Autism Recovery - No Progress...Normal???

Jordan progressed an amazing amount between September and the end of December.  January was a different story. Nothing bad, nothing great. But no progress. When progress slows or stops, I start questioning what is different. What we have added to his diet that may be affecting him, what we have forgotten to keep in his diet or regimen of supplements that may be causing it, what point he is at in his treatment – when one issue is resolved, another will often present itself, as we “peel back the layers” of his health issues. So, maybe we’ve resolved some yeast and heavy metal issues and revealed some viral or parasite issue?  All these things go through my mind – repeatedly. And I turn detective again trying to figure it out.

Discovering Stingrays!

We saw his neuro doctor (Dr. R) today, and I came away encouraged. He, obviously, knows way more about the brain and it’s development than I do (most of what I know of the brain, I learned from him).  He saw a couple of things in Jordan that I hadn’t counted as particularly significant, like using imagination as he took a toy lizard, changed his voice, and began a pretend interaction with the toy snake I was holding :)  He also mentioned how the brain will grow and learn, then may step back a bit and go, “Hmm” and let things settle a bit, before advancing again (okay, so that might not be the scientific explanation).

Tonight as I was reflecting on Jordan and his progress, or lack thereof, and was recalling my older, neurotypical son's progress in his first couple years. I remembered how it seemed that he would go through developmental spurts, where he would progress a lot, and then his development seemed to slow for awhile, until he would hit another developmental growth spurt.

Maybe I’m getting a little too used to monitoring every single detail of Jordan’s diet, development, supplements, vitamins, socialness, fussiness, motor control, etc.  Maybe sometimes something doesn’t have to be wrong or need to be changed when development slows a little.  Now I’m not stopping – we’re still consulting with the nutritional and detox doctor again in two weeks and we’ll be doing the new brain exercises for this month from the neuro doctor, and I’ve already redoubled our efforts on his diet and supplements, removing a couple things we had allowed to creep in.  But, I am breathing a little easier and find myself taking a nice big sigh, relaxing, and putting away my detective badge for tonight. Taking a moment, or a few, to enjoy and reflect on how far he’s come. A bad day now is still 1,000 times better than a good day one year ago!