Reflecting back and new happenings

I continue to be impressed and amazed with the progress that Hayden is making :)  I watched a video of what Hayden was like a year ago to what he is like today and it is pretty mind blowing.  The biggest change is how happy he is :)  He laughs and smiles non stop these days.  These are not the drunk / high I am in my own world laughs that he use to have.  I say drunk / high because that is what food does to him.  He gets an optiant release from foods that he is sensitive to. The laughs now are appropriate and genuine.

I love seeing Hayden so happy.  In the playroom the majority of the time is spent playing with him.  Instead of just joining him in what he wants to do / stim we are playing games, and signing songs TOGETHER :)

I think he finally has a grasp on emotions.  He can tell when someone is hurt, sad, mad, and happy.  Today at the playground a little boy fell and got hurt.  Hayden was very concerned looking the boy over.  He said, "ouch, it's okay," and then made a sad face!!!!  This is HUGE!!!  He is relating to people and trying to comfort them :) I had to truly fight back the tears of joy on this one.

There are some big events coming to Hayden's Son-Rise Program.  The first being that Gerd Winkler, a professional teacher for Son-Rise is coming to work with Hayden and his team April 9th and 10th. (to Hayden's team members I will get with you more in detail about this once I know the exact schedule)  Then on April 15th-20th I will be traveling back to The Autism Treatment Center of America for more training.

Hayden's current goals are:

1) To inspire Hayden to look at us while listening for appropriate amount of time based of the activity.
2) Motivate Hayden to speak using nouns, verbs, adjectives, prepositions, articles, and conjunctions or more.
3) Invite Hayden to interact for 9 minutes or greater during an activity.

There have been a lot of ups and downs with Hayden for the past several months and I think it is largely to the yeast treatment protocol he is on and his diet.  We are in the final phase of the yeast treatment protocol and I am hopeful that by the start of May we will be 100% committed to Hayden's (ours) new diet.

We are going to the GAPS diet.  GAPS stands for The Gut and Psychology Syndrome Diet. What I know is that we will be eating a lot of broths and fermented vegetables.  Who wants to come for dinner?? This diet has me intimidated but I know it is what needs done.  I am going to be 100% committed to this diet along with Hayden. Brandon and Ruby will cheat outside of the home away from Hayden.  I will be giving up chocolate, coffee, and pop.  I will for warn everyone so you can stay away from for a few weeks while I detox.  The great thing about this diet is that it is done in phases and generally takes 2-3 years.  When we are done with the diet Hayden should be able to eat normal foods again with out issues.