Four Years and Four Months Later

AaronMatthew is now 8 years old. So much has happened, I didn't blog for 4 years. I will begin with this...

Last year around this time, we helped a larger Metro Detroit church in the Downriver area start a Special Needs Ministry with a sensory room. They did a mini-documentary of AaronMatthew to launch it off. It was touching and heart-felt. My husband Bernie and I served these young hearts with all sorts of different abilities. We gave them a safe place to learn about God and worship Him. There were parents who didn't go to church because there wasn't a place where their child would be ministered to. We gave them that place. Eventually, we stepped down because back-to-back services became too much for our boys and AaronMatthew would become over stimulated and not be able to self-regulate.  It was an honor and privilege to be apart of leading these young ones to the feet of Jesus. 

The school district here has an amazing Special Needs Preschool program put on by an amazingly gifted and talented teacher who has become near and dear to our family. She helped to teach AaronMatthew the alphabet and to phonetically say letters. AaronMatthew was to move onto Kindergarden and I felt like the school district here was not equipped to handle him. I put it in writting for a revision of his IEP and heard of a center program in the Downriver Area at Madison Schools in Wyandotte. The invitation to the center program was by referral only. AaronMatthew was accepted into their program and there are other students in the program who are a lot like him with his abilities. AaronMatthew is working on writting his long name. We asked him if he wanted to go by "Aaron" or AaronMatthew. He said, "AaronMatthew."

I have a sister who is a year and 3 months older than I am. She had a stroke as an infant and it caused her some brain damage. She was in Special Education and put into mainstream classes. All her life, all she's wanted is for people to treat her as "normal." My mom and her fought for inclusion. At first, I thought that too for AaronMatthew. We still treat him like any other kid, but then I had a change of heart concerning inclusion. He is in second grade, but still hovering around a preschool/kindergarten level. He has a difficult time  communicating. He says 3 to 4 words at a time and not a complete sentence. At times it's difficult to understand what he says or wants unless you know him and are around him a lot. He understands what people say. If he doesn't understand you, he will say, "What?"  He says and understands about 1250-1500 words. Behaviorally, when he gets out of routine, he can be quite the handful. Sometimes we can catch him in the early stages and explain things in a way he can understand and give him choices and clear direction. Then he might self-regulate. When he gets overstimulated, (when his environment is different and there's a lot going on) he looses his ability to self-regulate after a time. He will calm down when he is in a familiar quiet place with his beloved blankie. He will then talk aloud for a half and hour or more with himself and with his stuffed puppy. Most of the times we cannot make out what he says, but when we do, it's like he is talking about what he just did. Or sometimes he needs to spin endlessly (stimming) in circles with his stuffed puppy, singing and spinning to Christian music.

He loves his dog Jasmine and Jasmine loves him very much. She follows him around constantly and never leaves his sight. She knows that AaronMatthew needs constant supervision. They play together often and are the best friends. AaronMatthew can tell Jasmine to roll over and she will do it. I cannot explain to you the bond and the attachment Jasmine has with AaronMatthew, all I can say is that Jasmine loves AaronMatthew very much and will do almost anything within her power for him.

AaronMatthew has always loved looking at picture books. His favorite is the Captain Underpants series. He loves SpongeBob and he has his favorite Disney movies. He enjoys watching Sid the Science Kid and Super Why. He will go to his favorite parts in a movie, pause it and replay it over and over again! He likes to line up his hotwheel cars. He loves swimming and loves to go to the indoor playground. Vanilla ice cream with "berries" on top is his favorite! He loves pizza with only cheese on it. He recently has taken to playing basketball outside. He spends a long time trying to get the ball in the hoop. He's getting pretty good at it and does it over and over again. We just got him into the Special Olympics for this season. We went bowling. We will continue that this winter and then go into track and field for the Spring.