Curing Autism Together

Our autistic daughter asks what a word means and makes another unprompted summary statement (never happened before) - supplements working!

This morning, after imploring my daughter Anna for months and years to ask questions and periodically to teach/ tell me something I don't already know, she asked her first freely generated, fully unprompted and non-contextually demanded question about what a word meant - something that normal children are asking by toddler age - 2-3 years old, maybe 4 - I'm not a child development specialist:  "What does 'fanfare' mean?"  She asked this after hearing her phone text notification, called "fanfare".  After I explained and acted out the word by acting like an emperor making an entrance and making up a fanfare-type series of sounds, she said, "See, I'm teaching you what the word 'fanfare' means!"  Which is kind of backwards - I'm teaching her, but she's at least trying to learn a word for the first time in her life that I didn't cue up or prompt somehow.  What a big deal!! 

 

Also yesterday we were walking while doing duo Lingo chinese, and my daughter noticed a ladybug on the deck, something my son, daughter and I often do, which we then move off the deck on a leaf or my hand or other object so as not to crush them by accident, only to realize this on was already dead - someone had already stepped on it.  I heard Anna quietly, almost under her breath, say "it got unlucky", I heard the word "unlucky" clear as a bell.  This kind of summary statement or secondary comment/ rflection about something that has happened using uncommon or never-used words, particularly abstract adjectives or other words like "unlucky", has never in my knowledge happened in the three years we've done DuoLingo on the deck and elsewhere.  I was shocked!  It reminded me of another summary statement she made about her brother in a recent prior post, just out of nowhere announcing that she loves him because he is very helpful and nice to her, something that had never happened in her over 20 years of her life following when she should have - based on normal kids - been talking.

 

 

Why I think this new emergent language is happening in a way that other prior methods have not triggered:  Our autistic daughter has been continuing to improve cognitively via taking citicoline (aka citicholine) and ginkgo supplements alone (with no other supplements, switching back to the Carlyle Ginkgo brand that was working prior to using the BioKrauter brand that didn't work) primarily.  We are continuing to learn DuoLingo chinese (we just crossed the 3-yr mark) and are doing grade 1 & 2 math workbooks, but these were things we were doing prior to doing the supplements, while she was taking Citicoline and Ginkgo of that other brand that didn't work for the last month or so, so it's the supplements.  I'm restarting her on fish oil gummies made by amazon that are inexpensive and have good amounts of DHA as well as testing Uracil (the deoxyribose-related compound supposedly helping in neurological regeneration) that i have yet to find in gummy form (please send me a link on this blog or otherwise if you have found it in a gummy).  I'll be posting links to the supplements for people to buy in a future post so follow and check back.

"You get my point?" Our autistic daughter's language progress continues with ginkgo and citicoline supplements

(1) Today our daughter Anna told us a particular food was giving her reflux because it had canola oil as an ingredient, then asked me, "You get my point?"  This is something she never asked before.  Typically when she is talking to me I have to ask her, "What's your point?" and she often doesn't have one or I can ask questions to have her realize her point, such as not to buy something again, not to hire someone again, to buy more of something, etc, but most often her comments leave me wondering, "And so?"  That's why this was so surprising for her to say.

We had just switched back to a brand of Ginkgo, Carlyle, after a stint using a similar looking ginkgo gummy that didn't work - our daughter didn't develop for the whole time she was on the other brand for over a month, nearing two months when I was getting very frustrated.  

(2) A few days ago (Thurs Nov 14th) Anna said "What do you think you're about to do with this [milk]?"  This is much more complex that what I'd typically expect Anna to say, like "Where are you gonna do with this?", the "think you're about to do with this" is not a phrasing we use typically but she pulled this wording from her past and constructed a new type of sentence verb tense.  

