Hi!

Material Prep

I'm still feeling very puny, but that doesn't mean I'm not still preparing new materials.

Daddy printed some new words from the 3,000 most common English words list, and I made some Monet encyclopedic knowledge cards.

Granny

Yesterday, Granny came to spend some time with Timothy. Timothy's still not feeling great - he wants to be held and carried most of the day.

When he starts feeling better, we'll focus on creeping more. Until then, though, we've just been giving him lots of hugs!!

Brain-Injury: How and Why

So many people have asked me "How/When did the brain injury happen?" I don't really know.

From the book _What To Do About your Brain-Injured Child_:

"It is not terribly important how a brain got injured–what counts is how badly and where. Nevertheless, a brain can get hurt in so many ways that it may be worthwhile to review some of them...

We see the baby who is born prematurely and who is simply not "done" yet when he is ejected into the world...Of all the factors that may be associated with brain injury, this factor of prematurity comes up most often in our case histories, in fact about three times as often as you would expect purely on the basis of chance. This does not, of course, mean that a premature baby will necessarily be brain-injured beyond the point that most of us are brain-injured...

Perhaps because the birth process itself is important, our share of brain-injured children delivered by Cesarean section is about three times normal..."

So there you have it!

Clingy

On Sunday, Granny came out and we got Timothy to crawl his greatest distance yet...over 3,000 feet!! He really had a great time with her, too!

Yesterday and today have not been nearly as productive. Timothy's been extremely clingy, which is not like him at all. He wants to be held all the time, he doesn't really want to crawl, which is not good...

I started getting a stomach bug and now I have it in full force. I don't really want to hold Timothy all day because I don't want him to get to catch what I've got.

Then again, he might already have it and that's why he wants to be held all the time...

I don't know.

Either way, he hasn't been crawling much today.

ECI - Our tax dollars at work

So, ECI came out to the house about 3 weeks ago to do some preliminary questions. They were going to set up an evaluation within the next 2 weeks.

They finally called today to set up the evaluation. Our "case worker" informed me that Timothy failed his nutritional evaluation because he only drinks 20 ounces a day instead of 24.

Me: "Are you serious?"
Her: "Yes - the amount for a child his age is 24-30 ounces"
Me: "Do you factor in the child's weight, how much he eats of other foods, his metabolism, or the thickness of the formula?"
Her: "No, we do not."
Me: "I just want to make sure I understand. Nothing is taken into consideration but the number of ounces of formula. The fact that he eats nutritious, homecooked meals 3 times a day does not factor into this at all."
Her: "Correct: State guidelines"

I cannot wait for this evaluation on June 6th. Our tax dollars at work! What wonderful, competent programs we have in place!!

Results

We're already seeing results!!

A few days ago, we blew an airhorn and he did nothing. The evaluator screamed and he did nothing. We've been working on it (albeit a bit inconsistently) for the last few days and today he's responded appropriately every time!!

I've read that the auditory (hearing) pathway will be the first area where we'll see results, and that seems to be the case so far!

Animal House (Again!)

Timothy went to Animal House parties with his cousin. They both had a really good time!!

Yesterday, he crawled so much before we left the house and then even more at Animal House Parties that he easily met his goal of 600 meters!!

The first day of many meeting his goal, I hope!

Random Pictures

Family Hope Center chart

You know, I was worried that the distance FHC prescribed would be impossible, but I don't think it will be.

His goal is 600-800 meters a day. He woke up at 9:00am this morning.I prayed that we would be able to get 20 meters in an hour. By 9:45, he'd already crawled 104 meters!! And I wasn't even on the floor getting him to go - he just did all that to chase Roomba!!

God answers prayers!

Detail

I posted this detailed information on a Doman/FHC message board and I thought you all might like to read it, too!

Wow!!! is all I can say about Timothy's evaluation. I'm with him every single day and it's amazing the things I never noticed until Donna pointed them out to me. My husband said it's like opening the hood of a car and looking at everything inside.

Timothy's physically 9.5 months, but his brain is functioning at 12.8 months. So it's working at 135% for a child his age!

Don't get too excited though - he has some problems and some major, major strengths.

