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 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. 

 

What might have triggered my autistic daughter to use another idiomatic expression for the first time today (after doing so twice, few days prior)?

After several hours of working on clearing off my desk of clutter and setting up a system to track new habits for both all of us (cleaning and chores that aren't getting done) and for my autistic daughter Anna specifically (academic stuff she need to repeat over and over like she does in DuoLingo Chinese), having already created such a list for myself as part of my 2024 resolutions to build new habits to support everything I want to accomplish (inspired by the books Tiny Habits, Atomic Habits, and Extreme Ownership I listened to on Audible, and that famous Admiral's speech on starting every day making your bed), rather than relying on willpower, including her in a bunch of the work such as labeling and formatting our chore checklist, she suddenly used an idomatic expresion she has never used before, telling me, "I don't want Tom feeding me words in[to?] my mouth". 

For a few seconds I was trying to figure out what she meant, mostly focusing what her brother had said to make her seem frustrated and complaining, before realizing that more importantly had, like a few days ago (see post of when she used two new verbs on the same day), was using an expression she never had before.  On further discussion, she really meant something more akin to "to shove down someones throat" referring to when he tries to get her to learn a science or math topic way beyond her interest/ ability etc. which sometimes happens, referring to someone trying to force words into her.  I thought maybe she invented the expression similar to ours, which is just as good or perhaps better, but when I asked her, after originally pointing out I thought she meant the "put words into my mouth", where she learned the expression she had misstated prior, she said "from you" meaning me, and when I asked if she just learned it right now from what I said or a while back, she said "from a while back".  

I have noticed when I've engaged with Anna to create formatted pages where regular measurements had to be made to make a visually regular and pleasingly tidy chart, as in this case where she had to measure 3/8" across from a list of chores and make a mark near the top and bottom of the lined section, then draw lined connecting them, to construct each of 15 or 16 vertical lines creating a column of checkboxes, she was sligtly cognitively higher functioning the next day, but perhaps this was the result of having done some of this work today.  This afternoon I also had her note new events happening today on the calendar date, and start writing out the days-of-the-month song that she still doesn't have down, nor the number of days in months, months in year, etc. I was going to have her write all the months, then their 3-letter abbreviation, then draw lines across to the 30, 31 or 28/29 day lettering, then write month names in the correct columns to the side under a "30", "31" and "28/29" columns.  She had written out the sentence once with numbers in all numeric words and then I am having her rewrite it with the lettered form of each number substituted so she can do both translation number to letter and back again, as an additional skill.  

These calendaring activities are the result of Anna saying completely shocking answers to questions like,

"how many days in a year",

"how many days in a month?",

"how many days in a week?",

"how many months in a year?", 

"how many hours in a day?"

"how many weeks in a month?"

she has sometimes gotten them right, then sometimes interchanged answers, such as saying to "how many days in a year?" 12, or 7, or 30, and not responding or retaining "365" even after being asked and given the answer to that question several times in the prior five or ten minutes, demonstrating she totally doesn't understand these terms intuitively in a solid way yet. 

Again, I'm hoping to figure out whether Anna's improvement in language in these small bursts happening so close together (see post from two days ago, Jan 20, 2024).  Are they the result of two new brain/ cognition support supplements (citicoline and ginkgo gummies), the reduced-lectin diet per Dr Stephen Gundry, our Chinese language learning with Duo Lingo now over two years daily, or other ABM (Anat Baniel Method) or ABM-like lessons, sometimes I've invented for a particular challenge and context (possible for me, being that I'm an ABM practitioner), or are these particular activities and engagement such as creating labels, helping make this formatted chore list / chart, having her repair the corner of a folder with the publishing/ers plastic glue, and other engaging activities with me for a few hours separately triggering improvement separately or possibly in combination with the prior factors? 

I apologize I haven't kept posting many times Anna started using new expressions here and there over the last two years while doing DuoLingo Chinese and occasional ABM lessons, so compare with prior to the supplements, reduced-Lectin diet and these activities she seems primed to learn from when done as a regular daily habit, but I will be doing so going forward.  Hopefully the improvements continue and I'll continue to post.  Consider following to be notified with each new post. 

Last night's ABMNM® (Anat Baniel Method® Neuromovement®) Lesson Triggers Our Autistic Daughter to Cook a New Dinner Dish on Her Own & I'm Working on Patenting a Game

Today my autistic daughter who is now shockingly an adult (hard to believe how long I've been trying to help her recover!) prepared a new dish for dinner on her own, not notifying us, not asking for permission, help, or even for me to taste it at the end, which has NEVER happened!  This is new and it jolted me into writing another blog article even if it isn't polished or lacks pictures.  The truth is the ABMNM lessons work to advance her mental organization and development profoundly although you never know how it'll manifest itself, as in this case, in her individual ambition and drive to make the sauce for Macaroni and Cheese like the one from Whole Foods hot bar.  I did once recently, maybe a month ago, try to make a cheese sauce, but she did it differently than we did.  

