"When one door of happiness closes, another opens;
but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."
Helen Keller

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Can you find the number? Brycen's recent accomplishment!

When I visited Brycen's classroom yesterday morning to check on how he was doing without his device, one of the associates was excited to share that Brycen did great participating in a group activity in kindergarten that morning.  My understanding is the teacher would say a number (and letters too I think) and the kids would write them...Brycen on his dry erase board.  We know that Brycen can write almost all of his ABC's legibly, not only in capitals but some in lower case as well, but we had yet to witness what he could do with numbers.  We recently programmed a section on his device for counting and had included buttons through 10 so he could "voice" how many of something when he is counting on his worksheets.  We had never really worked at home on much above 10, nor had we worked on writing the numbers.

So of course we had to practice at home so we could share all of it with you!  The first time I practiced with him, I just held up a card with the number and he copied it.  Then when Mike was home last night (prior to Brycen getting sick today so he was still on top of his game!), I brought out his binder with the numbers 0-20 that I had printed and laminated on Monday night.  Before I could even show him one, he started writing 0...then 1...then 2...all on his own.  He kept going with just prompts from us "What is next?" and pointing to other parts of the paper for him to write on so he wasn't overlapping so much.  He made it ALL THE WAY to 14 before he was stumped!  So, then I showed him each picture individually from 15-20 and he copied the rest! 

Can you decipher this?!

Isn't that 8 cute?!

All over the place but you can see 13 in the middle, then 14 and 15 and 17 pretty clearly on the right side.  The 16 and 18 were overlapping the 13, but 19 is in the middle on the bottom and 20 is on the top left.


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Autism and Our Family

"Autism"----It's one word that can change the life of a child and family in so many ways. Autism Spectrum Disorders are being diagnosed at a rate of 1 in 68 children currently. If you do not already know someone that has been diagnosed, the statistics say it won't be long before you do.

Our son developed typically until around the time he turned 2 years old. We heard words...we saw him play with other kids...we watched as he played with his toys appropriately...we made eye contact with him...overall we understood his wants and needs. In a matter of a few months, that was all taken away from him. He began lining up toys, lost all of his words and signs except for one word "ball", ignored other kids, could not sleep through the night, lost eye contact and the ability to follow directions, and he had no way of letting us know what he wanted or how he felt. It was heartbreaking to see something happening to our child that we couldn't stop!

Brycen began receiving home therapy 1-2 times per month for about 6 months before we realized it wasn't just developmental delays. We knew it was Autism...we just didn't want to say it outloud to anyone. He was officially diagnosed with Autism (classic form and regressive), as well as Mental Retardation in August 2009 by the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.

We continue to learn as we make our way through this journey with Brycen and we will continue to share this journey with you on this blog! The blog has been a great therapy for us to be able to vent our frustrations and struggles with accepting that we have a child with special needs, while sharing how blessed we are to have a child teach us what life truly means. It has also been a great way to inform others of his progress and changes over the last couple of years.

Thank you for your support of Brycen and our family! We hope you are able to learn something through this blog no matter if you are a parent of a child with special needs or a neurotypical child, a teacher or therapist, a family member, or just someone that is interested in the journey that a family goes on as they learn their child is battling a life-long disorder.