Seeing and Reading
Timothy is 35.4 months in this area - wow! I know!!

He is able to see detail, see shapes, his pupils contract really well.

He also understood that a picture represented an object. He had never seen a picture of shoes before, but he had seen plenty of shoes. When she asked him, he was able to identify the picture of shoes. Actually, he did this with about 25 different objects (and he even knew the difference between a basketball and a football...I didn't teach him that)! I was really, really impressed - that's a skill that is ususally not developed until 18 months!

He has a problem with his right eye. When he tracks objects, his right eye jumps back to the middle - I never noticed this. Also, his right eye over-converges. It almost crosses when he looks at something. Wow! Never noticed that either!!

So, he would have been able to read 8,000 single words and not read a book because he can't track words across a page!! That's very good to know!

Hearing and Understanding

Timothy CAN hear, but he cannot hear well. He does not respond fearfully to a loud and threatening sound. Actually, Donna screamed in his face and he didn't even pucker a lip. We took him out and stood him in front of the car and she blew the horn - he didn't care. So this is something we really have to work on.

Also, he only hears 20% of the sounds above his head, which was a big shock to me! When I saw that, I almost wanted to cry because I couldn't believe I'd missed it. He's a BABY - practically all sounds are above his head right now!! He also cannot hear high-pitched sounds at all.

Sensation and Tactility

This is another strength - his neurological age is 12 months here and he has NO problems. Actually, out of 6 brain pathways, this is the only one that is perfect.

He feels textures, he responds to pain, he can feel hot and cold all over his body, he prefers soft textures over rough textures, etc. I'm glad he's perfect there, we certainly worked on it! :D

Now his Motor Pathway...

Locomotion and Mobility

He was 7.8 months in this category, but only because he never crawled on his belly for *transportation*. He went down the track, he crawled at night, but he never crawled to get to something he wanted. Everything else he does well.

Communication and Speech

This was, obviously, his lowest category at 6.4 months (almost 4 months behind). From 2 to 8 months he's supposed to create vowel and consonant sounds. Donna said, like the speech therapists, that he's just not experimenting with sounds enough. And from 8 to 12 months he's supposed to say four meaningful words of speech, and he certainly doesn't do that.

Manual and Writing

I really *thought* he was going to do well in this category, but he is at 8.8 months.

He does everything perfectly...his fine motor is amazing. He's almost using both hands together, cortically opposing the thumbs and finger, which isn't even developed until 18 months old! However, she didn't see him pass objects from hand to another enough (even though I've seen him do it hundreds of times) and he can't drink from a cup (because he can't swallow liquids). He's really advanced in this area, but he's unable to do two things so it pulled him back a bit.

Emotional and Social

First of all, Timothy is not bothered by stinky smells. She pulled out a horrible smelling stinkbomb and he tried to EAT it instead of backing away.

He also doesn't smile to a smile. He always smiles at us, but that's because we're always smiling and saying sweet things. He won't smile just at a smile alone.

He also doesn't understand an angry tone, or get upset when people are yelling at each other, like babies should.

Socially, he was 8.7 months.

The Good News

The good news is that Timothy was a lot worse and the program we've been doing so far has brought him from severe to mild brain injury. Usually, when a child's behind in this category, he's also behind in this category. It wasn't that way for us, and she said the only way that happens is if parents have already been working on healing it.

Our Program

1. 600-800 meters of creeping a day. We tried to get him to do 400 yards a day before and that was hard, but now we know how important it is so we'll find a way to get that distance in! One day a week, we're going to have a marathon-creeping day where we do 150% of what we normally do in a week. So if he's been creeping 800 meters a day, he'll creep 1200 meters on marathon day.

2. Locate sounds. We'll make a variety of sounds - high pitched, low, and in between, and shake them near his body until he's able to identify where they come from. As this gets easier for him, we'll move out into the room and do it where he cannot see us (from behind the sofa, under the table, etc). 10x/day

3. Threatening sounds. We're going to make a loud, threatening sound without him expecting it. We'll use an airhorn, car horn, stereo, etc. Once he gets upset consistently for a week, we can call her and we'll tone down this program (we don't want to be constantly scaring our child). 10x/day

4. Olfactory. We're going to expose him to a new smell everyday. At least three smells a week have to be unpleasant (yogurt that's been sitting outside overnight, rotten egg, etc). 10x/day with the same smell.

