A great day and a spelling test!!

January 8Th 2009

Well I said I would monitor Joshua tonight and he is doing very well, when I got home he was his usual self very excited to see me. BUT I was on the cell phone and he "calmly" key word "calmly" went and sat on the recliner chair holding a piece of paper waiting for me to get off of the phone......never ever has he EVER waited for me to get off of the phone he ALWAYS interrupts MULTIPLE times. I hung up after about 3 minutes and then he came to me with a paper with 10 words on it......it was his homework practice spelling test, he told me each word twice, then spelled them out loud for me, then showed me the paper......sure enough he wrote each word and spelled them all right. Now this is the child who would scream and cry to even hold a pencil in his hand before his Stem Cell Therapy and as many of you read in my old Blog on our website www.stride4autism.com he started writing on his own in the Hotel room after his second treatment I believe.

I have not pushed the writing with him since then, but this well, this is amazing the whole thing the waiting to show me, then calmly reading it to me, oh he was so proud a huge smile as you can see on his face in the picture above!! Joshua this week has done a whole packet of homework math, reading with comprehension, and spelling. Now there was some movie talk tonight and a song came on the radio in his room he did not like and he cried for us to "change the song" but it did not last very long and he went right to sleep. He did well today his teacher said and he went to speech therapy, then came home and did homework. Now as I have said many times before Joshua has always been able to read, he just could, no one taught him he just memorized the words and that was that. But the writing was always a struggle, we are talking a straight up meltdown in the classroom because he did not want to write anything or hold a pencil at all, finally a weighted pencil helped him with that sensory issue, but he has no weighted pencil at home this was just a normal pencil. Gary said he did whine a bit during home work math mainly, but he did it all on his own.

I pray the Risperdal will be a thing of the past in 2009.

Any progress my son may make I attribute to Adult Stem Therapy, but as I have said before and will stand by it, it is too early to get too excited on changes, they may happen today but may not tomorrow, now if in 6 months they are continuing.........then............yes.... then I will be convinced of a change. But for today he did well, and for the first time in his ENTIRE life I saw him sit and wait calmly for about 3 minutes waiting for me to finish on the phone so he could show me his spelling homework, today I will always remember...... if it never happens again I will never forget the look on his face as he waited..... a big smile and he looked at his paper so proud just waiting to share it with me, to me it was breathtaking, a first, I pray not a last, but you never know if or when it will show itself again. In the picture above I share his joy of his homework spelling test so you may see his happiness.

I love the happiness when it is there it is so beautiful, so deeply touching, and had it not been for Autism I may not ever have noticed it or appreciated it so much as I do tonight. Thank you GOD I needed that tonight!! Thanks to those of you who are reading this and sharing it with me tonight, tomorrow, or later down the road..........

Oh yes tomorrow it may be another good day or it may be a normal bad day, only tomorrow will tell and I shall pass it on to you.

Goodnight and God Bless ~~~Lori