the change mid-year. Still, we have been fortunate to have wonderful people working with Matthew.

Good bye and thank you to the wonderful pre-school staff, we will miss you!

This is his new teacher. Today was day 1. He was very anxious but he did a great job! We are so proud!

Matthew, we love you sweet boy

3 comments:

Trojan Fan said...: So great to see the progress the past 2 years. Great job Matthew! Great job Mom and Dad!; November 4, 2010 at 9:39 AM
Anonymous said...: Delicious little pumpkin!
XOXOXOXO
Kim; November 4, 2010 at 3:46 PM
EP said...: What a big boy!! I love that last picture!; November 9, 2010 at 10:01 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.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Halloween

3 comments:

Matthew Dean

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