5. Learning - our learning program needs to be reduced for awhile while we work on growing his brain. Right now, we have a genius child who is anti-social and won't speak...not what we want. She does want us to continue doing words, though, but she wants us to make them larger.

Overall impressions

I really, really feel like she wanted to help Timothy. My head is still spinning from the information I learned - it was truly amazing!! I'm glad I did the FHC evaluation sooner rather than later, as this is a problem we can fix NOW!!

FHC Evaluation

We are both SO glad we did the evaluation! Now, we know exactly why Timothy has language delays and how to fix them!!

Averaging in his reading, Timothy has the neurological age of a 12.8month old child!! That means his brain is working at 135% of a child his age!!

The bad news is he has a brain injury - a mild, extensive pons and midbrain injury. His vision and reading is actually that of a 35.4 month old child, and his sensation and motor skills are really ahead, so they've been compensating for the other parts of his brains that have problems. Some parts of his brain have pretty big problems, though.

Timothy has problems with 6 out of 7 brain functions. His language is only that of a six month old. While 2 speech pathologists have evaluated him and said his language is behind, no one could tell us why. Now, we know why.

Timothy only hears 20% of what is said above his head. He's a baby, so practically EVERYTHING is said above his head. He doesn't *speak* because he cannot *hear*.

The lady evaluating him jumped out and screamed at him and he just looked at her (scared me to death, though). We stood right in front of a car and honked the horn and he did nothing. He really does have problems with hearing.

He also has some eye problems - his right eye cannot track an object across the room and it also cannot focus on an object. We never realized it before, but we saw it in the evaluation to our absolute shock!!

The good news is that we also know how to FIX it. She gave us a program to help organize the midbrain...the pons will just have to stay disorganized because we cannot make him do the exercises to repair it at this age. Basically, he needs to crawl as much as possible - only through crawling are we going to repair and organize that part of the brain. We're also really really going to work on sounds.

She was amazed at Timothy intellectually, but he's an absolute genius and he'll never be able to say a word and he'll be antisocial. We've got to tone down our learning program for awhile and focus on the brain.

I feel like we learned SO much about Timothy at the evaluation! Now if we can just do the program....

Ah, yes, Timothy thinks that the printer is his toy...his favorite toy. I try to keep him out of the office because we normally have tons of stacks of materials (Bits, word cards, bills, etc) that he destroys. He just loves the printer, though.

Tonight Timothy had a new dinner - a pinwheel sandwich. I got a whole-wheat tortilla, put down a slice of organic natural turkey, and then spread soft cheese mixed with pureed babyfood over all of it. I rolled it up into a pinwheel and cut into small pieces. He really liked it! I served with steamed carrots and pears (he doesn't really love pears).

Even though he doesn't eat babyfood too often now (he won't eat it out of a spoon), I keep making it because it's so easy to put some into whatever I'm making, adding nutrients (think pureed peas in a grilled cheese, pureed squash mixed in with the egg yolk for french toast...). It works for us!

Tomorrow is Timothy's big FHC evaluation! We're really excited about it!!

6 Years

Today marks 6 years since David and I officially started "going out" - and now we're married with a child.

In the last six years, we've been through 2 gallbladder surgeries, 6 graduations, a surprise pregnancy, a premature delivery, a cyst removal, financial troubles...we've had our share of difficult times. But we look at our baby sleeping in his bedroom and we just feel so remarkably blessed to be where we are. We really do feel like we're living a great, wonderful, meaningful life right now.

If you want to trade us for our life, you CAN'T have it. We're enjoying it much too much!!

Chuck E Cheese

We took Timothy to Chuck E Cheese for the first time today. He wasn't really into it, but he did enjoy watching all the kids. He didn't laugh and smile on the rides, but he did start crying when they were over...

e[Chuck

Timothy had a lot of fun in the sun today! He especially enjoyed seeing his family!!

