Jaedon's almost 10!!! Let's give a big present!!

My goodness! Where does the time go? I've been reflecting on this journey our family has been on, and decided to start this blog. There are so many lesson's I have learned along the way, so many left to be embraced. I hope some of my thoughts inspire others to embrace and better digest the lessons available in their journey.

Right now, I'm thinking about $18,500 that I would like to execute my plans for Jay's birthday. Let me tell you about them.

When Jaedon was 2 1/2, I was introduced to the Autism Treatment Center of America and their Son-rise program (http://www.son-ise.org/). I fell in love. We visited the center for a week when Jay was 4 and had 35 hours of personal training in implementing a program in our home. Jaedon received 40 hours 1;1 therapy using the son-rise approach. The changes in him we remarkable! i was bowled over, and by the end of the week I was in tears. There was hope for my baby, a child for which the traditional medical community offered little hope. We started implementing what we could part time, and began running a full time program when he was 6 years old. I'll spend several blog entries telling you about the roller coaster ride that this has been.

We have also done a range of biomedical treatments and have found Jaedon to be most responsive to Methyl B12 injections and Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy. Both these treatments gave us a jump in his language development and and cognitive function. We haven't been as consistent as we would have liked, so Jay will make progress for a few weeks, then regress for a few weeks between treatments. We really want to see how much progress he would make if he was consistently receiving his treatments.

Jay is now 9 and has changed so much. We have certainly learnt a lot. As always, theory and practice are miles apart, but we want to close that gap, but need some help to do that. Specifically, $18,500 will close the gap between what we know we should do with him, and what we can do with him. Consider helping us close that gap and give him the future he can have. We know the sky is the limit for him, with the right intervention.

This is what we want to do in the next 6 months for Jaedon

• 4 (6 hours each day) days intensive therapy from son-rise staff, parent and other staff training, goals setting and implementation strategy development- $5,000
  
• Parent Training at the Option Institute - $2, 900


• Methyl B12 injections (by prescription) - $600


• Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (by prescription) - $10,000
  

Send me email email if you want to participate in this project in any way. You can donate simply, through Paypal, or by contacting me directly. You may chose an aspect of this project to support, and send the money directly to the relevant organisation/institution.

So many families face these challenges. Send me email if you know someone dealing with the challenges of autism and just want to talk to someone who might understand. I can't be learning all these things for nothing!

Thanks for keeping Jaedon in your thoughts and prayers.