Matthew Sumida: Spring Break

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Spring Break

This week was Matthew's spring break so of course...a trip to Disneyland was in order. We went with our friends Trish, Martin and Brenna. Matthew had a great time and enjoyed spending the afternoon with his buddies. He was so friendly and social....
I was over the moon!

And the best, these pictures were not posed for. The kids all grabbed hands when we met up by Thunder Mountain and had fun choosing what rides to go on.

They all loved roller coasters!

Smiles all afternoon.

Such a couple of hams.

It was truly an afternoon to remember. Matthew had a great time and it was wonderful to see him so engaged and happy! A great start for a spring break week.
*****
W had so much fun that we went back on Wednesday with Brenna.

Of course we rode the Matterhorn a few times but Matthew actually chose to try 2 new rides which totally shocked us.

It was a fun night and we topped it off with a sleep over. I was VERY nervous because we had never tried one. Matthew is very particular about the bed time routine so I wasn't sure how it would go. Especially after an exhausting day at Disneyland. It was a huge success. Matthew and Brenna giggled and played their DS games until they both fell asleep. They were so cute and happy to be together. It was the most interactive we have ever seen Matthew with a friend. He had fun and was asking when Brenna will come sleep over again.

Look at the joy in his face!
Great job precious boy.
I love you and am so proud of you.

3 comments:

Ms. to u said...: Awesome! He looks so happy! Adorable!; April 13, 2011 at 8:00 PM
Anonymous said...: He looks so happy! Very cute.
K; April 14, 2011 at 6:27 AM
Mrs Jones said...: That really was such a fun day!! Thank you for inviting us!! :)); April 14, 2011 at 6:51 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.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Spring Break

3 comments:

Matthew Dean

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