Chipper

Granny brought a little dog with her to visit. Timothy LOVED seeing them both!! He had a lot of fun playing with the dog through the glass, too!

About ECI

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For those of you who are wondering about Early Childhood Intervention yesterday...it was rather stupid, to say the least. They were going to do preliminary questions, a nutrition screening, and a hearing test. She came in with a big bag of equipment, so we thought that was a good sign. It turns out the equipment was a scale.

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We have been trying to decide whether we should say he drinks the unpasteurized goat's milk, but it turns out she didn't even ask. All she asked is "How many ounces does he eat a day?" Hmm.

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And his hearing test was this~ Her: "Does he respond to his name?" Me: "Yes" That was it!! He passed his hearing test. So that was a little disappointing...I just thought it might be more substantial than that...

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But this wasn't the speech therapist, so we'll give the actual speech therapist a chance.

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Timothy's going to his cousin's playday today, and he's really looking forward to it!

Nightline

Bad news - Nightline has postponed the airing of the Doman program. They said it would "air in the near future"

Sorry to get your hopes up! I was looking forward to seeing it!!

Nightline

Okay, everyone - watch ABC's Nightline tonight (if you're in our time zone, it comes on at 10:30).

They're going to feature the Doman program. I'm not sure if they'll say good things or bad things about Doman (what bad could you say, really?), but I'm excited to watch it!!

Doman sure is getting a lot of publicity lately...

Cassette Tape

Here are some pictures from about a month ago - I'm just now taking them off my old camera.

I don't think these need any explanation *sigh*

Timothy now stands up and balances without holding on to anything quite often. We're still working on getting him to creep more, though.

Our current Bits are STATES of the United States and LEAVES. Our words have to do with the PLAYGROUND and OUTDOORS. In math, we're going through NUMBER SEQUENCES (7, 14, 21, etc today). We're all just having a ball right now with our program!!

And, drum roll please...Timothy's been making tons and tons of sounds and has been saying mama daily for the last 4 days. I'm not sure it means me, but I'll just pretend it does!! :-)

News Report

The Doman program appeared on a Fox station recently. You can view the clip here:

http://www.iahp.org/Fox29-Report.342.0.html

Nutrition

Last week, we started Timothy on egg yolks (yolk only - no white). I must say - he loves eggs!! These are eggs from free-roaming chickens. They're purchased at a local farm and are always very, very fresh (like a few hours old!). Timothy eats about 2-4 egg yolks a day. You boil the eggs for 3 1/2 minutes only to keep the enzyme structure intact.

I'm actually really really proud of Timothy's nutrition. If a year ago you would have said that I'd be making homemade babyfood and cooking fresh meals for Timothy daily, I would have died laughing! Now, though, it seems like a natural part of life.

We watched the FHC dvd's and they have some really elaborate nutrition requirements. We smiled at each other because it turns out we're already doing all of those things!!

Picnic

Timothy had a lot of fun this weekend at his first-ever family picnic!! He swang, swam, and got to play with his cousins! He also tried watermelon...he didn't like it, and neither does mommy.

It was rather sad to see how much less verbal he is than his cousin, who is five months younger than he is. We're two hours into the six hour Well-Rounded Child DVD Course through the Family Hope Center, and David and I are both thinking there might be something wrong with his midbrain. We really want someone to tell us for sure, though, and we're anxious to get him evaluated!!

Hooray for Clay

I'm really singing the praises of clay right now. This morning, I woke up to "Ooooh, oooooh" on the monitor. That's a new sound!

Clay Baths and Etc

We try to always remove the items Timothy outgrows, but his papasan chair is still in the playroom for some reason (he hasn't used it in months). He never pays any attention to it, but he did today...he used it as a stepping stool! Look at that...is that not dangerous??

Last night, David and I talked a great deal about the language delay. Part of the reason that he was so upset was that he used to make more sounds. "Where did all of his sounds go?" Timothy used to imitate our sounds, when we said good job he said gooo goooo. He said baao. Then, he stopped. It's almost like he's regressing in language, and that worries daddy more than having no language at all. And he's disappointed that he's not saying dada or hi - those are things a father looks forward to, and frankly we don't know when they'll happen or if they'll happen at all.