(3) About last Saturday Nov 9th our daughter suddenly exclaimed all of a sudden how much she appreciated our son, her brother, for helping her with school work I've prepped for her, beginning with "I love you so much Tom, you're so helpful helping e do math and my homework [appprox]".  Anna has never summarized her relationship with her brother, although she has a few times summarized her rleationship wiht e,  

We're going to keep doing the citicoline 125 - 250mg  gummis (1-2 gummies) plus the ginkgo going forward.  I get them both aa amazon.  Best wishes and good luck making this work for your autistic mentally impaired person, hope it works!!  Message me if you have more questions.  i will be setting up links to buy from amazon or other sites asap.  Let me know if this is important to you and start following so I cna release it here first. 

Thanks and Best Wishes!!!

 

 

 

Our autistic daughter's langage keeps progressing spontaneously by taking Citicoline & Ginkgo Supplements

Our autistic adult daughter Anna keeps progressing in her language at a faster rater than in the previous few years since I've been adding Citicoline and Ginkgo supplements to her diet.  We're still doing Duo Lingo Chinese language program (just passed day 1,000 straight) and this was very slowly helping her progress (maybe a new or unexpected statement once a month or so) to now one a week, perhaps more.  I stopped writing some of them down but decided I should go back to it, because later I just forget that she said altogether and why not document the changes?

Yesterday our daughter said "I have options" when she was talking about taking a shower or a tub bath, "options" being abstract as a concept and nothing I could teach her - she stopped leaning language at the level that could been seen or done as an action, and an "option" is something I've never heard her spontaneously say.  

About 10 minutes ago Anna said "Let the juicing begin" as she started the process of juicing celery (which we both drink for eczema reasons - see Medical Medium's books for more info), almost under hear breath to herself, her back to me as she took the lid off the juicer to put clean celery in the top.  She wasn't talking to me but said a fanciful expression spontaneously to herself, mostly.  Such a shock!  An autistic person who almost never says a new uncoached expression is a person recovering and making new connections.  

If anyone is interested in getting a link to these supplements email/ message me and I'll get that to you by email.   

Hope this helps others!

Our autistic daughter continues spontaneously using new expressions, today saying, "That's a shame" for the first time

I asked my autistic adult daughter, Anna, to click on various icons and commands to back up my computer via external hard drive, as usual.  After the backup had finished, I asked her to click on "eject" to prepare to remove my backup external hard drive from my computer.  She had done so but it was not responding, so I said, "Try again", then had to repeat that several times, which she did, but each time as she paused, we saw together that it didn't work.  As it continued to not respond to her mouse clicks, I stated the obvious, "I'm having problems with my computer."

Anna said, "That's a shame".

Later she said, "That's such a shame that your track pad mouse thing is broken". 

She has never used those terms to my knowledge in her life, and likely never attempted to do so as the result of prompting, and it's an expression noone in our house uses, so this is a spontaneous expression of new language skills. 

As I mentioned in a prior post, Anna continues to take citicoline and fish oil (omega 3's) but her ginkgo is out of stock, so her spontaneous emergence of never-before-used expressions is way down in frequency as I wait for them to be available again on amazon, but as you can see here, she still has new expressions about every month, which is way high for an autistic person but obviously low for normal kids.  We're grateful that her development speed as upticked after being at a crawl or nearly flatline in the last few years. 

Also, it matters the things I continue to do with Anna, including continuing to learn DuoLingo Chinese (we're at around 900 days straight) and ABM-like and cognitive coaching, such as I had her make the multiplication tables up to 12 twice and she got way better the second time - this week, plus having her write sentences in various ways to describe the same thing, which we did today.  It all contributes, but her development speed really went up after the started taking supplements (yes, I'm having some of them, too).  I'll keep you posted!

Thanks for reading!  contact me if you have questions. 

 

Our adult autistic daughter continues using new words every week while on Citicoline + Gingko supplement regime

I'm continuing to record the use of new words and expressions our daughter Anna is spontaneously using - correctly and in-context - since I started giving her Citicoline and Ginkgo supplement gummies bought online, daily.  I apologize for having missed several in the last few weeks, having forgotten them after not recording them immediately.  

