Monday, June 15, 2015

June 2015

A couple of months ago (April, I think) we added in Vitamin B12 to see if it would boost Kaiden's speech.  It was an oral supplement - wanted to try oral and see if there were any benefits before going back to the B12 shots - I mean, why stick the kid if I don't need to, right?  Well, sad to say not only did the oral B12 not boost speech, over time he has become less focused and had more acting-out behaviors like hitting people (for FUN, not out of frustration), he's more twitchy, screeches more, and generally being a crazy little wild man - and he's stopped making full sentences on his speech device, back to one word at a time.  So, knowing something had to be changed with his supplement routine, I removed the B12 to see if that was the problem.  And in the 4 days since, the hitting has been much less, the twitchiness has gone down a notch, and the screeching has been a wee tiny bit less.  I think it's too soon to nail it down as the B12, but right now I'm pretty sure it was the culprit.  I wish the answers were easy rather than all this trial and error stuff.

Since January Kaiden has gained another 3lbs, and it's just amazing to me when I pick him up, there is just so much more meat on his bones compared to a year ago. I can't believe how much he's grown in the last year!

What's been really fun to watch since December with beginning imaginative play - he's starting to want to interact with other children - and even children he doesn't know, rather than just sitting on the sidelines watching!  And interacting in a nice, playful way, not just going up to someone and flat out whacking them . . . which unfortunately, he has done several times.  He likes to see how people react to it . . . and so many people think it's "cute" because he has Down Syndrome, so they let him get away with it, which reinforces the bad behavior.  It's been a struggle.  It's not just Down Syndrome though . . . LOL, I certainly remember one family member when they were a small child and the terrible behavior they thankfully outgrew . . . the parents tried so hard to stop the bad behaviors but this kid just wasn't having it no matter what they did. 

That's it for now . . . we do have an exciting update coming but I want all the i's dotted and t's crossed before we announce that one. :)