Part of us wants to say it's the Einstein Syndrome (http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell083001.asp). Timothy is very bright - he blows us away (although ANY kid could do this - geniuses are made, not born). But part of us has seen other signs, signs that could point to autism, and we're worried about those (head banging, late speech, lacking social interaction). What we absolutely positively do NOT want to do is "wait and see" because he'll "talk when he wants to" We said that with my niece. I love her to death, but she's 8 and she's not talkin'. So we're going to DO what we can DO right now, whatever that may be.

We really both think that his 6 month shots caused a lot of the problems we've been having. (If you don't believe that shots can cause more harm that good, check out http://www.medalerts.org/vaersdb/ ).

But here's a timeline of what happened with Timothy's 6 month shots:

-Timothy gets a shot

-Timothy screams for 6 hours straight (his largest crying stretch)

-Next day, Timothy has a rash in a ring around the injection site

-One week later, Timothy has blood in his diaper

-Over the next several weeks, Timothy stops sleeping through the night, becomes more and more lethargic, stops babbling, and simply isn't Timothy

He stopped being lethargic and he will usually sleep through the night now, but his language never came back. We called FHC about a month ago when he just layed around all the time, and they recommended clay baths - one a week for ten weeks. Clay baths are widely used for autism, but they're very helpful for removing toxins of any kind from the body (http://www.clayforautism.com/ ). We ordered our clay awhile ago, but it just came yesterday. We decided to go ahead and do it tonight. It was rather unpleasant (see pics), but we were actually very, very impressed with the results. Daddy says "It's very slimy...it can gross the toxins out of him." But seriously, we didn't really expect to SEE any results with this, but we did. In the tub he was saying "b" sounds and "mm" sounds, which is more than we've been able to get him to say for the last several weeks. I don't know, maybe there's something to these clay baths...

Speech Delay

Today, we went to a speech therapist.

Daddy is (physically) sick over what happened.

For right now, we just want to say that Timothy is language delayed and we will be working on this.

We're going to FHC to actually treat the problem (whatever that problem may be) rather than the symptoms.

Edited to add - Timothy showed off his card skills to the speech pathologist and she was floored. Her mouth was hanging open! She said "Well, he's obviously has no problems understanding language...Was that called Glenn Doman?" She was really impressed :-) At least he's not delayed in that respect.

Video

Here's a video showing how Timothy reaches for the right answer. On the first one, he turns his whole body to get to the right answer. After the first two, he touches it with the corresponding hand.



The words...yeah, he just got those wrong. They all start with "C" and it's hard for him to differentiate between words that look similar.

We've been crawling SO much today - my knees have blisters on them and I haven't crawled half as much as he has!!

Crossing the Midline, Head-banging, and other wonderful discoveries

While waiting for the doctor to come into the room at Timothy's well-baby visit, we were doing some problem solving with Timothy's cards. Timothy got an answer wrong. Daddy watched his eyes when he did it, and he *looked* at the right answer but his hand was just drawn to the wrong answer, like a magnet daddy said. The answer was on the left side, but he was holding daddy's watch with his left hand. After some trial and error, we realized that Timothy does NOT cross the midline. He will not reach for something on the left side of his body with his right hand (well he does sometimes...). He reaches for answers on the left side with his left hand and the right side with his right hand, but he won't cross the middle of his body unless we force him to. Daddy really did good in catching this one...I never noticed it.

So we were worried. We're alredy worried enough that he's getting evaluated by a speech therapist tomorrow!!

Then, the next day, we come in from swimming and Timothy's a little upset. So he goes to the door and repeatedly bangs the back of his head against the door.

We're getting Timothy a full 6-hour well-child evaluation next week with Family Hope Center. If something's wrong, we want to take care of it NOW rather than later. We don't want to treat the symptoms (delayed speech), we want to treat the problem (if there even is a problem). We're really anxious to hear what they have to say!!

Books

Timothy knows several hundred words. I know that I *should* be amazed by this, but it worries me. David and I look at each other with dread because we both know we should have started books by now. And we haven't...