I'm a ABMNM® practitioner and decided to take my daughter through the series of movement lessons I was trained on during the Anat Baniel Method® Neuromovement® Practitioner Training one by one.  By "movement lessons" I mean the directed "mat work" form of lessons called "Transformational Movement Lessons" or "TMLs", where we can both benefit physically and mentally, as opposed to the other kind where you work on someone else on a mat or table ("Functional Synthesis" or "FS" lessons), and mostly if not only the person being "worked on" derives the benefit, but I need to get smarter and more flexible too, so we do the TMLs not the FS's. I have to do these trainings in segments because they're really long for her - often single lessons are an hour long since I have to stop and help her with the instructions often, plus the cleanup of our apartment to lay down a bunch of mats in our great room takes extra time.

We also have a baseline progress as the result of multiple ABMish, neuroplasticity, cognitive and other challenges throughout her days that I throw at her whenever there are activities I think would be stimulating for her, such as having her learn to use her left hand to brush her teeth and to pick up things on the floor with her feet (generating neuroplasticity), learning new activities like her learning how to help me use the serger today to repair a reusable grocery bag, and of course Duo Lingo, where we've been learning how to speak and write Chinese for about a year and a half (we're on day 582) which is helping her slowly progress linguistically as we practice various phrases in chinese she never used to say in English, such as when things are supposed to happen like using a phrase "yesterday morning" in sentences spontaneously.  I have her close her eyes and listen to the chinese phrases to listen for words and break them apart into meaninful chunks, something she stuggled with more before I started doing lessons with her, which admittedly has been sporadic up til now.   She and I are always better at Chinese on days we do lessons and several days to a week later, and so I have started making time in my week to try to do a lessons more often for all of our sakes.  I'm confident in the long run she can fully recover if I keep offering lessons and ways to apply them cognitively. 

-----------

I don't want to force myself to write too much as length as I used to nor to edit extensively or I just won't do it!  I know at this point!  But a bit on my journey - I'm trying to patent a physical & internet-based versions of a novel word game, something I've never done before.  Turns out patenting software, games and processes, as well as including both the physical and software form of games together - all features of this patent - are among the very hardest things to successfully patent for a variety of reasons but I undertook this to help protect the intellectual property of the software game we'll be releasing later this summer from copycats.  I finally got the abstract done, then realized it needed some tweaking and am now in the rewrite process, which is time consuming but really necessary.  I started on the Summary about the history of word games leading up to our product, but took a break from it to finish the Abstract as mentioned.  Wish me luck!

I'm a wellness and longevity applied science maven that I haven't had a chance to blow up into a business but I know it will happen eventually and likely soon as I work on it every day.  I'm still trying to figure out how to cure my PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) which causes insulin resistance and have tried many things. I'm using anti-aging supplements (NMN - Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) and Metformin to reverse aging, helping my gray hair revert to dark brown again - an on-going but slow process that's been going on for several years.  I'm still doing intermittent fasting every day to some extent to contribute to reversing aging now going on probably three years.  I can't wait until this patent is filed and we can release the games, so I can start selling anti-aging supplements that I've been using anyway and put out information on lots of things I've cured.  I am also curing that toenail fungus they always advertise about which I've tried things for years to cure but am curing it with raw honey - it's half grown out because toenails grow so slowly it takes a year or more to grow out the sick parts of the nail at a mm a month or less, but it's improving!  I have several other treatments lines up to test after the affected nails grow fully out and I can see if it comes back.

I've finally forced myself to reset to earlier bedtimes that I had been for a variety of traumatic reasons such as prior health issues I've since self-treated and cured, that used to amp up at bedtime and ruin my sleep not to mention my daughter's massive Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) that I cured (now around 10 years and running, probably more, since she had symptoms, like since Thanksgiving of 2012 or 2013, which used to keep her and me up most nights - it was so horrible but thankfully gone.  I will finish a video series/book about how I did it once I start the wellness company to go with the supplements after the Patent is filed.  I walk every single day for half and hour but just upped it to an hour and try to do so first thing in the morning while it's still really cool, like in the 50's or low 60's, which has reinforced my desire to keep this habit and move earlier to 5 or 6 am, I'm just not here yet!

Oh, I've mostly stopped doing the Son-Rise Program with my daughter as far as hiring and training others - it was too time consuming given my trying to create businesses I've been thinking about and planning for years and now am focused on implementing.  However the Son-Rise® Program attitude mostly dominates my really great relationship with my daughter, which is a "win" every day, and the mental techniques of the Option Institute are tools I pool from most if not every day with her and turning around my life to be what it as meant to be before Autism and other really bad stuff derailed me, so it's a "win" overall to have done it.   Thank you to any of you who participated in our program with Anna, some of whom I know have followed her progress here, it did make a difference.  

I need to go - it's already almost midnight and I need to get up early to walk!  

I know it's been a LONG time since my last post.  Sorry about that! I know I need to be doing more online communications on a number of topics.  Having PCOS makes me programmed to gain weight and have trouble losing it my whole life and I'm always embarrassed about how I look but I'm sick of hiding and think I just have to get over that.  

Thank you for reading all the way to the end of this post!   Hope you come back to see posts here more often.  I'll be posting more often and would like to help other people this way.

Best Wishes until next time

- Barb : )