Monday, April 28, 2014

Our Appointment with Dr. Sultan

The good news! Dr. Sultan follows the Defeat Autism Now! Protocol. When he mentioned it, I didn't have a clue what it was until I got home and searched. He is a D.A.N. doctor, it means that the protocol he uses is under the *Autism Research Institute. So I know now that we are in good hands. He will do a lot of testing to find the underlines causes for Tommy's Autism diagnosis. We will get back next week after some blood work gets done. He will do more advanced testing for food sensitivity as well as nutritional deficiency due to malabsorption issues, which I already know Tommy has it, but this will help to find the proper treatment that will heal his gut. He will do more testing for neuro-immunity. He also gave us homework, so I have to read a book, he indicated what pages are necessary to read for the next appointment. I have to create a folder that I have to bring with me in every appointment. I will keep you updated how things goes with this new doctor!

THE SKY IS THE LIMIT!

*The Autism Research Institute was established in 1967. Click here to get to their website!

Friday, April 25, 2014

Getting ready for the appointment with Dr. Sultan on Monday

I am so happy I found this doctor. I am revising the forms they sent for our Monday's appointment and he will check for absolutely everything on Tommy, how his body is reacting to chemicals in medications, etc. He will also check for issues in Difestive Tract, head, emotions, mind, neurological, energy, muscles-joints, cardiovascular, urinary tract, nose, lungs, mouth-throat-ears, eyes, medical history (past and present). So I am expecting a lot of testing because it is the only way to find where the problem is in his body. I have a lot of documents to fill in for our Monday's appointment, but my mother's instinct is telling that this doctor is the right fit. So I am expecting that this doctor is going to suggest huge changes in Tommy's diet as well as in his environment. But I am ready for it!

PLEASE SEND PRAYERS IN OUR WAY!

THE SKY IS THE LIMIT!

Thursday, April 24, 2014

I found a Dr. who may be my partner in healing my son from Autism

I have been searching for a doctor who could listen to me. Last  night, I found a website of a doctor that specialist in environmental medicine. Immediately, I sent an email to the doctor's office. They called me back this morning and the next appointment available is this coming Monday, so I just made the appointment. He is not one more doctor, he is:

  • Diplomate of the American Board of Environmental Medicine
  • Fellow of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine
  • Diplomate of the American Board of Pediatrics, and a
  • Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics
He currently serves as the co-chair of the Board of Examiners of the American Board of Environmental Medicine.
What is Environmental Medicine?
Accordinging to Wikipedia.org "Environmental medicine is a multidisciplinary field involving medicineenvironmental sciencechemistry and others. It may be viewed as the medical branch of the broader field of environmental health. The scope of this field involves studying the interactions between environment and human health, and the role of the environment in causing or mediating disease. As a specialist field of study it is looked upon with mixed feelings by physicians and politicians alike, for the basic assumption is that health is more widely and dramatically affected by environmental toxins than previously recognized.
Environmental factors in the causation of environmental diseases can be classified into:
  • Physical
  • Chemical
  • Biological
  • Social
  • Any combination of the above..."

I am just praying he will be the right fit and will listen to all my foundings about the possible coause of my son's Autism diagnosis.
Please send prayers in our way!
The sky is the limit!

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Tommy's Auditory Processing

Tommy's language comprehension was one of his strength until Autism stroked him. At his 34 months, Tommy lost most of his communication skills, including the skill to attend when his name was called —a skill he gained at his 4 month without intervention.  Since I began to focus on Autism, I could see a window of options and hope. I have discovered that there are many things that can be done to help kids with Down syndrome, Autism and other diagnosis to improve Auditory Processing. Therefore, I have gotten armed with information, technology and updated treatments to help my son to overcome his challenges.

1. To help a child with auditory processing, one should understand what auditory processing disorder is and how it does affect the everyday life of these kids.

When I say Auditory Processing disorder, people truly do not understand what that means and how this interferes with the everyday life of a child who has it.  I can describe it in one word: "PAINFUL." Yes, painful! Tommy reacts with a panic attack or aggression. He screams with a terrified and painful expression on his face when he hears a noise or a sound he cannot  properly process. This painful noise or sound makes him feel unsecured and fearful.