Once the kid knows more than 250 words, it's really time to move on to bigger and better things - books. Timothy wants to move on, I can tell. But we want to make sure we have a stockpile of books before we start because, honestly, preparing the materials is the hardest part and we want to do the program consistently once we start.

We've made about 6 or 7 books so far. With a new book every couple of days, that's probably about 2 weeks worth. We'd like to have about 2 months worth before we start.

Dear, beloved, local family and friends, if you are so inclined, Timothy would love to read your book! Handwritten, typed, stapled together, illustrated with stickers - he doesn't care. The only real requirements are:
1) The writing has to be BIG (about 1.5 inches handwritten, 70+ pt font typed) so that he can actually read it
2) No pictures and words together (so words on the left page and pictures on the right is fine) so that he's not using the picture as the cue for the word

One book we have is this:
Page 1: Timothy is eating.
Page 2: Timothy is playing.
Page 3: Timothy is sleeping.
Page 4: Timothy is standing.
Page 5: Timothy has lots of fun!

Another book is something like this:
Mommy loves Timothy!
Mommy loves Timothy more than the stars.
Mommy loves Timothy more than a mountain!
Mommy loves Timothy more than the earth.
Mommy loves Timothy forever and ever!

Another books talks about when he was born and is a much longer book.

Two books I've written up my favorite poems and made them very big.

One book is about different kinds of dogs - it's about 20 pages.

The book cannot be too short or too long - he progresses so quickly through material that in a few month I'm afraid he'll be reading War and Peace (*laugh*). We'll certainly be able to use any level of material at some point in the program!

Timothy would love to read about your undying love for him. Or your runny nose. Or your backyard. Or your views on politics. Or religion. Or cheese. He would love to see your stick-figure illustrations. He's desperate to move on!

Note - Don't feel bad if you don't have the time. Or don't want to. Or can't. No need to feel bad or apolgize. We busy, too, and we can't either...hence our desperate plea!

9-Month Well Baby Visit

Timothy had his well-baby visit today.

He's 20lbs. 4oz. He is in the 50% for weight. He is in the 50% for height (he grew). He is in the 50% for head circumference. So, there he's exactly average.

We did not get his shots, but we said we do want to continue tetnus. This article was very influential in our decision http://www.healthy.net/scr/news.asp?Id=9096 (thank you, Angie).

He is not babbling at all, though he very early on showed an ability to say words. So, we have a referral to a speech language pathologist for an evaluation (on my insistence). We go next Tuesday at 1:30 in the afternoon. I'm very, very excited.

I'm not too worried about his language, actually. Years ago in a linguistics course I learned that children who are exposed to 2 languages speak later than those only exposed to one because it takes them longer to sort out the languages. PLUS I also recently read that speaking is a skill that develops along with walking, and we're not really encouraging walking at this point. However, I don't think a speech pathologist will hurt at all, and I'm really hopeful that he'll be able to get therapy.

We packed Timothy's cards in his diaper bag to do while we were waiting in the room. A mother with a very young child saw the cards and asked about them. She was really, really interested and wrote down everything I said. Maybe I'll carry the cards more often to be a walking testament to the Doman program. :-) Honestly, I'd love to tell as many people as possible!

This is what HAPPY looks like

A BOX!!

Timothy's rule #1 - When UPS comes, always look through the box with a flyswatter. I don't know why, but he had to look with a flyswatter. Who knows what will come out of that box?, I suppose.

In the box were the Picture Dictionary CD-ROMS I ordered from the Gentle Revolution PRess with the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential. I want Timothy to be able to read in Spanish and English and the CD-ROMS actually have something like 10 languages (though we'll only use two). The words are spoken by a native speaker, so that really helps. He *loved* the set I showed him earlier!!

I also got the math video, which I haven't had time to watch.

Silly Math!!

Today we finished all of our cards early this morning. So, this afternoon, we were just reviewing math a little bit. I didn't know this, but math is REALLY, REALLY funny. That or my son is very, very goofy. Just look at how funny he thinks math is!!

Sorry - video (sound) not working