Curing Autism Together

Anna says several spontaneous, well-formed sentences with "when" and "because" and other words

Signs of Anna's neuroplasticity and development continue after a day where there was no noticeable improvement.  She skipped the supplements I gave her Sunday night.  She took them the morning of the next day, Monday, yesterday, and then I gave her another round of supplements yesterday evening late like at 8 or 9pm.  I'm giving her NMN (nicotinamide mononucleotide), omega 3's, magnesium threonate, a regular multi (usually HSN - hair skin and nails - version), PS (phosphatidyl serine, for neurological support), and pterostilbene (most important because I think it's helping her brain) in lieu of resveratrol which I've run out of at present.

We've been organizing and cleaning for hours the last few days because they were coming in to change our internet service in our building.  We're continuing organizing today already.  We took a break for her to empty the dishes which I kept labeling and organizing our office supplies area. 

Anna yelled back to me:

"After I empty the dishes I'll come keep helping you out because I know you need help."

This is remarkable because:

• it had normal sentence structure in all regards
• it included a "when" word, that she has left out of nearly all sentences her whole life, something we've been working on for years
• it included the "because", something we're working on in the playroom curriculum lately starting a few months ago

This may sound like nothing to people who have normal children, but to those of us who hear nothing but broken english nearly all the time, it's a big change. Hopefully it continues.

After we worked several hours on organizing and labeling the office area and bins, I was asking her for sandwich size zip lock bags.  She said:

Anna:  "I'm very sorry to say this but we don't have any sandwich bags left, so we're out of them."

Such a normal, NORMAL sentence unprompted, including elements I've been working on her with, such as using "so" in sentences, like the "because" as mentioned above, she's just using extra clauses unprompted.  If she spoke like this most of the time it'd be hard to know she ever had autism. 

I'm continuing giving her supplements - she had two doses, again, yesterday after skipping the day before that.  The day after the day she skipped - yesterday - she didn't say or do anything notably new, but today, having had supplements the day prior (yesterday) she's now saying two new thingsI just hope it continues.

 

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. 

 

Anna starts using adjectives spontaneously in the last 2 wks, perhaps DuoLingo Chinese is helping

Anna has started using adjectives spontaneously!  

 

WITH ME (HER MOM):

Anna's mom (me) was trying to show her something at the center island - preparing food, telling her what to do next, and she said:

Anna:  I don't need you're stupid instructions!"

 

WITH HER DAD

Her dad said, "It's been a while since I did the Snake impression," meaning imitating the Snake character in the Simpson's cartoon show.  

Anna: "Yeah, it's been a while".

Dad:  "Don't you miss it?"

Anna:  No not really, it got old."

 

We're so excited to hear the push-back adjectives, spontaneous in the moment!  She has been able to use adjectives is a rehearsed and prompted way, such as saying "it went bad" when food looks rotten and "Are you sick?" if I cough, but the those have been used dozens if not hundreds of times but us and her in certain wrote sentences.  But spontaneous sentences with descriptors you haven't heard 'a million' times just about never happen.  Thus why these sentences, despite their negative cast, jump out!

 

We've been learning Chinese on Duolingo (on day 236) and it's causing us to practice parts of speech and word order.  For example, in Chinese, the "when" is nearly always between the noun and verb of the subject phrase, whereas it's at the end of the sentence in English.  For example, "I am busy in the morning" (English phrasing) is "I in the morning am busy", in Chinese phrasing.  We've been sorting sentence building kits I bought years ago.  We are starting to learn more adjectives and use time words in DuoLIngo Chinese, something Anna hasn't done spontaneously, spontaneously.  She still only sometimes includes a "when word" and with using the right "when words", such as when I might ask when in response to a sentence lacking any time context, she may say "a long time ago" when I actually know the event happened yesterday.  We're also starting to use adverbs in DuoLingo Chinese, such as "slow" and "fast", and positional words such as "to his left", "behind the restaurant", "at the hospital" etc, but those have not seeped into her language either.  So prepositions, adverbs, conjunctions (also) continue to be mostly missing from her language, but at least adjectives are coming into use. 

 

I'm not sure that would happen just from learning this from DuoLingo.  In fact, she started failing to learn and getting frustrated weeks or a couple months ago because of these new parts of speech coming into the lessons, so I had to start identifying parts of speech with her and talking to her/ asking her about parts of speech.  For example, I had taught her "a noun is a person, place or thing" and that "verbs are action words".  After she says something, I'd say "what's the noun?" and/or "what's the verb" and if she picks the wrong thing, using it in a sentence where it doesn't fit based on past experiences.  So if she says "go" is a noun, I'd say, "Can you give me some 'go'?" and she can tell it's wrong, and similarly is she say "dog" is a verb, I'll say, "Can you 'dog down the hall?" or something like, "I like 'dogging'" and she recognizes immediately from basic sentence patterns that that's new and wrong immediately.  So using the words for and working at identifying parts of speech helped her be able to continue and progress in DuoLingo as the lessons rise to a level beyond her abilities in English.  In a sense, she is starting to speech Chinese better in some respects, than English.

 

As an ABMNM (Anat Baniel Neuromovement) practitioner, I can see how one principle Anat often taught us was similar related variations should help you accomplish the things you struggle at.  I am gambling this will be the case with the Chinese language studies online.  I can't find an English online experience based on learning English this well.  Even DuoLingo doesn't offer basic English, only English based on another language you already know. 

 

Our 200-day goal passed a month or two ago.

 

As someone working with an autistic person aiding their recovery, if you child starts learning and taking interest in learning the same old things (in Anna's case, in nursery rhymes and cartoons) in various languages, consider this could be a way in to helping them develop language.  Anna was interested in German because many kids videos are available in German, but I was not so much.  I know I wanted to be an entrepreneur, for example a planner I'm developing requires finding suppliers for various materials, and would like to feel more confident and comfortable using and communicating with Chinese websites and vendors, so like any homeschooling, I tried to make it a win-win and both try to learn together, by learning Chinese.  Chinese is more logical and easier to learn than English and the romance languages (I know French, Spanish and Latin) which have male and female words - even neutral words like "dog" and "hand" are male or female, and you have to describe things in male and female forms of adjectives, like "grand" and "grande", to match their male and female nouns.  This over-gendered layer makes these languages unnecessarily hard.   Also, Chinese had shorter words and many other reasons it's easier (I can go into more detail if anyone wants me so or perhaps in the future), including there are pictures for all words.  Imagine a word for "home" that's a picture that is memorable and that most of the time looks a little like the word's meaning.  It's an extra layer to remember by.  I'm suggesting those with autistic kids who want to spend time with their kids that's pretty fun and a good habit and contributes to that child speaking better, I say go for it!