He used to run while yelling like crazy trying to get out of the place where the noise is or he aggressively responds by hitting his head against the floor or the wall as a way to get that noise out his head. This panic attack and aggressions reactions haven't regularly happened, but the first time it happened, I felt hopeless because I didn't know how to respond. I have became a PRO! I can recognize for his body language if he is getting agitated for a sound,  I act quick to calm him down or get the noise tune down, so this is what Auditory Processing Disorder means for Tommy.  Bellow is how books explain Auditory Processing Disorder:
"Auditory processing disorder (APD), also known as central auditory processing disorder (CAPD) is an umbrella term for a variety of disorders that affect the way the brain processes auditory information.[1]Individuals with APD usually have normal structure and function of the outer, middle and inner ear (peripheral hearing). However, they cannot process the information they hear in the same way as others do, which leads to difficulties in recognizing and interpreting sounds, especially the sounds composing speech. It is thought that these difficulties arise from dysfunction in the central nervous system (i.e., brain)." Wikipedia.org
2. To find a listening therapy that suits your child's needs. 


A listening therapy or listening program is a designed music, which it is structured into a listening program individually selected for a person's auditory processing needs, with the purpose of retraining/stimulate the ear and brain to process sounds properly. There are many listening programs, which have been created by following the work of Guy Berard, Alfred Tomatis, Steven Porges, and Ingo Steinbach.

The cost of a listening therapy program approximately goes from $500 up to $3,000, or even more. Bellow is a short list of the listening therapies that have caught my attention:
    3. To create an Individualized Listening Therapy with the iPad
    Seeing how "painful" APD was becoming for Tommy made me to study about APD.  I have gotten into the conclusion that any sound can be used as part of a listening therapy, which is based on my own study and observations about my son's auditory processing. I am also a believer, for a child that has auditory processing issues, the listening program should be customized  to address his or her unique challenges in a register or processing certain sounds based on the child's  audiogram test results. I created a Listening therapy Center in our iPad using EASe Listening Therapy, Mozart Effect music by Don Campbell, speech sounds and everyday life sounds. 
    • EASe Listening Therapy. 
      EASe is the  only Listening therapy available for the iPad. The personal listening therapy apps costs $39.99 for parents to use. A high quality headphones are essential for the listening therapy. The Sennhieser HD 500 Series headphone has specially designed for therapeutic listening and come with a 2 year warranty, its price is $145.00 plus shipping at vision.com. This headphone is recommended by OTs. Based on my experience, this app is easy to use once you watch the video at youtube.com that explains how to use it. The app also has an option to add more modules and every module cost $59.99.  
    The professional version of EASe app costs $100 —It is not that bad comparing with other customized listening therapies that cost about $1,500 or more. But it should be used by a professional because it's customized according to the child's needs.
    • Mozart Effect (Altered Classic Music) or Classical Music
      According to en.wikipedia.org, "the concept of the "Mozart effect" was described by French researcher Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis in his 1991 book Pourquoi Mozart? (Why Mozart?). He used the music of Mozart in his efforts to "retrain" the ear, and believed that listening to the music presented at differing frequencies helped the ear, and promoted healing and the development of the brain." We use the Mozart Effect by Don Campbell, who has dedicated his life to study the Mozart Effect. The Mozart effect can be bought in iTunes at $7.99 each Volume. You can read more about The Mozart Effect by Dr. Don Campbell at mozarteffect.com.
    • Auditory Bombardment (Speech Sounds).
    • Basically, it is the use of phonics to target speech sounds when the child has speech delay —not to learn phonics. We used the Zoo-phonics program to target phonics sounds since Tommy was a toddler with our former Speech Therapist. The zoo-phonics doesn't have an app yet. We also use the app BrillBoard for the blending sounds. Antioch School District has had develop the Hillcrest Elementary School's Speech and Language Website with amazing information that parents can use at home for free. They have a section called Practice Auditory Bombardment at home, which a good variety of speech sounds to be listened with headphones. 
    • Everyday Life Sounds. 
    • Based on my observation with my son, I have realized certain environmental sounds in the everyday life affect Tommy because he cannot process them correctly. So the only way to help him to overcome this sounds is hearing them more often, but in a controlled manner, so he gradually can begin to register those sounds at the right pitch. I know high pitches are the ones disturb him, so I stars with the volume of the sound very low and gradually I increase the volume after several days or weeks hearing the same sounds in a lower volume until he tolerates to listen to the sound at the right pitch. A website I use for everyday sounds is: . I also use the headphones while he is listening to everyday life sounds.  

