Small But Observable Gains

We have now been home for 2 weeks and are gearing up for our next trip - a family vacation to Nebraska, Colorado and Utah. We are looking forward to some quantity and quality time together as a family after way too much separation. After I was gone for about a month we were all at home for 1 week before Mike left on a week long business trip. He will return home in time to have about 12 short hours to repack and take off for the next trip.

This week we have begun to see some positive changes in Seth. He has shown some growth in his receptive language skills. We had been working in therapy on Seth's understanding of varied instructions (give me, touch the, show me). For over 6 months we have been working on this and he has struggled to process the entire sentence. We have been putting 8-10 picture cards in front of him and giving him various instructions to "give me the chair, touch the car, show me the airplane". He had been missing the first part of the sentence and only focusing on the last word. Since returning home from North Carolina he has shown understanding of the varied instructions - which is exciting. He is also continuing to use his index finger to point to a variety of items and has been having greater success in identifying body parts.

We are hopeful that he will continue to makes gains over the next few months. I recently heard from some other parents who had done hbot who said they saw the greatest changes 3 months after completing the treatments. Mike and I have begun talking about the possibility of doing more of these treatments if we continue to see some gains. The skills he gains will not be lost if we don't do more, but we could see further growth with more treatments. We are praying about if, when and where we might do more hbot. We are also hoping to get in with a new doctor in Chicago as the doctor we had been working with in Omaha moved to Colorado.

We feel a need to continue to pursue treatments for Seth to help him grow and mature with the hopes that we will be able to keep him in our home long-term and not have to place him in a group home due to safety concerns. This is the driving force behind pursuing various treatments at this point. Thanks to all for your continued prayers - we hope we will continue to have positive gains to report in the coming weeks. I will try to post while we are on our trip to let you know how he is doing.