Our adult autistic daughter's rate of spontaneous use of new language has continued with around one new word or phrase every week or two, which is compared with at best one every month or several since I started this gummy supplement combination, even though we've been out of Ginkgo supplements for a several days (less than a week) as we await a delayed Amazon delivery of another brand we're going to test out. 

Today Anna used the new verb correctly in context.  Our dishwasher had filled with 2 inches of water after last wash and we had repeatedly tried the button that forced it to try to clear the lines, in the end clearing the water, but today we were keeping out eye on it during operation since it is making unusual gurgling sounds during the draining part of the cycle.  Minutes ago I asked her to go check if the dishwasher was draining OK into the sink since it was making those unusual sounds again.  As she quickly headed over to check out the dishwasher, she used the new verb, "babysit", saying, "I was trying to babysit the dishwasher in case the water was going to fill up in the inside." 

Wow!! She has never in her life used the word "babysit" spontaneously!  You don't realize how impoverished an autistic person's vocabulary is until you see even a modest bump in learning and realize how glacial learning of language was previously by contrast.  I recommend these two supplements - ginkgo and citicoline - to improve autistic people's speech spontaneously.  

Our autistic daughter used another idomatic expression for the first time yesterday - Ginkgo + Citicoline Supplements seem to be helping her cognitively

Our autistic young-adult daughter spontaneously used an idiomatic expression in a sentence yesterday again, around 2 months after starting ginkgo biloba and citicoline, this time saying "No siree, no siree Bob".  This was in response to my pulling a stretchy-fabric with black gaiter from my neck up to my head, which momentarily looked like I had a spooky criminal mask like people wear to rob gas stations or something like that when they put on panty hose or a ski mask, and she reacted saying to take it off an saying she was scared that I was going to hurt her or kill her, it was then I realized the stretchy gaiter, which I was briefly having trouble getting off (it was tight, too long etc.), made me look like a criminal wearing panty hose or a ski mask on my face as she's likely seen in movies or the news (the gaiter had several partially transparent mesh sections), then approximately (from recollection since I'm doing this the next day):

• I said, "I'm not going to hurt you, I'm not that kind of person."
• She responded, "No you're not that kind of person."
• I agreed again, "No, that's not who I am.  I'm your mom and we're friends.  I wouldn't hurt you."
• She concurred, with relief, "No siree, no siree Bob!", agreeing with me, then added, "not like the mutant ninja turtles with the masks" and made a few other comparisons.

I asked where she heard that expression from and she couldn't remember.

I was shocked to hear a normal idiomatic expression ike "No siree, Bob!" coming from her, something I have either never said in my life of so rarely or long ago I can't remember doing so, likewise with her father and brother.  It's just not something we say.  So again, she is either picking up expressions from youtube videos or picked up what this meant from her former Son-Rise Program facilitators both volunteers and paid who we used to have work with her.  This is how normal people/children learn language.  They just hear it in context and their brain pulls it up on another similar context where the expression fits a similar situation.  The supplements she's taking seem to be creating frequent new language expression. 

Ginkgo is supposed to increase blood flow to the brain, while citicoline is a source of choline/ betaine/ phosphatidyl serine - it can branch to feed either the needs of the liver or the brain, based on what the body wants to convert it into.  We all know autistic kids most likely were contaminated with heavy metals at a key time in development that prevented the formation of the brain's long-distance connections ("white matter", shown in studies to be lacking in autistic people), but how many remain in their liver and/or brains decades afterward?  Can more choline help somehow detox the brain, or perhaps grow neurons more effectively around contaminated areas in the brain?  Can improving liver function with choline and the betaine it can be converted into help the liver, which can start detoxing itself and or the brain? 

Stay tuned and I'll post new developments.