    4. To foster Multi-languages if you have a multicultural family or follow your dream if you  if you would like  your child become bilingual regardless the labels.
    Raising a Bilingual child has more advantages than disadvantages, this included kids with Sensory processing issues. It may take longer for them to talk, but it is beneficial for your child in the long run because it helps to improve auditory sensory processing. So it is worth to try it. According to the article "The Cognitive Benefits of Being Bilingual
    "...The neurological roots of the bilingual advantage extend to subcortical brain areas more traditionally associated with sensory processing. When monolingual and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds (e.g., the syllable “da”) without any intervening background noise, they show highly similar brain stem responses to the auditory information. When researchers play the same sound to both groups in the presence of background noise, the bilingual listeners’ neural response is considerably larger, reflecting better encoding of the sound’s fundamental frequency,17 a feature of sound closely related to pitch perception. To put it another way, in bilingual people, blood flow (a marker for neuronal activity) is greater in the brain stem in response to the sound. Intriguingly, this boost in sound encoding appears to be related to advantages in auditory attention. The cognitive control required to manage multiple languages appears to have broad effects on neurological function, fine-tuning both cognitive control mechanisms and sensory processes."
    Raising Tommy bilingual is helping with his speech because it has always been one of his strengths, which has been noticed by his therapists who has also heard advanced speech sounds since he was a toddler. We are very proud that Tommy does understand Spanish and we keep our high expectations for him, he will fluently communicate in Spanish one day. 

    I have also exposed Tommy to listen to songs in other languages such as Russian, Chinese, Japanese and African dialects to help him to process multiple speech sounds rather than learning those languages. He actually sings some of those songs in these languages. He doesn't know what they are saying, but he can mimic the speech sounds.

    5. To establish a home intervention based on neurodevelopment and neuroscience (neuroplasticy and neurogenesis) to overcome or cope with the challenges of Autism/Down syndrome.
    Neuroplasticity, also known as brain plasticity, refers to changes in neural pathways and synapses which are due to changes in behavior, environment and neural processes, as well as changes resulting from bodily injury.[1] Neuroplasticity has replaced the formerly-held position that the brain is a physiologically static organ, and explores how - and in which ways - the brain changes throughout life.[2]
    • Neurodevelopmetnal Program. Tommy's neurodevelopmental program targets auditory processing and we are seeing more progress in a shorter period of time than with traditional interventions, which is becoming to be noticeable to other people.  
    • Tommy's neurodevelopmental program is addressing his speech with an activity that uses phonics, similar to Auditory Bombardment, with the same principal to get an accuracy of speech sounds, not for teaching phonics. This program also has activities that work on digit spans for Auditory processing. 
    • Sensory Enrichment TherapyWe are doing sensory enrichment therapy, which it has been around for about 8 years. This therapy was recently proven to be clinically effective for kids with Autism. Even when the therapy focuses on kids with Autism, it works for most diagnoses with neurological dysfunctions such as Cerebral Palsy, Down syndrome, Anxiety, ADHD, and among others. We have about three months doing this intervention and we began to see quick results. They are helping me to enrich Tommy's environment to control his anxiety. I like that they provide a cough who truly understand for what Tommy has been through and how it has affected his brain. They recommended for Tommy to listen to classical or pleasure music through the they to help him to calm down and reduce his anxiety. As well as individualized activities that we do twice a day. As well as avoid stressful situations for him because every time that he is under stress exchanges the biochemical balance in his brain that affects all his development, including auditory processing. 
    I believe that stimulating Tommy's brain with the technique such as, Auditory Bombardment as well more than one language has enormously helped him in the production of understandable speech sounds to the point School has ruled out a speech evaluation at this moment because it is not a concern. So Tommy has lost his service for Speech for the 2014-2015 school year, Yahoo!

    I am not an expert, but I am a mom taking the lead in my son's well being. In my 6 years of raising Tommy, I have seen how faster he progresses when I am in charge. Therapists and educators are professionals who help, but the best therapists and educators for our kids are ourselves because we are the ones that spend more time with them; therefore, we are the ones who have more time to stimulate them during the daily routine and the ones who unconditionally loves them.

     THE SKY IS THE LIMIT!
    I just Keep asking to God for wisdom and guidance through the process to find what is appropriate for helping my son to heal. Keep sending your prayers on Tommy's way!