Our autistic daughter Anna has been learning Duo Lingo Chinese with me now for over 800 days, and I've been gradually implementing Dr Gundry's Plant Paradox book avoiding lectins to accelerate Anna's my weight loss (which we're doing using intermittent fasting, mostly by skipping breakfast and eating lunch as late as we can, sometimes just eating a large dinner and an after-dinner snack - sorry I forgot to post about this - I will in subsequent post). She's been slowly adopting new language (English words) but nearly always after coaching and practice, although suddenly today she's used not one but two new verbs she appears to have spontaneously learned like most people learn most things, by observing and understanding their use in context then using them in a similar context that matches.
Maybe it's the Citicoline (brain and liver support) and/or Ginkgo (brain support) gummy supplements we've started using in the last approx.two weeks, or maybe it's the Duo Lingo, but likely the more recent things gave the DuoLingo progress a bump up to have a sudden burst of spontaneous language learning/ expression. It's hard to pin-point what's missing when you're interacting with Anna verbally and why her speech is so hamstrung but part of it is she knows very few verbs and similarly for other words. Someone expressing themselves with only the most fundamental words and expressions she's heard us explain and/or other cartoon or video or other characters repeat often and where the meaning is clearly demonstrable and not abstract. She isn't able to create spontaneous sentences except for in very rare cases, like once a month at most and not that well. Since most of life is repetitive, like talking about what we had for dinner or want to make for dinner, whether we want to walk to the grocery store or not on our walk, whether our pants fit or are tight, our weight, etc. we've already discussed many dozens or even hundreds or thousands of times over more than two decades she's been alive and hearing speech around her. I've notice that the limited number of verbs as well as abstract concepts is a particular ceiling on her ease of expression. I could go on, but in short, when a new word noone has tried to teach her suddenly is used in a generally new sentence as it mostly is (as each new type of word, phrase or expression enables new types of meaning to be expressed), it's a shock. This happened today and I'm coming back to edit my original post from earlier to include a second new verb and expression she said just a few minutes ago.
EARLIER TODAY:
Today Anna was washing a large amount of dishes and was commenting "That was a lot" and "I 'powered' through it", the first time I've heard her use that verb (meaning first hear and understand what it means, then remember/ learn it, then apply it at the moment it would make sense and express her matching feeling/ action), or any other new vocabulary words she learned spontaneously recently. I asked her where she learned the expression "powered through" from, and she stated the Duo Lingo, saying, "That was a lot. Way to power through!" that displays on the screen after some particularly long sessions/ lessons (like 20-30 min). She's never said "That was a lot" or "Way to power through" before, other than reading the DuoLingo screen in that context and not repeating it again all day after that activity is over, so the new verb "power through", given how hard it is for me to teach her new verbs she actually uses later.
THIS EVENING AFTER 10PM
Anna said, about pork her dad made and ate for part of our dinner, "I thought it was tasking kind of old but I ate it. I thought about spitting it out. It was supposed to stay pink but it faded. It turned to be pink or red but it faded away to like brown, which is not a good sign." Those sentences are compiled in order as best I can render them. They were said with pauses between them and some brief responses from me, for example, which prompted the exchange, when she was complaining "the pork was getting old" or some such thing repeatedly but marooned and stuck without the words or ability to free-style explain herself beyond that, so she kept repeating it a few times with a frustrated affect (BTW, my husband, son and I ate it and while I thought it was borderline, the other two didn't sense it being old at all, our daughter is just able to sense things the day before we all do on food, her senses being a bit sharper than the rest of us). I had been trying to teach her the verb to regret. I was saying "Do you regret eating it?" She often when upset about something just gets stuck because she doesn't know what to do or say. She doesn't go on to say "I wish I had / hadn't ___", she just has an unhappy affect and essentially repeats herself over and over unproductively for both her and listener, and I've found she usually understands this and can progress to echoing words I prompt her with afterwards like "I'll try to do __ differently next time" and she and/or I apologizing also helps if something upsetting has happened. This is why her just using the verb "to fade" and describing the process of the meat changing colors (she didn't actually see the meat before it was cooked, she's just speculating based on the taste as she perceives it, my husband is super picky and wouldn't have used and eaten it if he thought for a second it was "off") was such a shock, because I have not recently taught her what the word "to fade" means (she had some colored papers, cardstock, etc. fade before so I'm sure I've used it rarely and can't remember it coming up recently, nor in any shows we're watching).
WHAT COULD BE CAUSING HER NEW LANGUAGE TODAY?
We started the reduced lectin diet after Jan 5th when I bought Gundry's Plant Paradox audiobook, that's about two weeks ago, and it took several days before I took action, so perhaps since the 10th, or the last 10 days. The Ginkgo supplements were started the last week or so of December (just over two weeks ago) and the Citicoline (a choline form that can support brain or liver function - convertible to phosphatidyl choline or betain respectively). The over two years of Duo Lingo Chinese - which we enjoy doing together daily - has created a "learning new words" habit she never had when young and very autistic (until recently - the last few months and only after frequent and heavy coaching and making her repeat after me, does she EVER ask "what does ___ mean?" when she doesn't understand it - not understanding most of the words most people say most of the time was just what life is/was for her growing up. I have her look up words and expressions we use commonly, like "It's cold outside", even if we haven't learned them in Duo Lingo, to teach her the habit of looking up and learning words in addition to practicing rearranging words and creating sentences in Duo Lingo, yet she still NEVER asks me spontaneously what any words mean. She'll take an instruction or have me say something and I'll say, "Do you know what '__' means?" and she'll say "No", then she is just in the last few months knowing to say, "What does '__' mean?" and appears to be able to at least minimally retain new words and explanations of new words since she's been learning Chinese - it's clearly increased her brain memory bank capacity in some way. She never asks what English words mean nor looks them up in a dictionary or online unless I direct and guide her how to and process/ interpret what the answers she find mean. I have yet to see her ever spontaneously look up a word I said that she didn't understand that I didn't pause, ask her what a word meant, and have her remember that's the cue to ask "what does __[insert word here__ mean?" after so many time's I've asked her to do so.
I'm thankful to get at least a few "freebies" - where she - an autistic person I'm still helping recover - learn new words on her own and in context, without so much effort and repetition to teach it to her, which I do with nearly any and all words she's ever learned and/or currently using. I'm going to keep track and post more often if this continues and used it in context
She doesn't understand words that I'm so surprised she doesn't - so many words it's pretty upsetting. Learning Chinese in Duo Lingo at least has taught her, after two years, that learning language is part of her life and that looking up what words mean is something she's used to, even if in translation from a foreign language, hopefully that will generalize to her seeking meanings of English words she doesn't understand, eventually.
What are the lectin-reduced diet effects on autism? Can citicoline or ginkgo improve autistic people's speech? So far, potentially yes, and so can learning a second language in a fun software like duo Lingo only the latter appears very slow but still better than nothing. Having started both the low-lectin diet and these supplements less than a month ago means the jury is still out. I'll post updates if this continues and try to figure out what is helping her improve. Subscribe to get updates!
BTW, I got both gummy supplements from Amazon.
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